Charles Spencer and his third spouse are divorcing, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The Earl’s relationship with the Countess of Spencer broke down amid the pressure of writing his harrowing memoir detailing the bodily and sexual abuse he suffered at boarding college, it’s understood.
The couple introduced their pending divorce to employees at Althorp, the Spencer household property in Northamptonshire, in March.
‘It’s immensely unhappy,’ Earl Spencer instructed the MoS final night time.
‘I simply wish to dedicate myself to all my youngsters, and to my grandchildren, and I want Karen each happiness sooner or later.’
Earl Spencer and Karen Gordon, a Canadian philanthropist, married in June 2011 inside the grounds of Althorp, the place the Earl’s older sister Princess Diana is buried. The couple had met the earlier yr on a blind date at a restaurant in Los Angeles.
Earl Spencer and Karen Gordon, a Canadian philanthropist, married in June 2011 inside the grounds of Althorp
Talking to The Sunday Occasions in 2020, the Earl mentioned: ‘Karen and I each admire what the opposite does and take care of what we’ve got. Neither of us has discovered happiness like this earlier than.’
His spouse was notable by her absence at occasions held at Althorp and Spencer Home in London in mid-March to launch the Earl’s ebook, A Very Non-public Faculty.
Charles Spencer instructed the MoS that the 5 years of labor on his memoir has deeply affected him and led to him present process residential remedy for trauma late final yr.
He’s understood to have been significantly traumatised by his discovery of his 1976 schoolboy diary, wherein the assistant matron, who he alleges sexually abused him, had written a long-forgotten message.
The diary was found on the excessive shelf of a room at Althorp that was being refurbished after he accomplished the primary physique of his ebook.
Earl Spencer wrote he was ‘rocked’ by the invention and described how the girl, who The Mail on Sunday is as we speak figuring out as 67-year-old grandmother Sally Jane Carr, has merely written ‘Me’ alongside together with her tackle and phone quantity.
‘There’s something concerning the phrase, ‘Me’, that strikes me now as not solely wildly inappropriate, however intensely intimate – and, in fact, slyly nameless.’
The Earl’s memoir additionally revealed the trauma of his mom leaving him and Diana when he was three-years-old and the way being introduced up by a succession of nannies additionally impacted him.
Charles married his second spouse Caroline Freud in 2001 however the pair bought a divorce in 2009
Charles and his first spouse Victoria Lockwood bought married in 1989 after which divorced in 1997
Throughout an interview with the Remedy Works podcast in March, Earl Spencer mentioned that being abused as a toddler had a profound influence on his alternative of romantic companions in maturity. He mentioned he was left inclined to girls who had been incapable of loving him.
‘I believe I went for handsome individuals who weren’t actually into love,’ he mentioned.
‘I am having an excellent take a look at myself and all the things round me and I believe I’d be quite a bit simpler to dwell with now than I ever have been previously.’
Earl Spencer, in the meantime, has not too long ago turn into near Norwegian archaeologist Cat Jarman. The pair, together with the Rev Richard Coles, host The Rabbit Gap Detectives, a historical past podcast.
Dr Jarman, who’s separated from her husband, has appeared on BBC Two’s Digging for Britain and was final month awarded ‘Nordic Individual of the 12 months’ by the Confederation of Scandinavian Societies.
She has additionally been serving to Earl Spencer unearth a Roman villa within the grounds of Althorp. Pals say they appear very joyful collectively however that it’s early days.
Karen’s first husband was millionaire Hollywood producer Mark Gordon, recognized for his work on Saving Non-public Ryan and The Day After Tomorrow, who she met whereas engaged on the entrance desk of the 4 Seasons in Toronto in 1994.
The couple married three years later however cut up in 2003 and Karen reportedly acquired a $1.3 million settlement. She was later linked to billionaire George Soros.
