How much do you know about cardiac surgeon Hasnat Khan?
Who Is Hasnat Khan? All About Princess Diana’s True Love
Updated on May 19, 2025
He’s a skilled surgeon
Born into an upper-middle-class Muslim family in Jhelum, Pakistan, Khan attended medical school in Pakistan and practiced surgery in Sydney, Australia, before moving to London in 1994. In London, he earned his PhD at Imperial College and worked at Royal Brompton Hospital, London Chest Hospital and Harefield Hospital.
“Diana was excited by the fact that he actually held other people’s lives in his hands,” says Andersen. “[T]hat what he did was literally a matter of life and death.”
He met Diana at the hospital
Hasnat met Diana while he was doing his rounds at Royal Brompton Hospital on Aug. 27, 1995. The princess had gone to visit Joe Toffolo, the husband of her friend and acupuncturist, Oonagh Toffolo, who had recently undergone triple-bypass surgery. Kahn was at the time working for the heart surgeon who performed the operation.
“I first met Diana when I had occasion to speak to Mrs. Toffolo, whose husband was required to stay in hospital for some time,” Khan said in a statement to authorities after Diana’s death. He went on to say that Diana visited on a regular basis, and that from “what she had seen during her visits, Diana became very interested in the workings of the hospital.”
Their friendship quickly turned to romance
The princess—who had been formally separated from Prince Charles since 1992—was almost immediately smitten by the handsome surgeon. (Friends would later say she likened Kahn to a young Omar Sharif.) She visited the hospital daily in hopes of running into Khan and even arranged to observe some of his surgeries.
“I think I’ve met my Mr. Wonderful,” Diana said to her friend Simone Simmons, who recalled the conversation in an interview with Vanity Fair in 2013. She also said Diana talked about Kahn’s “dark-brown velvet eyes that you could just sink into.” Khan, too, was taken with the princess, noting her charm and compassion for patients. “I found Diana very down to earth, and she made everyone feel at ease,” he said in his 2004 statement. “I did notice that she was also very flirtatious with everyone.”
Their first “date,” in September 1995, was impromptu. Khan needed to pick up some books at his uncle’s house in Stratford-upon-Avon and invited Diana to come with him. “I was very surprised when she said she would,” he later recalled. The two drove there together, Diana met Kahn’s aunt and uncle and then they had dinner and drove back to London. “After this, our friendship turned into a relationship.”
They took extreme steps to remain discreet
Of course, dating the most famous woman in the world was never easy. “Diana would put on a dark wig and sunglasses and sneak into the hospital to watch Khan perform heart surgery,” Andersen says. Her then-butler, Paul Burrell, has also described hiding Khan in the trunk of his car to sneak him into Diana’s home. They spent most of their time together at Kensington Palace, or at Khan’s one-bedroom apartment in Chelsea.
When Diana called him at work she would leave messages under an assumed name (“Dr. Armani”), and when they dined out at a restaurant, she’d wear disguises to keep from being recognized. “It was all very cloak-and-dagger, and that made it the more exciting for both of them,” Andersen adds. “Only a handful of people knew they were lovers.”
Their relationship was turbulent
Diana thrived in the spotlight, but Khan hated public attention. And once news of their relationship broke in November 1995, he found himself in the middle of a tabloid maelstrom. “The press went everywhere trying to get information on me,” Khan said in his 2004 statement. “They visited old girlfriends, my medical school and retired professors who I had known.” He also received death threats and cut-out pictures of himself with a noose around his neck.
Kahn said Diana tried to shield him from the media glare, but the pressure took a toll on their relationship. “He wasn’t willing to give up his privacy for her,” Andersen says. “Their battles were epic—lots of shouting and slamming of doors. It was a very stormy affair.” Even a teenage Prince William could see that his mother was riding an emotional roller coaster. “She was deliriously happy one moment, weeping uncontrollably the next,” Andersen says. “When Diana started dating Dodi Fayed for the express purpose of making Hasnat Khan jealous, William pointed out that at least he didn’t make her cry.”
They talked marriage—but their differences kept them apart
Diana told friends she was willing to convert to Islam to marry Khan, and she even traveled to Pakistan to meet his family. But Khan’s father, Abdul Rasheed Khan, said his son told the family that his relationship with Diana was doomed. “If I married her, our marriage would not last for more than a year. We are culturally so different from each other,” the elder Kahn says his son told him. “She is from Venus and I am from Mars. If it ever happened, it would be like a marriage from two different planets.”
In his statement at the inquest, Hasnat Kahn said neither he nor Diana ever actually proposed. “My main concern about us getting married was that my life would be hell because of who she was,” he said. “I knew I would not be able to live a normal life.” Diana also knew the firestorm their marriage might have caused. “The British public would probably have turned on her for making a Muslim the stepfather of their future king,” Andersen says. “It’s not hard to imagine the racist headlines in the British tabloids. It might have devolved into quite an ugly scene.”
He says Diana ultimately ended their relationship
In his 2004 statement, Khan says Diana broke off their relationship in July 1997, shortly after returning from a vacation aboard the yacht of businessman Mohamed Al Fayed. She denied there was anyone else involved, he said, and he only learned later that she had begun dating Al-Fayed’s son Dodi. Still, Diana’s friends maintain she still hoped to reconcile with Khan. “If Hasnat Khan had called and proposed, Diana would have dropped everything and come running in an instant,” Andersen says.
He struggled after her death
In the early 2000s, Khan left London and moved back to Pakistan. “I am quite relieved to be home. My blood pressure is stable—I go fishing, I go for walks,” he said at the time. “It feels like a sanctuary. It’s very peaceful. I can go outside and read a book and enjoy the peace.” He has said his leaving was unrelated to the prospect of his being called to testify at the inquest into Diana’s death, but he did admit in a rare interview with the Daily Mail that “the advice I have been given is that I cannot be called if I am overseas.”
In 2006, Khan married Hadia Sher Ali, the 20-something daughter of a noble Afghan family, in a marriage that was arranged by his parents. They separated after less than two years, for “multiple reasons,” according to Kahn, although he admitted his relationship with Diana and the fallout, including the inquest, dominated his life at the time.
He doesn’t think Diana gets the credit she deserves
Although their romantic relationship ended, Khan never stopped admiring Diana’s humanitarian achievements. “She did great work for the country and for people all over the world—not just in the United Kingdom, but everywhere,” he told the Daily Mail. “I think that is important. She did a lot of work. She didn’t just shake hands and wave at people.”
Kahn was disappointed in the memorial fountain dedicated in Diana’s honor in London’s Hyde park in 2004. “My feelings are that creating a fountain is not at all near how you can remember a great person,” he said. “You put great people up as high as possible … Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had statues, and they are still there. They weren’t remembered by a little fountain.” (Princes William and Harry would later commission a bronze statue of their mother at Kensington Palace, to mark what would have been her 60th birthday in 2021.)
He believes the media still treats Diana unfairly
In one of his rare interviews, with the British magazine Hello, Khan took issue with the 2013 film Diana, starring Naomi Watts, which aimed to portray his relationship with Diana. Khan said the movie was based entirely “on hypotheses and gossip” and vowed never to watch it.
He has also spoken out against attempts by some to portray Diana as unstable or manipulative. “I found her a very normal person with great qualities and some personal drawbacks, like bad habits,” he told the Mail. In 2021, he came forward to say he believes Diana was manipulated by journalist Martin Bashir, who was then under investigation for tricking the Princess into a now-infamous 1996 BBC interview.
“One of her most attractive qualities was her vulnerability,” Khan told the Mail. “It was what endeared her to the public. I later realized that Martin picked on those vulnerabilities and exploited them.”
He’s built a quiet life out of the spotlight
Today, Khan is again living in the U.K, working as a cardiothoracic surgeon at Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals in Essex. He has also founded a hospital cardiac unit in his hometown in Pakistan that services impoverished patients. And in 2017, he wed again, this time to a woman named Somi Sohail.
About the expert
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Reader’s Digest has published hundreds of stories on the British royal family, providing a behind-the-scenes look at the fascinating facets of the monarchy. We regularly cover topics including the latest royal news, the history and meaning behind time-honored traditions, and the everyday quirks of everyone’s favorite family members, from Queen Elizabeth’s daily snack to Prince William’s confessions about his home life. We’re committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. For this piece on Hasnat Kahn, Lauren Cahn tapped her experience as a longtime journalist who often covers knowledge, history and the British royal family for Reader’s Digest. We verify all facts and data, back them with credible sourcing and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- Christopher Andersen, author of The Day Diana Died, Diana’s Boys and The King: The Life of Charles III; email interview, May 8, 2025
- Daily Express: “Hasnat Khan: The statement in full”
- Vanity Fair: “Diana’s Impossible Dream”
- Daily Mail: “WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Diana’s Mr Wonderful Hasnat Khan gives his first ever interview”
- Daily Mail: “The ‘love of tragic Diana’s life’ finds happiness at last: Heart surgeon Hasnat Khan becomes engaged”
- Telegraph India: “Di heart-throb moves on – Surgeon who could have wed princess to join wife in Pak”
- Hello!: “Princess Diana’s former lover Hasnat Khan says new film is based on gossip”
- Telegraph India: “Di’s ex finds new love”
- Daily Mail: “Hasnat Khan wields the knife: The heart surgeon gives his first interview in 12 years”
