The ‘love of tragic Diana’s life’ finds happiness at last

PRINCESS DIaNa described Hasnat Khan as ‘Mr Wonderful’ and friends said the heart surgeon was the love of her life.

Now, Khan, 57, hopes to have found the love of his life. I hear he has become engaged to a beautiful Muslim woman many years his junior.

She is understood to be called Somi Sohail and accompanied him to a ball in London’s Mayfair this weekend held by the charity Chain of Hope.

‘Hasnat is very happy,’ a friend tells me. ‘He hasn’t told us much yet about Somi, but they plan to get married and have children. We are delighted for him.’

The surgeon shared an intimate relationship with Diana until just months before her death in 1997. ‘I found her a very normal person with great qualities,’ he said in 2008, breaking an 11-year silence about the Princess.

after meeting at the Royal Brompton Hospital, where Diana was visiting a friend who was recovering from a heart operation, they pursued a discreet, two-year affair that finished in the early summer of 1997.

The Princess’s closest friends have spoken of her distress when he ended their relationship, which was serious enough for his family to meet her during her 1996 visit to Pakistan, when she wore a traditional shalwar kameez — baggy trousers teamed with a flowing dress — out of respect for their Muslim faith.

It is understood that at one point Diana was so smitten she contemplated converting to Islam so they could marry. She abandoned the idea when he decided their relationship could not work long-term.

His father, abdul Rasheed Khan, said his son had told the family: ‘If I married her [Diana], our marriage would not last for more than a year. We are culturally so different from each other. She is from Venus and I am from Mars. If it ever happened, it would be like a marriage from two different planets.’

Khan introduced Diana to Chain of Hope, for which he is a volunteer surgeon. a decade after her death, he wed Hadia Sher ali, a Pakistani descendant from afghan royalty, who was 29 at the time. However, their arranged marriage ended after just 18 months.

Last night, Khan and Miss Sohail could not be reached for comment.