Royal couple ‘grew bored’

Press, 5 September 1989, Page 8

Royal couple ‘grew bored’

NZPA-AP London The Princess Royal made the decision to separate from her husband because they had grown apart, and not because of interest in another man, according to a report in the “Sunday Times.” Brian Hoey, who the newspaper said had known the couple for 20 years and had been co-operating with Princess Anne for the last year on a new, approved biography, wrote that reports earlier this year of personal letters written to the Princess by a Buckingham Palace aide made Captain Phillips “furious.” This was “not because he felt cuckolded, but because no one from Buckingham Palace had bothered to tell him that they had issued a statement, or even that the story was appearing,” Mr Hoey said. “It was an example of the distance that had grown between himself and his wife — they just did not communicate with each other. The marriage had been troubled for some time,” he wrote. Mr Hoey did not spell out how close the Princess is to the aide, Tim Laurence, but he said: “there is no third party involved in the breakup of their marriage,” and Laurence “is not expected to figure largely in the Royal Family’s future plans.”

Mr Hoey said Princess Anne decided four months ago on a separation, because she “is totally honest and unable to pretend that things are all right when they are obviously not.” He said the couple, who married in 1973 and have two children, “no longer share the same interests ... They have grown bored with each other.” The separation was arranged in secret, and in announcing it last week the Palace said no divorce was planned.