Princess Diana once dreamed of leaving Britain behind and starting a new life in South Africa with her secret lover, Pakistani-British heart surgeon Dr Hasnat Khan, according to her brother Charles Spencer’s new memoir. In ‘Swan Song: Diana, My Sister,’ released Wednesday, Spencer claimed Diana had hoped to escape what she saw as an increasingly unbearable life in Britain and build a quieter, more ordinary life with Khan in Cape Town.
Her plans reportedly went as far as seeking help from renowned heart surgeon Dr Christian Barnard, who had performed the world’s first successful human heart transplant at Cape Town’s Groote Schuur Hospital. According to Spencer, Diana hoped Barnard could help Khan find a suitable position at the hospital.
Spencer wrote that Diana often imagined different ways her life could turn out, describing some of her plans as “naive yet impossible dreams”. By March 1997, when she travelled to South Africa to visit Spencer, he says she was deeply unhappy and found life in England “intolerable”.
“She had come to see for herself if this sublimely beautiful tip of Africa … could provide a haven for her and her heart surgeon lover. Might they, she dared hope, move there together and carve out a life?” he wrote.
Spencer claimed that Diana had been secretly dating Khan for around two years. She affectionately called him her “dishy doctor”, and the relationship was widely considered her most serious romance following her separation from then-Prince Charles.
Spencer said Diana saw South Africa as a possible escape. With William and Harry attending school in Britain, she felt a new chapter might be possible far away from the relentless attention surrounding her.
“Diana dreamed that she and her man could live happily, normally, nearby. The other side of the world seemed to offer the possibility of asylum,” Spencer wrote.
Barnard apparently encouraged the idea, telling Spencer that he was looking into potential medical opportunities for Khan and was confident something suitable could be found.
During her stay, Diana also met Nelson Mandela after asking her brother to arrange a meeting. Spencer said he spent much of the trip trying to protect her from the press but privately noticed how distressed she was. She reportedly spent hours waiting for Khan to call, only to be disappointed when he rarely did. “Diana had spent her waking hours at my home with her mobile in her hand, constantly waiting for the man in her life to call. And, to her obvious distress, he rarely had,” he wrote.
Diana and Khan first met in 1995 when she visited the Royal Brompton Hospital in London, where a friend’s husband was undergoing heart surgery. Diana became interested in Khan and reportedly returned to the hospital almost every day for several weeks. A relationship eventually developed.
The couple went to extraordinary lengths to keep their romance private. Diana once wore a black wig to visit a London jazz club with Khan, while he reportedly hid in the boot of a car to secretly enter Kensington Palace. Diana even asked her butler Paul Burrell to find a priest who could marry her and Khan. The idea was later dismissed by Khan, who was Muslim. Diana also visited Khan’s family in Pakistan and introduced him to William and Harry.
However, Khan later admitted during the 2008 inquest into Diana’s death that he believed marriage to her would have made a normal life impossible because of the intense public attention surrounding her, Reuters reported.
The relationship ended in the summer of 1997, shortly before Diana’s death in a Paris car crash. Khan said Diana ended things after returning from a holiday with Mohamed Al-Fayed and his family. He was reportedly furious when she later began seeing Al-Fayed’s son, Dodi, who also died in the crash.
Spencer said Diana was visibly struggling during her South Africa visit, with her eating disorder having become severe. He recalled being heartbroken by how unhappy his sister was and admitted he felt unable to help her.
Nearly three decades after Diana’s death, Spencer says his memoir is intended to preserve the memory of a woman he describes as “a one-off, dynamic character, full of love, charisma and self-doubt, who gave life a hell of a go and left the world a far better place, despite exiting the stage while still so young.”
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