Princess Diana’s love life was no secret. From her marriage to Prince Charles to her alleged affairs, her love life always remained tabloid fodder. But, amid all the buzz there was one guy who caught Diana’s full attention– Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan.
Diana’s two-year romance with Dr Khan is still one of the most talked-about affairs. But who is Hasnat Khan?
Khan met Diana in 1995 when the Princess of Wales visited London’s Royal Brompton Hospital to meet a friend’s husband, who was recovering from heart surgery. According to Vanity Fair, Diana was instantly attracted towards him and told her friends that time, “Isn’t he drop-dead gorgeous?”
According to Diana’s butler Paul Burrell, Khan was not sporty, not handsome, and not even wealthy enough to be Diana’s lover. However, the Princess of Wales loved him because of his nature.
Diana described Khan as ‘Mr Wonderful’ and some believed he was her soulmate. Burrell said she begged Khan to marry her and he was even asked to find a priest for the marriage ceremony. She even visited Khan’s parents in Pakistan.
“When you think of the kind of men Diana must have met or been with or seen — here is a man who is completely and totally selfless. She said she’d never met anybody like him,” a friend of Diana told Vanity Fair.
Diana and Khan’s romance was a hush-hush affair. She used to leave messages for him at the hospital using the alias Dr Arman. They even avoided the media by meeting at unusual places and at times Diana wore a black wig to escape detection, The Guardian reported.
According to the ABC News‘ documentary ‘The Last 100 Days of Diana: the People’s Princess’ ended her relationship with Khan because he refused to go public.
“I think Hasnat was very much in love with Diana, but had really reached the end of his tether because Diana pushed him and pushed him and pushed him to go public and say we’re a couple, and he wouldn’t,” Tina Brown, the author of The Diana Chronicles, said.
“Even after two years, the relationship wasn’t leading to a meaningful progression or conclusion and that was the main stress on both of us,” Khan told Daily Mail in 2013.
Khan tried to call Diana on the night she died in a car accident. Richard Kay, Diana’s friend, revealed in The Last 100 Days of Diana about Khan’s phone calls to her.
“I think he was worried about her. I think he was worried, as were a lot of her friends, about what she’d got herself into,” Kay said.
