FOLLOWING IN HIS MOTHER’S FOOTSTEPS
THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE BEGINS A TOUR OF PAKISTAN
It seems incongruous that Diana, Princess of Wales’s connection with Pakistan should have been born on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. Seated near the country’s then prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, in the royal box in 1989, the two women struck up a conversation and, before long, an invitation was extended for the princess to visit the country. Two years later, in 1991, Diana went to Islamabad for her first solo royal tour.
It came at a time when rumours about the state of the Wales’s marriage were mounting, and the trip was widely expected to be a failure. “There were many lurking in the corridors at the Palace who would have loved [Diana] to fall flat on her face, as she was well aware,” Ken Wharfe, her former bodyguard, later wrote.
But she was determined to go, and had aides craft a programme that was as traditionally royal as could be: wreaths were laid at Commonwealth war graves, cultural events were observed, and holy shrines visited.
She dazzled in outfits that were just the right side of daring, and broke tradition by shaking hands with male officials, no doubt charming, rather than shocking them in the process. “The Princess of Wales took Pakistan by storm,” wrote the high commissioner in his post-visit telegram. The tabloids declared Diana “All the Raj”.
In between the pomp and formalities, Diana’s personal touch was felt in visits to a drug detoxification unit, and a centre for disabled Afghan refugees in Peshawar, where she became aware of the horror of landmines. When Prince Harry walked through the Angolan minefield on his tour to South Africa last month, images of his mother’s own visit to the country were never far from people’s minds. But the Princess first heard about these explosive devices six years earlier, on that trip to Peshawar. It would be one of the many things she took with her from that formative tour.
On her second visit to Pakistan, Diana came not as a representative of the Queen, but as self-appointed comforter-in-chief. Among the many pictures of the Princess nursing the sick, an image of her cradling a little boy in the cancer hospital built by her friend Imran Khan stands out. The cricketing legend was then the husband of Diana’s great friend Jemima Goldsmith, who hosted her second and third visits to Pakistan in 1996 and 1997. Now the prime minister of Pakistan, Mr Khan will, no doubt, be among the first to greet his late friend’s eldest son.
The Cambridges’ visit is being hailed as a watershed moment. It’s easy to forget there was a time when the Duke’s mother was considering moving to Pakistan; her relationship with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan was serious enough that she was said to be planning to convert to Islam in order to marry him.
In February 1996, Diana went to Pakistan with Annabel Goldsmith and her niece Cosima Somerset to visit Jemima and Imran in Lahore, ostensibly to raise funds for the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital, founded by Imran. The real purpose, suggested Diana’s biographer, Tina Brown, was to “wow Hasnat’s family”. Details of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s tour are being kept under wraps for security reasons, but it is understood William intends to “honour” his mother’s humanitarian work during the visit. Inevitably, their five-day visit will bring back memories, but just as his brother’s trip proved last month, it will also be a chance to write a new chapter in the family’s relationship with the Commonwealth.