London
Princess Diana once entertained the idea of moving to Pakistan and living with the “love of her life” Hasnat Khan here, a new documentary “Diana: Her Last Summer” by a royal expert has revealed.
The documentary will air on Channel 5 tonight in the UK, reported Mail Online. According to the British publication, Eve Pollard, the royal expert behind the film, claimed that the Princess of Wales “had conversations with Jemima Goldsmith about life in the south Asian country”.
Goldsmith had been married to Prime Minister Imran Khan from 1995 to 2004, during which the two lived in Lahore.
“The idea that the Princess of Wales was going to marry and live with the Pakistani doctor was not what we were expecting,” Pollard said.
“She had long conversations with Jemima Khan, who had married Imran Khan and Diana was wondering if it was something she could do,” she added.
Diana went on to make three trips to Pakistan. In the summer of 1997, for what turned out to be her final trip to the country, she flew with Goldsmith to Lahore, on her father James Goldsmith’s private jet.
According to Mail Online, Diana took time out during the trip “to secretly meet Hasnat’s parents, but the attention it brought shook the foundations of the relationship, which the heart specialist had wanted to keep private”.
Hasnat had always known to be private, and so only a few of Diana’s confidantes knew about the relationship. This included Paul Burrell, “who said he used to sneak notoriously private Haznat into the Kensington Palace in the boot of his car”, the publication reported.
“I would bring him into Kensington Palace in the boot of my car or underneath a blanket in the backseat of my car,” Paul told documentary makers.
“‘The police never stopped me and I’d take him off in the back entrance. From there on their romance blossomed and they met him on dates outside of the palace too.”
A former BBC royal correspondent, Jennie Bond, said that there had been “rumours for quite a long time that Diana was in love with a heart surgeon but no one knew if it was true”.
Recalling her exchange with the princess, she said: “I remember her telling me once that she left the palace to go and watch open heart surgery. She said ‘its so important Jennie’.”
Another correspondent, Richard Kay, said: “She was enormously attracted to Hasnat. He was such as kind, really solid bloke, there’s something slightly Mills and Booms if you like, something about a woman falling in love with a doctor, a heart surgeon no less.”
Bond said that when the couple broke up due to mounting pressure from being under public scrutiny, Diana told the correspondent that “no one will ever want her”.
Diana went on to spend time with Harrods owner Mohammed Al-Fayed in France, and in particular his son Dodi, both of whom died in a car crash months later.
Paul Burrell, who served as Diana’s butler said that the princess “allowed dozens of paparazzi photos in the hope Hasnat would see them”.
“Every time Diana rang me she would ask about Hasnat, asking if I’d seen him, if I’d been to his pub, if he’d seen the photos, to see what he said,” Paul said He added: “Haznat was furious that Diana could turn to someone like Dodi, he knew that wasn’t his Diana — the son of a multimillionaire and a playboy”.—Agencies
