In June, Princess Diana’s younger brother Charles Spencer, announced that he and his third wife, Karen Spencer, were divorcing. A few months later, the earl released The Rabbit Hole Book, written with his podcast cohosts Cat Jarman and Reverend Richard Coles, and during a promotional appearance for the book, he confirmed that he and Jarman were in a relationship. This week, the couple opened up about the beginning of their romance in a joint interview with the Mail on Sunday, and Spencer said that Jarman understands him well.
“I’m too old for hearts and flowers stuff, but the best way to describe it is that with Cat, I can be myself,” he said. “She knows who I am. Who I really am. I don’t have to pretend to be something I am not. And she brings out the best in me.”
He first met Jarman, a professor born in Norway, when she visited his estate for an archeological dig. He added that their relationship has expanded his intellectual horizons. “I’m ashamed about how little I know, compared to Cat,” he said. “I’m embarrassed to say that I’d never been to the British Museum until I went with her. I must be the only person in Britain who hasn’t been. But with her, it was like having a Blue Badge guide.”
In March, Spencer released a memoir, A Very Private School, where he discusses his experiences of sexual abuse as a young boarding school student. He told the Mail on Sunday that writing the book led him to his divorce. The earl has hired Fiona Shackleton, the lawyer King Charles retained for his divorce from Princess Diana in the 1990s, to represent him in those proceedings.
“I took [the memoir] on because I had reached the stage in my life where there was this incredibly complicated knot that needed unpicking,” he said. “I don’t think it [the abuse] is something I will ever come to terms with but writing the book has made me understand my life a lot better. I was on a mission—it sounds so twee—to find myself, and get rid of the damage that school had done to me, and rediscover who I would have been without it.”
Jarman said that getting to know Spencer through working on the podcast helped her understand how to support him. “I feel that I’ve got to know Charles very gradually, as a friend, and I know how his life has developed,” she said. “I know who he is now. That is all that matters.” She added that Coles, who rounds out the podcast trio and is reportedly a friend of Karen’s, wasn’t initially told that the pair had embarked on the relationship, but he probably felt things change. “It wasn’t discussed, but I think he knew,” Jarman said.
The hosts are close but not too close, Spencer said. “Not in that way between me and Richard,” he joked. “It's not a Fleetwood Mac situation with everyone having affairs with everyone.”
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