Diana, Princess of Wales, secretly wanted to marry a Muslim heart surgeon and asked her butler to consult a Roman Catholic priest to find out how it could be done, Paul Burrell claimed yesterday.

The Princess’s former aide told her inquest that she was condemned in harsh terms by her mother, who was upset that she was having a relationship with Hasnat Khan.

But after the Princess reluctantly split up with the Pakistani consultant — her “soulmate” — she used the publicity from her holiday romance with Dodi Fayed to make Mr Khan jealous, Mr Burrell claimed.

On the first day of his evidence at the High Court, Mr Burrell, 49, boasted of being at the “hub” of Diana’s social circle and claimed to be a confidant to her innermost thoughts.

He said he did not believe that Diana planned to marry Mr Fayed, the son of Mohamed Al Fayed, the Harrods store owner, but was “overwhelmed” by his generosity, charm, attention and good looks. She continued, he said, to be “burning a candle” for Mr Khan after they split up following an emotional meeting late at night in Battersea Park in July 1997. He said the couple had reached a “stalemate” because she could not persuade the intensely private man to embrace public life with her.

“The Princess said this was her soul- mate, the man she loved more than any other,” her former butler said. “It was a very deep and spiritual relationship. I witnessed it at first hand and they were very much in love.”

He claimed that she knew her trip to the Mediterranean with Mr Fayed so soon after splitting up with Mr Khan would make the consultant jealous. “It was conducted on a world stage,” Mr Burrell said. “She knew exactly what she was doing. She knew that the photographs taken in public would be transmitted around the world. She knew full well that

Dr Khan would start the day at his local shop to pick up the papers.

“It was a message, I believe, to say, ‘Look at me now, look where I am’. I knew her inside out.”

The “upper levels” of the Royal Family, including her sons, had known of the Princess’s affection for Mr Khan, and her neighbour, Princess Margaret, was aware of the doctor’s “clandestine comings and goings” at Kensington Palace, where there were plans for him to have his own quarters, Mr Burrell said. However, Diana’s mother, Frances Shand Kydd, was enraged by their relationship.

Under cross-examination by Michael Mansfield, QC, counsel for Mr Al Fayed, Mr Burrell admitted that the Princess allowed him to listen in to a telephone conversation in which Mrs Shand Kydd rounded on her daughter as a “whore” for “messing around with effing Muslim men”. It was that telephone call that prompted Diana to sever links with her mother, who died in 2004. Asked by Ian Burnett, QC, counsel for the coroner, whether the Princess had contemplated marrying Mr Khan, Mr Burrell said: “She did ask me if I would be prepared to arrange a private marriage between her and Mr Khan. So I thought the best person to speak to was my parish priest, Father Anthony Parsons.” Mr Burrell is not Catholic, but his wife and two children are.

Diana, 36, Mr Fayed, 42, and their driver, Henri Paul, died in Paris in a car crash in August 1997.

Mr Burrell said it was “impossible” that the Duke of Edinburgh would have ordered the murder of the mother of princes William and Harry, as Mr Fayed’s father believes.

Mr Burrell also rejected Mr Al Fayed’s claim that the Princess and Dodi were about to become engaged, adding that he did not think the Egyptian was “the one” for her. The former footman, who has written two books about his time working for the Princess and who flew from his home in Florida for the hearing, was asked about a note she wrote to him in which she said the Prince of Wales was “planning an accident in my car”.

He said he knew of nothing to support the idea that the Princess or Mr Fayed were victims of a murder plot. Referring to letters he had seen from the Duke of Edinburgh to the Princess, he admitted that they were “sharp” but said that they were not nasty and, instead, reflected the “healthy banter” the pair engaged in.

Mr Burrell agreed yesterday to travel to his home in Cheshire to retrieve letters that he would bring to court today.

The inquests continue.

Princess’s ‘soulmate’

— Diana, Princess of Wales, met Hasnat Khan at Royal Brompton Hospital, Chelsea, where he was a heart surgeon

— He grew up in the garrison town of Jhelum, in Pakistan, where his father, Abdul Rasheed Khan, built a glass factory with his brother

— The Princess gave Mr Khan the codename Dr Armani and they communicated secretly. He was once smuggled into Kensington Palace in Paul Burrell’s car boot

— The couple split in 1997 after Mr Khan said he could not come to terms with becoming “public property” if they stayed together

— Last October he left London to live with his parents in Jhelum, 75 miles from Islamabad. He is now the head of a cardiac hospital in Malaysia

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