Princess Diana plotted to move to South Africa with her lover Dr. Hasnat Khan in a bid to flee her “petulant” ex-husband, King Charles, her brother Charles Spencer claims in a bombshell new book.
uncertain
brother → plot → book
The tragic royal went as far as to speak to famed medical pioneer Dr. Christian Barnard as she hoped he could snag Khan, a British-Pakistani cardiothoracic surgeon, a post at his Cape Town hospital.
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he → go → hospital
As Spencer, her youngest sibling, notes in his new memoir, “Swan Song: My Sister, Diana,” out today, his sister was “prone to naive yet impossible dreams about as to how her life could be.”
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life → note → dreams
He details the chaos Diana lived in — a state of frenzy also whipped up by the stories planted about her by palace courtiers, the “men in grey suits,” as she dubbed them.
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she → detail → them
Life in England, indeed, had become “intolerable” by the time she flew to visit her brother at his home in Cape Town in March 1997, he asserts.
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he → become → March
“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,” he writes.
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he → come → her
“Might they, she dared hope, move there together, and carve out a life?”
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she → hope → life
Diana, whom Spencer admits was “mercurial,” dated Khan in secret for two years before they split in the summer of 1997, weeks before her death at age 36 in a car crash in Paris.
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they → admit → Paris
She famously called him “my dishy doctor.”
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She → call → him
The now-62-year-old Earl Spencer admits Diana had previously “scoured” Country Magazine “looking for a rural getaway” where she could live in “perfect peace” with an “earlier man in her life.”
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she → admit → life
Now, he said, “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.
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love → say → home
This was where Christian Barnard had performed the first successful human heart transplant thirty years earlier.
“Diana dreamed that she and her man could live happily — normally — nearby.
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she → perform → transplant
The other side of the world seemed to offer the possibility of asylum.”
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side → seem → asylum
Dr. Barnard, in turn, promised that he was “busy investigating possible medical opportunities for her man.
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he → promise → man
He was confidant something suitable would turn up.
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something → turn → ?
”
With her sons, Princes William and Harry, boarding at Eton College in the UK, the world was opening up for Diana, Spencer said.
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Spencer → board → Diana
Although he spent the trip trying to shield his sister from the press, she asked to meet President Nelson Mandela, which he facilitated.
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he → spend → which
As for Khan, Spencer writes, “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.
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man → write → life
And, to her obvious distress, he rarely had.
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he → have → distress
The couple first met in 1995, two months before her infamous Panorama interview, when the princess was visiting Joe Toffolo, the husband of her friend Oonagh, who was having triple bypass surgery at the Royal Brompton hospital, supervised by Khan.
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who → meet → Khan
After the visit, Diana returned to the hospital almost every day for three weeks to pursue Khan and a romance eventually began.
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romance → return → Khan
Although it was Diana’s most serious relationship since her separation from the then Prince Charles in 1992, the relationship was kept away from prying eyes.
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relationship → keep → eyes
On one occasion Diana wore a black wig to slip into Ronnie Scott’s, the Soho jazz club, while another time, Khan hid in the trunk of a car to enter Kensington Palace and visit the princess, with the help of Diana’s butler, Paul Burrell.
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Khan → wear → butler
Burrell was even asked by Diana to find a priest who would marry her to Khan, who is a Muslim, though Khan later said the thought of this was a “ridiculous idea.”
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thought → ask → this
In an inquest into Diana’s death in 2008, Khan admitted that he feared married life with the world’s most famous woman “would have been hell for me … because of who she was.”
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she → admit → me
He said although they had once considered moving to Pakistan, Diana finally rejected the idea.
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Diana → say → idea
“I knew I would not be able to live a normal life.” he added.
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he → know → life
It was Diana who finally called off the relationship after she returned home from a vacation with Harrods owner Mohammed Al-Fayed and his family in July 2997, he said.
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he → call → July
Khan confessed he was “mad as hell” when she started dating Al-Fayed’s son Dodi, who also died in the Paris crash, alongside driver Henri Paul.
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who → confess → Paul
During Diana’s visit to Cape Town, Spencer says it was clear her eating disorder was “rampant” and notes how “deeply unhappy she was.”
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she → say → Town
He had not been able to help her, he says, which remains “heart breaking”.
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which → help → her
But Spencer’s account of his sister’s doomed search for happiness is only one strand of a memoir that paints an often bruising portrait of life inside the royal family.
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that → doom → family
Spencer has already drawn the fury of King Charles for claiming his ex-brother in law sounded “giddily elated” and like a “lottery winner” when he spoke to him following Diana’s death, likely due to the fact he could now be with Camilla Parker-Bowles.
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he → draw → Bowles
The four-times married, father-of-seven makes no secret of his distaste for Charles, with whom he says he clashed about forcing William and Harry, then 15 and 12, to walk behind their mother’s coffin in the funeral procession.
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he → marry → procession
Charles “hissed” down the phone, “rest assured, we’ll forget her soon enough”, he claims.
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he → hiss → her
This prompted Buckingham Palace to issue an extraordinary statement suggesting Diana’s brother had misremembered events, saying “the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise”.
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others → prompt → ways
However, in an interview with the BBC Sunday, Spencer stood firm in his recollection, telling Laura Kuenssberg,“I can tell you here and now, those are exactly the words he said.”
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he → stand → you
Sensationally, he also alleges in the book that Charles had wanted his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, who died aged 96 in September 2022, to step down.
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who → allege → September
Spencer says, “Some who knew him well claimed that Prince Charles ,by this stage, wanted his mother to abdicate in his favor.
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mother → say → favor
“Others felt that he just wanted more official responsibilities, while remaining respectful of his mother’s right to see out her reign as she wished.”
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she → feel → reign
…and 10 more, not listed.
The Aporia
