Princess Diana 'had plans to move to Africa to marry lover' and escape ‘petulant' Charles
Princess Diana 'had plans to move to Africa to marry lover' and escape ‘petulant' Charles
Kathleen O'Boyle Thu, September 24, 2026 at 1:32 PM UTC
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Princess Diana died in a tragic car crash (Image: Getty)
Princess Diana was planning a new life in South Africa with her secret lover Dr. Hasnat Khan in a bid to escape an increasingly "intolerable" life in England, according to her brother.
In his new memoir, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, Charles Spencer claims Diana had hoped to move to Cape Town with Khan, a British-Pakistani cardiothoracic surgeon she secretly dated for two years behind then-Prince Charles' back.
The princess even contacted famed medical pioneer Dr. Christian Barnard, hoping he could help Khan find a position at Groote Schuur Hospital, where Barnard had performed the first successful human heart transplant. The information comes alongside several revelations made in Spencer's new book.
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Spencer writes that Diana was "prone to naive yet impossible dreams about as to how her life could be," but says that by the time she visited him in Cape Town in March 1997, just months before her death, England had become "intolerable" for her. "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," Spencer writes. "Might they, she dared hope, move there together, and carve out a life?"
According to Spencer, Diana imagined that she and Khan could build a quieter life near his home in Cape Town, away from the scrutiny surrounding her royal status and her former husband, then-Prince Charles.
Hasnat Khan was a doctor living in Africa that Diana was dating (Image: Getty)
"In the latest of these whimsical scenarios, she hoped her new love could work at Groote Schuur Hospital, a few miles away from my Cape Town home. This was where Christian Barnard had performed the first successful human heart transplant thirty years earlier," he alleges.
"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."
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Barnard was apparently willing to help, Spencer claims, writing that the doctor was "busy investigating possible medical opportunities for her man. He was confidant something suitable would turn up."
Diana and Khan first met in 1995 when she visited a friend's husband at the Royal Brompton Hospital, where Khan was supervising his heart surgery. Diana returned to the hospital almost every day for three weeks, and the pair eventually began a relationship.
They went to great lengths to keep their romance private. Diana once wore a black wig to visit Soho jazz club Ronnie Scott's, while Khan reportedly hid in the trunk of a car to enter Kensington Palace and see her.
Diana was also serious enough about Khan to ask her butler Paul Burrell to find a priest who could marry them. Khan later dismissed the idea as a "ridiculous idea." She visited his family home in Pakistan and introduced him to her sons, William and Harry.
Diana's brother says she wanted to 'escape' Charles III (Image: Getty)
However, Khan later admitted during the 2008 inquest into Diana's death that he feared marriage to her "would have been hell for me...because of who she was." "I knew I would not be able to live a normal life," he added.
The couple ultimately split in the summer of 1997, just weeks before Diana died in a Paris car crash at 36. Khan said Diana ended their relationship after returning from a holiday with Mohamed Al-Fayed and his family in July 1997.
Spencer says Diana was "deeply unhappy" during her Cape Town visit and that her eating disorder was "rampant."
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
