OPINION - Earl Spencer's third divorce makes me think he could use some traditional advice
Earl Spencer plainly is a forgiving man. For his latest divorce, his third, from Karen Gordon, he’s hired Fiona Shackleton, the legendary divorce lawyer who acted for Prince Charles (as was) in his sister Diana’s divorce. No matter. Lady Shackleton — the lucrativeness of whose speciality can be seen in her title, of Belgravia — is the lawyer of choice for celebrities looking to come out of their difficult marriages with their dignity and assets more or less intact.
The earl is, then, something of a veteran of these negotiations. Three wives, seven children. It puts into perspective the other side of William’s and Harry’s family, their mother’s relations, who are, it seems, as dysfunctional as the Windsors, which is saying something. Earl Spencer, in his historic address during Diana’s funeral, had expressed the hope that the princes would find refuge with Diana’s family. Well, if it was an exemplar of marital stability they were after, the Earl wasn’t it. The nation may be grateful for William’s choice of nice safe middle-class Kate Middleton for his spouse. Aristocratic values aren’t what they were since Queen Elizabeth’s day, when you’d be barred from Ascot for a divorce.
The earl has been open about the difficulties of his parents’ rancorous divorce. Diana was traumatised by their mother’s separation from her father, which happened when Charles Spencer was three years old. As divorces go, that one was a stinker. Diana’s grandmother testified against her own daughter to ensure the earl retained custody. It was not a good precedent for Diana, nor for her brother. Her two older sisters miraculously escaped unscathed, at least in terms of their own marriages.
The Earl says he now wants to focus on his children and grandchildren. That’s an admirable aspiration, because a succession of spouses takes its toll: when his daughter Kitty, one of his four children by his first marriage to Victoria Lockwood, married a rich man old enough to be her father in 2021, the Earl was absent. It was said that relations between Kitty and the Earl had cooled since his latest marriage to Karen and so the Earl tactfully stayed away.
There is a further reality, namely, that aristocratic men can get a little spoiled
But in the case of Charles Spencer there is an additional problem, one to which he attributes the breakdown of his latest marriage. His relationship with Karen was strained by the effects of writing his autobiography, A Very Private School, and specifically the element dealing with the sexual and emotional abuse he and other boys suffered at his prep school, Maidwell Hall, where the school matron made sexual advances to the little boys in her care and the boys were brutally caned.
The corporal punishment may have been par for the course at the time but the sexual abuse was out of sight and corrosive. As he said recently, “It killed a part of me; it killed the gentler part of me. For us to survive in that environment, a small but important part of us had to die. I think that is the essence of it.” He did others a service by bringing into the open the reality that sexual abuse can be perpetrated by women as well as men but it took its toll.
The Earl has undergone therapy repeatedly. Indeed, Karen herself was an enthusiast for therapy; in a remarkably open interview, it was said that she wouldn’t have married the earl unless he’d had work done, that is, on his various issues. But you have to wonder, does therapy itself sometimes compound the problems it seeks to resolve? But you don’t want to mind me; I take the late Queen’s view about these things, that we’re all better off just getting on with life, saying our prayers and not picking at our emotional scabs.
There is a further reality, namely, that aristocratic men can get a little spoiled. Or to put it another way, an earl, especially if he’s got his own hair and teeth like Charles Spencer, with an estate like Althorp, isn’t really going to struggle to find a lady friend. (I only saw Althorp after the earl’s stepmother Raine Spencer had done her worst, and it was, I thought, horrid, but most people take a different view.) And duly, he is now said to be seeing a Norwegian archaeologist, Cat Jarman. She, the earl and the Rev Richard Coles co-host a history podcast. Let’s hope that the Rev Coles can give sane advice on relationships. It might be what Earl Spencer needs.
Melanie McDonagh is an Evening Standard columnist
