Hasnat Khan with Alexandra Panagoulas

London, Nov. 22: Pakistani heart surgeon Hasnat Khan, 51, who was Princess Diana’s lover for two years, is to marry a Greek woman 21 years his junior, it was revealed today.

Hasnat, now based at the new Basildon Hospital in Essex, has been living in London with Alexandra Panagoulas, who is training to be a cardio-thoracic surgeon.

The couple were relaxed about being photographed together at a children’s heart charity ball at the Natural History Museum in London two weeks ago.

This will be Hasnat’s second marriage. He cited “multiple reasons” when he and Hadia Sher Ali, a Pakistani woman of 29 whom he had married in May 2006, divorced after only 18 months.

There has been speculation that Diana, even though she had been killed in a car crash in 1997, cast a long shadow over the marriage.

This time, though, the indications are that Hasnat’s relationship with Alexandra, whom he met through his work, are based on a sounder foundation.

Alexandra was born in Sweden but left at 13 with her parents when they returned to their native Greece. Her father Nicos, who owned restaurants in Sweden, is now a successful timber merchant in Athens where the family live in an upmarket suburb.

Alexandra came to London at 18 to study medicine at Imperial College, so intellectually there will be more of a match with her fiancé than there had been between Hasnat and the emotional but temperamental Diana.

The princess is said to have called Hasnat “Mr Wonderful” and had him delivered nightly to her bedchamber, with the surgeon bypassing Kensington Palace security by squeezing his considerable bulk into the boot of her butler’s car.

Alexandra’s mother Agallia, who has met her future son-in-law several times on trips to London and given him her seal of approval, does not appear bothered by the age difference.

“The world is different now,” she told The Mail on Sunday. “We can’t decide for our children, they decide for themselves, they are independent. Like every mama, I want only to see my daughter happy, because she is a good girl and he is good for her.”

She added: “It is very happy news. Hasnat is in love with her and he is a good man, a man of quality. I like him very much.”

Of her daughter, who had “always wanted to be a doctor”, Agallia said: “She is very natural-looking and doesn’t like to wear make-up. But he is very attractive, too.”

She also said: “I liked Diana very much, she was fantastic — and my daughter is a good girl too. It is not for me to compare them.”

There has been a tragedy in the Panagoulas family. In 2002, Alexandra’s brother Dimitri was one of 202 people killed when Islamic militants detonated three bombs in a tourist district in Bali.

In the protracted inquest into Diana’s death held in London last year, Hasnat chose not to appear but submitted written evidence. Contrary to media speculation, it was she who had ended their two-year affair after meeting Dodi, son of the Harrods owner, Mohammed Al Fayed.

“We had a normal sexual relationship and I have no reason to believe that she was ever unfaithful to me,” Hasnat told the inquest.

He said the couple had discussed marriage but neither had proposed, although she had asked her butler, Paul Burrell, to sound out a priest to see if they could be married in secret.

“As far as I was concerned, she would not have had to convert to the Muslim faith. The only problem would be if we had children and what faith to bring them up in. She never said she would convert, although she read up on Islam.”

He had suggested they move to Pakistan, where they would not be troubled by media attention. The Princess had gone to Pakistan to consult Jemima Khan, then married to Imran Khan. “She wanted a husband to be there for her, to have a normal relationship.”