Princess Diana reportedly wanted to marry Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, with whom she had a relationship lasting nearly two years before her death in August 1997. Their romance remained largely private, away from the intense media attention surrounding the Princess of Wales. Diana believed Khan was different from the people who had disappointed her, telling a friend in the summer of 1997: “Everybody sells me out. Hasnat is the one person who will never sell me out.” The quotation appeared in a 2013 Vanity Fair investigation by journalist Sarah Ellison, which drew on interviews with people close to Diana. Their relationship was shaped by her hopes for a future together and Khan’s concerns about the consequences of living in the public eye.
How Princess Diana met Hasnat Khan
Diana met Khan on September 1, 1995, at London’s Royal Brompton Hospital, where he was working as a cardiac surgeon. She had visited a friend, Oonagh Toffolo, whose husband was receiving treatment following heart surgery. Khan came to the waiting room to discuss the patient’s condition, and Toffolo introduced him to Diana.According to the account later published in Vanity Fair, Khan’s professional manner and apparent indifference to Diana’s celebrity made an impression on her. She returned to the hospital during her friend’s husband’s stay, and the two gradually developed a relationship.Their romance continued for around two years. They spent time together privately, including at Kensington Palace and Khan’s home in Chelsea, sometimes taking precautions to avoid photographers. Diana’s friends later described the relationship as one of the most significant in her life after her marriage to then-Prince Charles.
Princess Diana wanted to marry the heart surgeon
Diana’s feelings for Khan reportedly went beyond a private romance. According to Jemima Khan, a close friend who was married to Imran Khan, a distant cousin of the surgeon, Diana was deeply in love with Hasnat and wanted to marry him, even if it meant living in Pakistan.Diana reportedly sought Jemima’s advice about what life with a Pakistani husband might involve. During visits to Pakistan in 1996 and 1997, Diana also met members of Khan’s family and explored the possibility of a future together. Her interest in marriage was also discussed during the inquest into her death in 2008.Former royal butler Paul Burrell told the inquest that Diana had asked him whether a private marriage between a Christian and a Muslim could be arranged. He said she had described Khan as her soulmate and the man she loved more than any other.
Hasnat Khan (Image: Vanity Fair)
‘Everybody sells me out’: Diana trusted Hasnat Khan
This quotation appeared in Sarah Ellison’s September 2013 Vanity Fair article, which examined Diana’s relationship with Khan through interviews with people who knew them.Ellison reported that Diana told a friend during the summer of 1997: “Everybody sells me out. Hasnat is the one person who will never sell me out.”The words reflected the trust Diana reportedly placed in Khan during a period when her private life attracted intense public scrutiny. The surgeon was not part of the royal establishment or celebrity world, and he appeared to offer her a relationship in which she could spend time away from her public role.The quotation is a retrospective account attributed to Diana by the magazine, rather than a statement preserved in a contemporaneous recording or transcript. It nevertheless became a defining detail in later accounts of the relationship and Khan’s preference for privacy.
Why their relationship eventually ended
Despite their feelings for each other, Diana and Khan faced a fundamental disagreement about what a shared future would look like. Diana was one of the most recognisable women in the world, while Khan wanted to continue his medical career without becoming a permanent subject of press attention.In his statement to the inquest into Diana’s death, Khan said his main concern about marriage was that his life would be “hell because of who she was”. He worried that constant media scrutiny would prevent them from leading a normal life, including if they had children.He also described receiving anonymous threats during their relationship, including envelopes containing cut-out pictures of him with a noose around his neck. The threats added to the stress of a relationship already complicated by publicity.Khan said the relationship ended after Diana returned from a holiday in the south of France in the summer of 1997 and told him it was over. The breakup came shortly before her relationship with Dodi Al Fayed became prominent in the press.
Hasnat Khan’s life away from the spotlight
Khan largely maintained his privacy after Diana’s death on August 31, 1997. He did provide information to investigators and later addressed aspects of their relationship in connection with the inquest, but he did not collaborate with the 2013 film Diana, starring Naomi Watts.He also criticised the film’s portrayal of their relationship, saying the filmmakers had got it wrong. In interviews, he described Diana and himself as friends who interacted as normal people, rather than through the hierarchy associated with her royal status.His reluctance to turn the relationship into a public narrative contrasted with the sustained attention it attracted after Diana’s death. Their romance remains part of the story of her private life, but the most intimate details largely come from accounts by friends, associates and people who later spoke to journalists.