Hasnat Khan The Crown

Here is everything you need to know about Princess Diana and Hasnat Khan’s relationship

Diana’s former butler said Khan was the ‘love of her life’


Season five of The Crown covers a lot more to do with the breakdown of Charles and Diana’s marriage and fans have been introduced to her love interests over the years. One of Princess Diana’s love interests portrayed in the fifth season of The Crown is Dr. Hasnat Khan, who was once described as Diana’s soulmate.

In episode seven of The Crown season five, Princess Diana comforts her friend while her husband is in hospital having surgery. All while taking care of her worried friend, one of the doctors performing surgery catches the former Princess of Wales’ eye. In case you thought this relationship between Dr Hasnat Khan and Princess Diana was a work of fiction, you’d be wrong. Here is everything you need to know about Princess Diana and Hasnat Khan’s relationship:

Princess Diana and Hasnat Khan were in a relationship for two years

In the fifth season of The Crown, Princess Diana begins dating a heart surgeon, and she actually did this in real life. From 1995 to 1997, Diana was in a relationship with Hasnat Khan before she began dating Dodi Fayed. Khan is a British-Pakistani heart surgeon and it has been reported that after Diana met Khan, she visited the hospital almost every day for three weeks to pursue him.

Hasnat Khan The Crown

via Netflix

They really did meet at a hospital like it’s shown in The Crown

In The Crown, Princess Diana visits her friend at the hospital while her husband is having surgery and that is how she met Hasnat Khan. According to Sarah Bradford’s book, Diana did indeed meet Hasnat while “visiting the sick husband of her therapist friend and counsellor, Oonagh Shanley-Toffolo, at Royal Brompton Hospital in West London.”

via Netflix

In the seventh episode, Diana describes Hasnat as “dishy”, but in real life she apparently said to her friend: “Isn’t he drop dead gorgeous?” Sarah Bradford described Hasnat as “kind, honourable and compassionate,” at they initially managed to keep their affair a secret.

Princess Diana visited his family in Pakistan

In 1996, Princess Diana visited Pakistan and she even visited his family as she grew closer to him. In her book, Sarah Bradford said Diana “did everything she could to advance his career” and even hoped they could marry each other and “live together in peace”.

via Netflix

Speaking with The Telegraph, Hasnat said: “She really enjoyed her time when she came here. She also enjoyed the afternoon tea she had with my family. And I think she very much liked the Asian family’s eccentric culture.”

In 1997, Diana ended their relationship after it became public

In late 1996, Hasnat and Diana’s relationship became public after it was reported in the Sunday Mirror. The two were in love but it was Hasnat who was “undecided about the prospect of marriage”. According to a close friend of Diana, Hasnat was a “wonderful person and he was in love with her, he was completely besotted with her, but he did not want to marry her.”

Hasnat Khan The Crown

via Netflix

Six days after they broke up, Diana began seeing Dodi Fayed and flew out to Paris to visit him. However, Diana’s butler, Paul Burrell said Hasnat was the “love of her life”, not Dodi. He said: “The love of her life was Hasnat, not Dodi, who died with her and who she’d been in a relationship with for 30 days. I think if the accident hadn’t happened, she’d have rekindled her romance with Hasnat.”

In 2008, Hasnat called Diana ‘a very normal person with great qualities’

In an interview with The Telegraph, Dr Khan reflected on his relationship with the princess and said he found her to be “a very normal person with great qualities”. Hasnat continued to stay loyal to Diana even after her passing and said: “If I had said some things about her before 1997, she could have responded to them but, since she is not here, it would be very unfair to make a comment about her.”

Hasnat Khan The Crown

via Netflix

Hasnat Khan is currently living in Essex

According to the Mail Online, Hasnat Khan is now currently living in Essex. He would now be 64 years old and does humanitarian work in Saudia Arabia, Pakistan and Ethiopia.

The Crown season five is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

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Featured image credit via Netflix.