Who was Dr Hasnat? His relationship with Princess Diana in his own words

While Khan majorly stayed mum on relationship with Diana, it was only after her death that he publicly spoke about it

"Isn’t he drop-dead gorgeous?" a 34-year-old Diana mused as she looked at Dr Hasnat Khan after meeting him for the first time at Brompton Royal Hospital in 1994. "And his name is Hasnat Khan. It’s written on his shoes," she allegedly chuckled to her acupuncturist and friend Oonagh Toffolo as the latter's husband recovers from heart surgery.

Khan had been operating on Toffolo's husband and Diana was there as her friend's support system, as per several accounts. That was the beginning of a very private romance between the Pakistani-British surgeon and the Princess of Wales. The couple was rumoured to have been in a relationship for two years - which consequently ended after Khan decided that the life in limelight wasn't something he could live with.

In the fifth season of Netflix's hit drama, The Crown, we see Khan and Diana's romance as the latest installment navigates through the British Royal family's toughest era. Khan is essayed by Pakistani superstar Humayun Saeed in the show while Elizabeth Debicki portrays the People's Princess.

While Khan has majorly stayed mum on his relationship with Diana, it was only after her death that he publicly spoke about it. "I did not think for one minute that she would say yes, but I asked her if she would like to come with me,” Khan told the police in an interview following Diana’s death, as per Vogue UK. “I was very surprised when she said she would. After this, our friendship turned into a relationship.”

Khan went on to add that the couple was so serious that they had talked about even getting married, with Diana moving to Pakistan with him. But the decision didn't come to fruition due to Diana's much publicised life. “My main concern about us getting married was that my life would be hell because of who she was,” he later told the police. “I knew I would not be able to live a normal life and if we ever had children together, I would not be able to take them anywhere or do normal things with them.”

Khan, as per Vogue, had stayed with Diana at Kensington Palace the night before she went to Paris with Dodi Fayed. “After a few days, I felt something was wrong,” he added. “I told her I thought something was wrong because of the way she had been acting, but she just said that because of the geography of where she was, she was having problems getting reception on her phone.” 

The pair met again, at the end of the month in Battersea, and Khan told the Princess that he suspected there was now another man in her life. She denied this. “At the end of our meeting in Battersea Park, we arranged to see each other again the following day at Kensington Palace. It was at that second meeting that Diana told me that it was all over between us," he recalled. 

On BBC's Martin Bashir

Khan also spoke in great detail about Diana's infamous BBC interview with journalist Martin Bashir. “One of her most attractive qualities was her vulnerability. It was what endeared her to the public,” Khan said. “I later realised that Martin picked on those vulnerabilities and exploited them. He was very persuasive with Diana. It was all about him being from the BBC, being respectable, and very pious even. But he filled her head with rubbish, such as that stuff about the nanny Tiggy [Legge-Bourke] being pregnant with Charles’s child.”

Khan said of the period leading up to the interview, “She told me that whatever she did, she always knew how the courtiers at Buckingham Palace would retaliate. She said she knew how the Duke of Edinburgh would react and the same applied to the Prince of Wales. The only person she didn’t mention was [Queen Elizabeth], and I never once heard her utter a word of criticism of her.”

Khan told the Mail that Diana continued to be friendly with Bashir after the interview aired on November 20, adding that he visited a pub with Diana and the reporter in January 1996. “Almost from the word go, he started asking me the most direct personal questions about Diana and our relationship. Why didn’t we get married? When were we going to get married? That kind of thing,” Khan said. “It was intimate stuff.”

Khan said that he couldn’t remember when exactly Diana and Bashir ultimately stopped speaking, but that Prince William was the cause. “The boys were central to everything she did,” Khan said. “[William] hated the Panorama interview and told her she had made a mistake, which had upset her. But he was very direct and said: “Mummy, he’s not a good person.”

Khan said he decided to speak out after he was contacted by a friend of Bashir’s seeking his assistance. “He phoned me, and said he knew Martin Bashir, and that he was under a lot of stress. He said he was a decent man but that he was very depressed and that he had a favor to ask: would I talk to Bashir?” he said. “I think the idea was that I would say something about how Diana wanted to do the interview. I could not do that.”

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