‘Diana wanted to know how I had adapted to life in Pakistan’: Jemima Khan on how late Princess was ‘madly in love’ with Hasnat Khan and planned to leave the UK for him

• Diana appears on the front cover of the September issue of Vanity Fair
• The interview sees Jemima Khan and Rosa Monckton share their own accounts of Diana’s relationship with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan

Jemima Khan has revealed that her late friend Princess Diana was so ‘madly in love’ with Hasnat Khan, she considered moving to Pakistan to be with him.

In a Vanity Fair article titled: ‘The Grandmother Prince George Never Knew’, Jemima says Diana, who dated the heart surgeon from 1995-97, sought her advice during fundraising visits to Lahore.

‘She wanted to know how hard it had been for me to adapt to life in Pakistan,’ Jemima told the magazine’s contributing editor Sarah Ellison.

True love: The September 2013 Vanity Fair features the late Princess Diana on its cover. Inside, the magazine discusses her relationship with Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan

Close friends: Diana pictured with Jemima Khan on 21 February 1996 in Lahore. It was on visits such as these that Diana would seek Jemima’s advice on moving to Pakistan

‘Both times she also went to meet [Hasnat’s] family secretly to discuss the possibility of marriage.’ 

Publicity-shy: Hasnat Khan, pictured in January 1997, was in a relationship with Diana for two years

Indeed, Diana was apparently desperately keen to impress Hasnat’s immediate family, especially his mother.

But in spite of her best efforts, it would appear that this second love would see Diana yet again falling on the wrong side of an influential family.

Even though Diana had an aristocratic lineage, had married (and divorced) Prince Charles, and was mother of the heir to the British throne, Naheed Khan was unlikely to approve of her son contemplating marriage with an English woman.

‘[For a] son to marry an English girl is every conservative Pashtun mother’s worst nightmare,’ Jemima said. 

‘You send your son to be educated in England and he comes back with an English bride. It’s something they dread.’

Though the couple discussed marriage and children (friends of Diana told the magazine that she had wanted a daughter with Hasnat), the relationship fell apart around the time that she met Dodi Al Fayed. 

Diana’s friend Rosa Monckton says Hasnat was the one who initiated the break-up, but other friends argue that Diana ended it because the surgeon refused to marry her.

In fact, Rosa insists to this day that Diana’s relationship with Dodi was only to make Hasnat jealous.

On the silver screen: Diana’s relationship with Hasnat is at the centre of the upcoming film Diana, starring Naomi Watts in the title role

It would seem that marriage was certainly a point that divided the couple. According to Jemima, Hasnat ‘hated the thought of being in the glare of publicity for the rest of his life.’

And indeed, in his interview as part of the Lord Stevens inquiry into Diana’s death, he called marriage ‘a ridiculous idea’, adding that he ‘told her that the only way I could see us having a vaguely normal life together would be if we went to Pakistan, as the press don’t bother you there.’

Insider’s theory: Rosa Monckton pictured (left) with Diana in 1993, believes to this day that Diana used Dodi Al Fayed to make Hasnat jealous

Royal ties: Diana in 1995 on the VJ Day 50th Anniversary with Harry, William and Prince Charles

 

Diana’s relationship with Hasnat is at the centre of the upcoming film Diana, starring Naomi Watts in the title role.

Despite this fact, Vanity Fair reveals Hasnat refused to cooperate with filmmakers, remaining very much the man Diana once described to a friend as ‘the one person who will never sell me out.’