The true nature of the relationship of Diana, Princess of Wales, with Dodi Fayed may be disclosed at their inquests if the so-called love of her life agrees to give evidence.

Hasnat Khan, a heart surgeon with whom the Princess had a two-year affair while he was working in London, has maintained a discreet silence since he parted from her in 1997, fearing that the glare of publicity was interfering with his medical work. Lawyers involved in the hearings are now confident that Mr Khan will give evidence, either in the form of a written statement or by video-link from Pakistan, where he now lives. They believe he is anxious to set the record straight.

Mohamed Al Fayed, Dodi’s father, insists that his son and the Princess planned to marry and were the victims of a murder plot masterminded by the Duke of Edinburgh and carried out by the British security services.

Mr Al Fayed’s legal team have claimed that the Princess broke up with Mr Khan because she had found a new man in her life, but other witnesses during the three months of evidence the jury has so far heard have suggested that she took up with Dodi only to make Mr Khan jealous and in the hope of winning him back.

A Perrier with the Princess

Peter Stothard, former Editor of The Times, recalls a discussion with Diana about memos, mistresses and the media

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One witness told the hearing yesterday, as it resumed after the Christmas break, that the relationship between the Princess and Mr Fayed had been over several weeks before the pair were killed in a Paris car crash in 1997.

Rodney Turner, a friend of the Princess and a director of HR Owen, the car dealer that supplied her with vehicles, said that in early August 1997 she had told him not to fuss, as the pair had stopped seeing each other. He had been opposed to the relationship because of the supposed business reputation of Dodi’s father, the jury was told.

“What she said to me was that it was all over, which was a shock to me. She added: ‘Don’t fuss, don’t fuss, it’s all over. I’ve had a wonderful time’.”

Cross-examined by Michael Mansfield QC, for Mr Al Fayed, Mr Turner admitted that the Princess’s request for him not to fuss may simply have been a way of avoiding a lecture from him on her current boyfriend.

Asked by Jonathan Hough, for the inquest, whether she had ever mentioned a wedding, he said: “She never said to me she was intending to get married to one particular person.” She had been having a “fine summer”, and was very happy and looking forward to going back to work and seeing her sons.

She had never discussed threats to her life. The claim by Paul Burrell, her former butler, of an alleged letter saying the Prince of Wales wanted her dead so that he could marry Tiggy Legge-Bourke was “a bombshell to all of us,” Mr Turner said.

Talking about a period in the mid-1990s when there was a heightened threat of IRA attacks, he said that the Princess did not take any threat seriously - she had once joked: “If it’s not the IRA, it’s my husband.”

Colin Haywood-Trimming, a retired detective chief inspector and the Princess’s former protection officer, questioned about whether the intelligence services were keeping a watch on her, claimed to know nothing about what they did. He denied any knowledge of an inquiry into how the “Squidgygate” tapes, in which she is heard talking intimately to James Gilbey, were leaked to the media. “You were a very senior officer; you can’t have been doing your job,” Mr Mansfield told him, irritated that Mr Haywood-Trimming appeared to be stonewalling all his efforts at cross-examination.

Grahame Harding, the founder of a security firm, told the hearing that during a sweep for bugging devices in the Princess’s apartments at Kensing-ton Palace he discovered something he thought was a possible device. He got a reading from a wall that divided the apartments from a room used by the Prince. Questioned by Nicholas Hilliard, representing the coroner, Mr Harding agreed with his suggestion that the reading could have come from a radio or a number of things.

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