Earl Spencer reveals: I’m FINALLY in love with the precise lady

This has been quite the excavation, with all manner of surprises unearthed. Earl Spencer has the air of a man who can’t quite believe what he has found.

He gazes at the (younger) woman by his side, and addresses the conundrum of what to call her.

‘I’m 60, so if I said Cat was my girlfriend, it makes me sound 20, doesn’t it?’

Dr Cat Jarman, 18 years his junior, agrees. ‘I can’t call you my boyfriend either,’ she says. They reach a mutual agreement. ‘We are in a relationship,’ she says. ‘That’s the grown-up way to put it.’

There is some very grown up (i.e. complicated, in a heading-for-the-courts sort of way) background to this love story, but it’s clear that it is a love story, and this is the first time the couple involved have been prepared to tell it.

‘I’m too old for hearts and flowers stuff, but the best way to describe it is that with Cat, I can be myself,’ says Earl Spencer. ‘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.’

And this is a novelty in a relationship? ‘Yes,’ he says, quietly. ‘It is.’

The romance between the Toff and the Prof has been the talk of the society set.

The (thrice-married, not-yet-divorced) ninth Earl Spencer, brother of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, is one of the most famous aristocrats in the land. He met the new woman in his life when she arrived at Althorp, the country estate his family has owned for 500 years, with a pickaxe.

Cat, 42, is a Norwegian-born archaeologist, who had heard of Althorp because it is an archaeologically important site. There have long been rumours of a ‘lost’ medieval village buried in the grounds. In 2021, Cat and a TV crew from Channel 4 arrived to dig.

He knew who she was because he had once reviewed a book she wrote. She tells me she really didn’t know who Earl Spencer was. Her knowledge of centuries-dead aristocrats is splendid, but she was a bit hazy on living royals, and those who move in their circles. In fact, it sounds as if she pretty much elbowed the lord of the manor out of the way, in order to get to the more exciting artefacts. She might not have literally said ‘hold my axe, Posh Boy’, but that’s the idea.

‘I grew up in Norway, where we don’t really have a class system, and there isn’t really any interest in all that,’ says Cat.

‘I’m a nerd. I’d heard of Althorp, and was excited about the lost village. When a TV producer phoned me up and asked if I would be interested, I said yes. But to be completely honest, I didn’t know who Charles was. He sort of tagged along.’

Friendship blossomed between the two. Charles, a historian himself, was fascinated by this bright (‘and interested’) woman who seemed so much cleverer than he was. ‘I’m ashamed about how little I know, compared to Cat,’ he says, going quite pink.

‘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.’ Cat leans over. ‘He’s a member now.’

Their friendship grew and grew. Not only was he not remotely bothered that she, in her mud-spattered working gear, didn’t seem like any other (society) woman he had ever come across, he found this intriguing.

He liked the fact that all the titles that had been bestowed on her (she has a PhD, and is the current Nordic Person of the Year) had come about through academic achievement, rather than birthright. Having failed to find this lost village, Cat returned to dig for a Roman villa at Althorp. ‘As you do,’ quips the very self-aware Charles.

The place is like a village anyway, as vast country piles are, but another guest, at that time, was the celebrity vicar Rev Richard Coles, who had become a very close friend of Charles after he moved to Northamptonshire.

Charles chuckles as he tells me he met the Rev Coles at a dreary drinks do, ‘which got infinitely worse when this vicar came bearing down on me. I put on the smile and prepared to talk about the church roof’. Instead, we had a jolly old chat about the fact that Richard [a one-time pop star who had been in Bronski Beat and the Communards] was gay.

‘I asked him what the bishop thought about him living with his partner. He said the bishop was fine, as long as it was celibate. I said “so are you celibate?” and he said “Sod off”. I knew then that I’d made a friend for life.’

The unlikely trio – by now the Toff, the Prof and the Man-of-the-cloth – would hang out, talking about history, religion, life, and it sounds like a right giggle.

It was Cat who suggested that their combined expertise should be harnessed. Last year, they all started to record a podcast called The Rabbit Hole Detectives, which can best be described as part game-show, part excuse for some hilarious (and often erudite) banter.

‘We just talk about stuff,’ explains Charles. ‘It has been a huge success, and the three have now written a book together, chock-full of interesting facts and historical, well, stuff. If you want a Christmas present recommendation for a hard-to-buy-for nerdy-type, this is the one to order.

‘So we were friends, then we were colleagues,’ adds Charles. What was it, specifically, that brought them close? ‘Shared interests. We were fascinated by the same things. And she made me laugh. Laughter was key.’

There had not been much laughter in Charles’s life. During the time his friendship with Cat was developing, he had been writing the searing memoir A Very Private School, published earlier this year. This book was a chilling exposé of the public school system. In it, Charles documented how he had suffered physical and sexual abuse at boarding school. It took him five years to write, and those were five years of trauma.

‘Even now I find it hard,’he says. ‘It wasn’t just my own story, but the thing that affected me so much was telling other people’s stories.

‘So many people contacted me afterwards to tell of the same thing. I have actually just finished writing an extra chapter for the paperback, and when I was showing it to Cat I just burst into tears.’

His wife had been cited as the great support during the writing process, but he admits now that towards the latter stages, he was sharing drafts with Cat too, valuing her input. She says she saw how affecting it was for him, ‘and I came to understand the man, and what had made him the way he is’.

Eight months ago, in March, their friendship tipped into ‘something else’. They won’t say how it happened because it’s private (‘and too complicated,’ sighs Charles), but they admitted their feelings for each other.

Quite when Charles told his wife Karen, a Canadian socialite, that their 13-year marriage was over is not clear, but the public announcement was made in June. This could potentially be a messy divorce. Charles has already engaged the rottweiler divorce lawyer Fiona Shackleton (who, interestingly, represented King Charles during his divorce from Diana).

Was Rev Richard Coles – who also counted Karen as a friend – aware of the developing romance? ‘It wasn’t discussed, but I think he knew,’ says Cat. I am speaking to the pair as they take part in a literary festival in Iceland to promote their new book.

There is much joking about how the absent member of their trio is off in the jungle (Rev Coles is taking part in I’m A Celebrity). There is banter about close they all are. ‘But not in that way between me and Richard,’ says Charles. ‘It’s not a Fleetwood Mac situation with everyone having affairs with everyone.’

I had feared they would want to gloss over much of the detail of their romance, but actually they are open, to a point (and it’s legalities that hold them back on some aspects).

This is a most difficult situation, though. Earl Spencer has seven children from three marriages. His youngest child, Charlotte Diana, from his marriage to Karen, is just 12. Cat, who is separated from her husband, has two teenage boys. They won’t talk about the children, other than to say that her sons have visited Althorp. Is Cat now living there, since it has been reported that Karen still is (although she posted on Instagram that she is preparing to move out)? ‘No we aren’t living together,’ says Charles.

It may well be hard for his wife to hear it, but Charles Spencer does seem very happy. Relieved too. ‘It really is nice to be with someone who wants to do stuff,’ he says. ‘Take today. We could have come to this festival and just stayed in the hotel, but we were up this morning going to see a lagoon. It really is nice to find someone who is dynamic and interested.’

He insists he ‘wasn’t looking, neither of us were’.

‘The thing is, I am 18 years older than Cat and so there wasn’t even the possibility . . . I’ve never been with a much younger person. I wasn’t even thinking romance. I was at the tail end of a marriage. It just wasn’t a possibility.’

Yet Charles has now had three failed marriages. His book was astonishingly candid about the effect childhood abuse had on his capacity to form relationships. He admits himself that he is emotionally damaged. Some would say, I suggest, that Cat – who seems very sensible, very grounded, very much not a gold-digger (unless we are talking Roman coins) – should run a mile.

‘I feel that I’ve got to know Charles very gradually, as a friend, and I know how his life has developed. I know who he is now. That is all that matters,’ she says.

He nods. ‘I’ve never tried to do a hard sell on Cat. She’s very canny, very emotionally mature. With her I don’t pretend to be anything I am not. She knows exactly who I am – and who I am not.’

Does he reckon he is ‘fixed’ enough to be embarking on another relationship, though? He isn’t remotely offended by the question. ‘Well, I’m not as fixed as I would really love to be, but I am as fixed as I could be. And I do take responsibility for lots of stuff in the past.’

Ultimately, though, he believes he was with the wrong women before. Maybe the wrong ‘type’ of woman too. ‘Put it this way, this is a very easy relationship to be in. Sometimes in the past I was trying to make people better, or make people happier. I think I was a people pleaser. I’m much less concerned with that.

‘A lot of my close friends have said how happy they are that I am with someone like Cat because it shows enormous progress from where I was before.

‘Look, it’s good to be with someone who is just so . . . nice.

‘I don’t want to denigrate anyone, but Cat is just completely different to anyone I’ve ever been with before.’

It also seems that Cat not being part of the social set, not part of (or impressed by) our extraordinary class system, is a factor here?

‘I think Cat being Scandinavian is quite lovely for me, coming to me cold, as it were, just accepting me for the person. I’ve been to visit her parents in Norway, and they really don’t have a class system there. It seems a really happy place and everyone just gets on with it.’

How his wife must rue the day he sat down to expunge those childhood demons. He agrees that there is a direct link between writing the memoir and blowing up his life. ‘I took it on because I had reached the stage in my life where there was this incredibly complicated knot that needed unpicking.

‘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.

‘By laying everything on the page so brutally, I think I realised what was true and what was not true.

‘When you see things very clearly, it is very hard not to unsee them. I realised that my life was in a bit of a mess. After writing the book, there were tricky things to deal with.’

Including, an unhappy marriage, clearly. ‘This sounds so self-absorbed, but I feel I’m in a more honest phase of my life.’

And what will the next phase look like? Is marriage number four a likely outcome? Rev Richard Coles won’t need to rush home from the jungle (given impending divorce proceedings) but does he need to get his diary out?

‘It’s a bit early for that,’ concludes Charles, but the way he looks at Cat suggests otherwise.

The Rabbit Hole Book by Richard Coles, Charles Spencer and Cat Jarman, published by Michael Joseph is available for £17.20.