Hasnat Khan, the passionate and impossible love of Princess Diana
Three years after her separation from Prince Charles, Lady Diana had a passionate affair with Hasnat Khan, a British surgeon of Pakistani origin. From 1995 to 1997, their relationship was low-key and complicated. Diana Spencer's great love is rarely expressed in the media.
He was his "Mr. Wonderful" ("Monsieur Merveilleux", in French version). From September 1995 to July 1997, Diana Spencer had a relationship with Hasnat Khan, a British cardiothoracic surgeon of Pakistani origin. She was then officially separated from Prince Charles since 1992. Back on a passionate but impossible romance.
Love at first sight in the hospital in 1995
In 1995, Diana was 34, he was 36. They met at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London on August 27. "It was a public holiday and she was coming to visit one of my patients," Hasnat Khan himself told the Daily Mail, at the start of 2021. Diana accompanies her friend, acupuncturist Oonagh Shanley-Toffoloo, whose husband Joseph comes to have an operation. The surgeon naturally goes to the patient's wife to give her news of her patient. This is when the two future lovers meet.
According to Vanity Fair, the princess is quickly under the spell of the doctor, throwing at her friend after seeing him for the first time: "Isn't he splendid?".
Diana visits her friend's husband for three weeks, sometimes crossing paths with the surgeon she befriends. "When you think of the kind of men Diana must have met, here is one completely and utterly altruistic. She said that 'she had never met anyone like him,' a friend of the late Princess of Wales told the magazine in 2013.
Isn't he splendid?
"One day I got out of the hospital and she was coming in and she was yelling at me, 'Where are you going?'" Hasnat Khan recalls to the Daily Mail. Two weeks after their first meeting, Hasnat Khan takes him to Stratford-upon-Avon, to his uncle's home "to collect books". This is their first official release.
Hasnat Khan, Diana's "Mister Wonderful"
For two years, the lovers live a romance out of sight. It is at Diana's home in Kensington Palace (now the official residence of Prince William and Kate Middleton) that the couple meet. It often happens hidden in the car of Diana's butler, Paul Burrell, recounts royal expert Tina Brown in her book The Diana Chronicles. He does not live very far, in the district of Kensington. Quickly, the princess nicknamed him "Mr. Wonderful", according to the testimony of several of his close friends to the British press.
To leave him messages at the hospital, Diana impersonates "Doctor Armani"
“She was very ordinary in many ways, a normal person with great warmth,” Diana's former companion told the British tabloid, noting a “natural” empathy she showed with her patients. 'was so intuitive with her that I started to call her' the witch 'She loved it, ”he says.
To hide their story, they use ploys. In the street, they rarely walk together. When it does, Diana wears a black wig and big glasses, reports The Guardian. To leave him messages at the hospital, Diana even uses a false name, posing as "Doctor Armani". The secret bursts in the fall of 1995.
An impossible marriage and relationship
A new phase began in their relationship in 1996. For the first time, Diana accompanied Hasnat Khan to see his family, in Lahore, Pakistan. In London, she introduced him to her children, William and Harry. The same year, her divorce was pronounced. She only wants one thing: to marry Hasnat Khan. He refuses. Despite her withdrawal from the royal family, Diana is still followed by the paparazzi. Their story in the eyes of the world is unthinkable to the doctor, unless they leave London.
"I told him the only way to see each other and have a vaguely normal life together would be to go to Pakistan, because the press doesn't bother you there," he told police in 2004. , questioned during the investigation into the death of the princess, takes up the Daily Express. He also mentions an impossible marriage: "My main concern about our marriage was that my life would be hell because of who she was. I knew I couldn't live a normal life and if we had children together I would could not take them anywhere (...) Emotionally, she still felt young. She wanted a husband to be there for her (...) "
She wanted a husband to be there for her.
Their respective lives were also very different on a daily basis. Hasnat Khan recalls one of their pub outings: "Diana asked if she could order the drinks because she had never done so before. She really enjoyed the experience and chatted happily with the bartender."
At the pub, Diana asked if she could order the drinks because she had never done so before.
"She gave him an ultimatum: show herself in the public eye or it won't work," reports biographer Tina Brown. Thus, the couple would have seen practically until the departure of Diana for France, in July 1997, before the Princess of Wales put an end to their relation, because of the "non-progression" of their history. "Even after two years, the relationship was not leading to any significant progression or conclusion and it was a source of stress for both of us," the surgeon told The Daily Mail.
But Diana does not go on vacation alone on the French Riviera. She is accompanied by the wealthy Dodi Al-Fayed, whose father owns the Ritz in Paris. In August, a few days before her death in a car accident, paparazzi photos showing the princess on the heir's boat in Saint-Tropez went around the world.
The night of the death of the princess, August 31, 1997, Hasnat Khan tried to join her again, he explained to the police in 2004. Without ever succeeding.
The surgeon and Diana's last sweetheart was present at her national funeral on September 6. Discreet in the media since the death of his former partner, Hasnat Khan married an Afghan aristocrat in 2006 before divorcing two years later.
Diana's death, pain intact for Hasnat Khan
It was not until 2008, eleven years after Diana's death, that Hasnat Khan agreed to speak to the British press. From Pakistan, he explains to the Telegraph: "Since she is not here it would be very unfair to comment on her. I am loyal to her not because she was a celebrity, but because I am true to all my friends. " However, his distress since Diana's death remains intact: "Sometimes I feel like screaming. There have been very bad times. I have evolved but it keeps coming back."
On the release of the film Diana in 2013, which focused on their relationship, with Naomi Watts in the title role and Naveen Andrews as the doctor, Hasnat Khan came out of his reserve to express his disagreement with the story shown in the director. Oliver Hirschbiegel. To the Daily Mail, he reveals: "There was no hierarchy in our relationship. She was not a princess and I was not a doctor." According to him, the film is "based on gossip and friends of Diana about a relationship they didn't know much about, and some of her relatives who didn't know much either.
There was no hierarchy in our relationship. She was not a princess and I was not a doctor.
According to him, Diana was manipulated by the BBC's Martin Bashir
"She told me that she had granted an interview. She did not tell me to whom, but said that she had obtained the tapes of the recording and was storing them in a safe place until the news is announced, "shared Diana's ex-companion to the Daily Mail, in early January 2021.
The interview in question is still talking more than 25 years later. On November 20, 1995, Diana's interview on Panorama (BBC), watched by 23 million Britons, created an earthquake within the monarchy and throughout the kingdom. She talks about the depression and bulimia she suffered for several years, linked to her unhappy marriage and the affair that her husband had with Camilla Parker-Bowles. "When no one is listening to you or you feel that no one is listening to you, all kinds of things start to happen", she then launches to discuss her suicide attempts.
At the end of 2020, the BBC opened an independent investigation. Journalist Martin Bashir is accused of providing Diana with false bank statements, proving that the Firm employed two people to spy on her. According to Hasnat Khan, the Princess of Wales would have been well handled by journalist Martin Bashir, in charge of the interview: "One of her most attractive qualities was her vulnerability. I later realized that Martin had picked out those vulnerabilities and exploited them. He was very persuasive with Diana. "
The former companion of the princess therefore joined the camp of Charles Spencer, Diana's older brother, also accusing the BBC journalist. According to Hasnat Khan, it was Prince William, then just a teenager, who finally convinced his mother to cut ties with Martin Bashir.
