Documentary, Princess Anne: The 7 Loves of her Life
#PrincessAnne
#QueenVictoriaChildren #QueenVictoria' #Documentary #Princes
#PrincessAnne
#QueenVictoriaChildren #QueenVictoria' #Documentary #Princes
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00:01Princess Anne. She may be the hardest-working royal,
00:06but when it comes to her love life, she's far from a fairy-tale princess.
00:10You were totally useless. I was quite well-educated, one way or another.
00:14She said, I will marry the man I choose no matter who he is or what he does.
00:20From intense press speculation...
00:22There was an awful lot of interest in who she was seeing
00:26and what this might mean for the monarchy.
00:28..to a love triangle with the future queen.
00:31She doesn't seem concerned about etiquette from the palace's point of view.
00:36..and public scandal for a very private princess.
00:39Divorce? Fair enough.
00:41Never been mentioned.
00:42Mark was having an affair of his own.
00:45He fathered an illegitimate child.
00:47Tonight, royal experts and insiders reveal how Anne's seven love affairs
00:52show us what she's really like.
00:54In many ways, Anne was a trailblazer.
00:57Why did she choose these men?
00:59By his account, she was lonely and he provided that companionship.
01:04And despite lies, affairs and divorce...
01:06I have no comment to make on the news at all.
01:08..how has Anne managed to keep her royal reputation intact?
01:12She is very shrewd.
01:13She knows how to keep information away from the press.
01:16Scandal, controversy and romance.
01:20These are the loves of Anne's life.
01:32Sir Timothy Lawrence is the man we're used to seeing by Princess Anne's side.
01:37Out of all the royals, Princess Anne does seem probably one of the happiest.
01:44Happily married, very settled, no drama, no impropriety.
01:50The marriage spans 28 years, and as this recently revealed cosy candid photo shows,
01:56they're clearly still very happy together.
01:59I think a lot of people think that she's always been married to the same person.
02:03Anne may be in a stable relationship now, but it's been a long journey to get there.
02:08She had a rumoured seven relationships, each different from the last.
02:15Princess Anne's past is, to say, the least colourful.
02:19I mean, we know that she had seven boyfriends.
02:23She was the first royal child to divorce.
02:27She married a commoner.
02:29She just was rebellious.
02:31Some of the boyfriends were considered incredibly unsuitable.
02:36This story begins whilst she was still in her youth,
02:39and perhaps the world's most eligible princess.
02:42And when the press reported Anne's very first boyfriend,
02:45it seemed like a perfect royal match.
02:48Gerald Ward was a friend of the royal family,
02:51a great friend of Prince Charles.
02:53He was regarded as suitable, if you like, by the palace, educated at Eton.
02:58The family had land in Wiltshire.
03:01But at 12 years older than 18-year-old Anne,
03:04what was it about Gerald that really attracted her to him?
03:09He was very much in that sort of action-man genre
03:13that Anne was instinctively drawn to.
03:16A good rider, a good horseman.
03:18Her love for horses was almost all-consuming when she was young.
03:23Her father said once,
03:26if it doesn't fart and eat hay, she's not interested.
03:30They were spotted together shortly after Princess Anne finished her A-levels
03:34at boarding school.
03:36So this really puts her at, you know, the age of 18, really quite young,
03:40feeling out these new relationships and kind of figuring out who she was.
03:44It's no surprise that her romance with Gerald fizzled out quickly.
03:50I think Anne felt she was being sort of pushed slightly,
03:54nudged towards this eminently suitable character.
03:58And I think she was very young.
04:00He was a good bit older.
04:01He was too tweedy.
04:03It was clear from early on that the young, strong-minded princess
04:07wasn't willing to let social expectations dictate her romantic life.
04:11Anne was always clear.
04:13She said, I will marry the man I choose no matter who he is or what he does.
04:18If you had not met a man whom you wanted to marry,
04:22do you think you would have married out of a sense of duty?
04:26No way.
04:29She'd led quite a short of life and she needed to explore.
04:35She wanted to enjoy life.
04:39The romance was over quickly, but their connection didn't end there.
04:43Gerald marked the start of an unusual pattern Anne had with most of her ex-partners.
04:48Although their relationship did not last,
04:50she remained on very good terms with him, as did the rest of the family.
04:55Gerald actually ended up being one of Prince Harry's godparents.
05:01The fallout from Gerald showed Anne just how desperate the press were
05:05for stories about her love life.
05:07She was forced to come up with ways to keep her private life private.
05:12She resented the fact that the press would be interested
05:16in finding out who her boyfriends were.
05:18It also led to this rather difficult relationship
05:22that she's had with the media over the years.
05:25She often came across as rather prickly, short-tempered.
05:29Anne noted this struggle in a Parkinson interview in typical comedic fashion.
05:34Do you ever regret what you say to them?
05:36I mean, the report that went around the world was you told one photographer
05:39to naff off, I think it was.
05:41Do you wish to retract your choice of words?
05:46No, no, no.
05:47There was several of them, actually.
05:52Telling the press to leave her alone didn't always work.
05:55They soon got wind of another love affair.
05:57As quickly as Anne had shrugged off Gerald Ward,
06:00she picked up boyfriend number two,
06:02who, unlike Gerald, was certainly not a conventional royal escort.
06:06The things that Sandy Harper did, the way he behaved,
06:11the way he dressed, set off alarm bells throughout the establishment
06:17because although he had this background which was vaguely acceptable,
06:21he dressed very much like a hippie.
06:23He had long hair, he wore beads, open cheesecloth shirts.
06:27But, of course, for Anne, this was marvellous
06:29because she'd escaped the sort of tweedy world
06:33which was still core to the royal family.
06:36After the eminently suitable Gerald Ward,
06:39Sandy was a breath of fresh air for the rebellious princess.
06:42Not a military man or an aristocrat,
06:44but a professional polo player whom she met through her love of horses.
06:48They were seen out at discotheques that were springing up
06:52all over London in the late 60s and early 70s.
06:57I think one of the most striking things about it
07:00is that after an evening out, it was often Princess Anne
07:05who drove them home afterwards.
07:07She liked men who were fun and she liked to be amused and entertained,
07:12people who were prepared to take a bit of a risk in their private life.
07:15The relationship told the world
07:17that Anne wasn't prepared to play by the royal rules.
07:20She was not a conventional princess,
07:22which she wryly admitted herself in the famous Parkinson interview.
07:25I didn't really fit there.
07:28Somehow the image that the media thought I ought to have.
07:31I think, you know, princesses as you come in sort of fairy story, you know.
07:38That's what they are and somehow it didn't fit.
07:44Luckily for the stuffier types at the palace,
07:48neither Sandy nor Anne saw a future in their wild romance.
07:51He was a bit of a self-confessed ladies' man.
07:54He did do an interview where he said,
07:56you know, I take a lot of girls out
07:58and the relationships don't work out.
08:01I think probably that was the most exciting time of her life in a way,
08:07but she knew it couldn't last.
08:09So she knew it was almost like she was being allowed to play for a while
08:13before the serious business of being a grown-up royal had to begin.
08:19By age 20, speculation about Anne's love life was rife.
08:23And when rumoured boyfriend number three hit the headlines,
08:26it seemed Anne was open to becoming a grown-up royal.
08:29Richard Meade was another extremely accomplished horseman.
08:32And in fact, one of our most decorated Olympians.
08:36His love of horses, that rivalled even hers,
08:40seems to have been a huge attraction for Anne.
08:42But unlike Sandy before him,
08:44Richard also had an understanding of her royal life.
08:47Meade was definitely part of that approved social set
08:50that it was okay for the royals to mix with,
08:53because, you know, they knew his background, they knew his family.
08:56He was also quite discreet,
08:57which is obviously something that the royals really take quite seriously.
09:01And she really wouldn't have been interested in someone
09:03that fawned over her and her royal status.
09:06But I think for her the main thing would have been
09:09someone that could deal with her no-nonsense attitude.
09:13Richard seemed to be the favourite for the princess's hand.
09:17I think there was a lot more talk about Richard Meade
09:21as a potential husband for Anne
09:23than there had been hitherto about anyone else.
09:26But Anne's own father had his doubts.
09:30Richard Meade, who indeed was a friend of mine,
09:35he was unfortunately 12 years older than the princess,
09:39and I'm told that the Duke of Edinburgh felt
09:42that it was a bit too much of an age gap between the two,
09:45so he was discouraged.
09:47Anne was just 20,
09:50and Richard may have been just too grown up for the young princess.
09:53She seems to have listened to her father,
09:56and after less than two years, the pair parted ways.
09:59She was in no great hurry.
10:01Times had changed.
10:02She was not under pressure to marry.
10:04She didn't have to produce an heir to the throne.
10:07It gave her a degree of freedom that her brother never really had to enjoy,
10:12and she was determined to enjoy it.
10:15And if that meant dating one, two, three, four, five men before she married,
10:20then so be it.
10:22Richard Meade, he became quite a close friend.
10:25They could go on horse events together,
10:29and his children became very friendly with Prince William and Prince Harry.
10:34So she wasn't spiteful, she wasn't bitter.
10:37Next, Anne's most risky romance has been under wraps for years,
10:43involving a complicated love quadrangle.
10:46He would have been a complete no-no for the royal family.
11:02The story of Anne's most controversial relationship
11:05that sent shockwaves through the royal circle remains largely untold.
11:09By age 20, Anne had met rumoured boyfriend number four.
11:15Andrew Parker Bowles, I think, was a serious contender,
11:20a very distinguished army officer as well,
11:23and a very great favourite of the Queen.
11:26And his relationship with the royal family goes back so far,
11:29he was actually in the procession at the Queen's coronation.
11:33I think she was very intrigued by him.
11:35He was a very suave, sophisticated figure,
11:38much more experienced in the ways of the world
11:41than the men she'd hitherto been dating.
11:45But there was one slight problem.
11:47Anne wasn't the only woman Andrew was seducing.
11:51The name is familiar, of course,
11:53because he was dating a young woman called Camilla Shand,
11:57who became Camilla Parker Bowles
11:59and is now, of course, the wife of the Prince of Wales.
12:03But he was also seeing a lot of other women in his spare time.
12:07It was thought that when he cheated on Camilla with Princess Anne,
12:13that Camilla decided to get a bit of revenge,
12:15and that was when she actually started up her own relationship with Prince Charles.
12:20Thus began Anne's best-kept secret,
12:23a rumoured royal quadrangle involving the Queen's two eldest children.
12:28The relationship shows that for the determined, forthright Anne,
12:32there was to be no settling in her pursuit of happiness,
12:35even for the sake of appearances.
12:37There's very much a sense of,
12:39well, if a guy can do it, why can't I with Princess Anne?
12:42She saw in Andrew Parker Bowles someone who was slightly dangerous,
12:48if you like, but also great fun.
12:50And I think it showed there was an element of that in Anne too,
12:54that she was someone who was prepared to take risks with her romantic life
12:58and to see where that might lead her.
13:01This risky romance did not sit well with the palace,
13:05and perhaps, as with previous lovers, this was also part of the appeal.
13:09So I think even at this very early stage in Anne's life,
13:13we can really see her strong character coming through.
13:16She doesn't seem concerned about etiquette from the palace's point of view.
13:22She's quite interested in men who are a bit different,
13:26who have got a little bit of a reputation.
13:29He would have been a complete no-no for the royal family.
13:32Apart from the promiscuity,
13:34the big issue with Andrew Parker Bowles
13:37was that he was a Catholic.
13:40This is one detail that Anne would have to consider.
13:43For the pair to marry,
13:44Anne would likely have to withdraw from the line of succession.
13:47Princess Anne was never going to try and break that particular rule,
13:51but that worked in her favour, in a sense,
13:53because she wanted to have fun without the pressure to turn that fun
13:57into a sort of formal relationship or even marriage.
14:01As scandalous as the relationship may have been,
14:04once again, the notoriously private princess
14:06miraculously kept it under wraps from the public.
14:09When she and Charles would go to breakfast,
14:12they would voraciously scan the paper
14:14for any of the little tidbits that the papers had published about them.
14:18They wanted to know what they'd figured out,
14:20you know, had that relationship been kept secret.
14:25I think this revelation really has come about
14:28because of the Netflix show, The Crown.
14:32And I think a lot of people were quite shocked.
14:34I think a lot of people had to check on Google
14:37if this was actually true.
14:41How do you know all this?
14:43Because I was briefly caught up in it myself.
14:46Wait a minute. When?
14:48Then, in the past. It doesn't matter.
14:53It was all very straightforward.
14:54He got what he wanted, which was to make Camilla jealous,
14:57I got what I wanted, which was a bit of fun.
15:00Fun?
15:01Yes. Sorry, Mummy, it was.
15:04The private conversations can still only be imagined,
15:07but the story of this extraordinary relationship
15:10was a revelation to most.
15:12She really was besotted with Andrew Parker Bowles.
15:15I think after a couple of years of Anne really chasing him,
15:20she realised that, you know,
15:22he was only really going to make her unhappy.
15:24The press were getting more interested
15:26and, of course, the long shadow cast by his Catholicism
15:30and his promiscuity.
15:32It's understood when Andrew was posted to Germany,
15:36it firmly put an end to things.
15:38But despite their complicated past,
15:40Anne has kept this ex especially close.
15:43Andrew is a godfather to Zara.
15:46He's remained a firm friend of Princess Anne's
15:49for the best part of 50 years.
15:52So, no, I don't think there was any ill will on Anne's part towards his marriage for Camilla.
16:00After the dangerous liaison with Andrew, Anne once again sought out a quieter, less colourful partner.
16:06And again, she chose one who shared her love of horses.
16:10In 1968, Anne met Captain Mark Phillips.
16:14He was a member of the Queen's Dragoons.
16:16Of course, you know, another dashing cavalryman.
16:20It's easy to see what Anne saw in him.
16:22Another gold medal winning equestrian.
16:24A military man whose father worked for the royals and no controversial reputation.
16:30Maybe she was looking for somebody who just made her feel safe and secure, reassured, a calm relationship where she knew that the gentleman was really into her.
16:40Because actually, Andrew, having been quite the ladies' man, maybe didn't give her that stability.
16:46After the other difficult relationship she'd had, he must have seemed a godsend.
16:52They quickly hit it off.
16:54And then they were both at the 1972 Olympics.
16:58That's where the relationship really blossomed.
17:03Mark was different to Anne's previous boyfriends.
17:06He was a quiet character.
17:08Because we know she's very much like her father, who is quite a controlling character, Mark must have seemed a big improvement on people like Gerald Ward.
17:19The relationship would have been the man in the driving seat.
17:23With Mark it was different.
17:25He was quite shy.
17:27Royal biographer Brian Hoey has first-hand experience having met and interviewed Mark and Anne.
17:33The princess took control of the interview.
17:36And I've known him ever since.
17:38And he's a pretty good guy.
17:40And you get him talking privately, and he is very, very articulate.
17:43But he is not brilliant if you get him speaking publicly in television.
17:48When you were a teenager, did you have any idea of the sort of girl that you would like to marry?
17:55No, I...
17:58No, I didn't.
18:00I wasn't very clever with girls, I think, when I was a teenager.
18:05I definitely was a bit...
18:08Not very good.
18:09Not very successful, she was like.
18:11After the princess's previous boyfriends, who enjoyed the limelight and matched her strength, Mark seemed happy for Anne to take the lead.
18:21His background was very different to her.
18:23He was a commoner.
18:24He was the son of a sausage maker.
18:27You know, he didn't really have the ears and graces of somebody who had grown up around royal circles, that confidence.
18:34Anne appeared to welcome this break from her usual aristocratic type.
18:39The new romance was quickly blossoming, and of course, instantly captured the attention of the world's media.
18:45Princess Anne was terrified.
18:48I don't think that's putting it too strongly, that her relationship with Mark Phillips would be discovered, would be exposed, would be written about in detail.
18:57And I think the reason for that was that she knew that he was the one.
19:03To avoid being discovered, she even admitted to hiding in Mark's horse box, with her typically dry humour.
19:09It was an enjoyable experience, being in a horse box, Mark.
19:12Well, I've been a much better driver of horses than ever since.
19:16You have.
19:17You have to have some consideration.
19:19She was always quite happy to lie to the press, if it meant protecting her private life.
19:26Has it been a great strain keeping it secret, and indeed, keeping it away from people like ourselves?
19:32I think it has, yes. It became rather restraining, yes.
19:39But the press finally got their story.
19:42The long months of rumour, speculation and denial were over.
19:46The Easter engagement was now public knowledge.
19:49Mark Phillips was the man who had finally tied down the Queen's only daughter.
19:53The Royal Family were thrilled at the engagement, so much so that the Queen Mother said that they were the perfect couple.
20:00Six months later, on the 14th of November 1973, Anne became the first of Queen Elizabeth's four children to wed.
20:09The moment we've all been waiting for, and how lovely she looks.
20:14It was spectacular at Westminster Abbey.
20:16These pre-internet days, still something like 500 million people plus watched the wedding.
20:25So, inevitably, it started off with enormous enthusiasm.
20:29They faced this great isle in the congregation, and all eyes are upon this couple.
20:40Both Anne and Mark were hugely private, but they instantly became one of the world's most famous couples.
20:45He was beginning a public life which he hadn't really countenanced for himself,
20:50but he sort of reconciled himself to the fact that he was marrying a woman he loved,
20:54and he would just have to make the best of it.
20:59Such was their desire for privacy and normality.
21:02When Mark was offered an earldom from the Queen, he turned it down,
21:05as the newlyweds wanted their children to be freed from royal constraints.
21:09Early married life appeared idyllic from the outside.
21:12The Queen, as a wedding present, had given Anne Gatcombe Park,
21:17this magnificent house in Gloucestershire.
21:20I saw quite a lot of Anne and Mark during their early days of marriage.
21:25I thought they were perfectly suited.
21:27Apart from being a loving couple, they were good friends.
21:31Anne continued her riding career alongside her royal duties.
21:36Four years after the wedding, their first child, Peter, was welcomed into the family.
21:40But within a couple of years of Peter's birth, cracks were already beginning to show in the marriage.
21:45Both of them had left the world of show jumping and competing,
21:49and he was becoming a farmer and she wanted to devote herself to royal duties.
21:55I think they were very much in love, but he was in love with Anne, who was a horsewoman who shared his passion for riding.
22:04I don't really think he gave much thought to the other side of Princess Anne.
22:09Someone who had a full public life as a royal princess, and where that meant he was going to fit in.
22:17Mark's ability to look past Anne's royal status seemed to have been an appeal for them both.
22:24But he now faced the reality of her role.
22:26Mark openly described public appearances with Anne as pure torture.
22:31He quickly absented himself from that.
22:34He didn't really want to become Anne's plus one on all her trips.
22:39It wasn't long before the clearly uneasy balance of power seemed to have caused a divide in the relationship.
22:45Perhaps when they got together they were a better match.
22:48And as time went on and Anne grew in confidence and involved, perhaps she just outgrew him.
22:54I think after time Mark wasn't really accepted by the rest of the family.
23:01They thought he was rather dull and he could only talk about horses.
23:07Rather cruelly it's said that Prince Charles used to call him foggy in the sense that he was a bit wet and a bit thick.
23:17Soon the strains in the relationship would become impossible to hide.
23:21And as they say, one thing led to another.
23:24And he said that they began an affair.
23:39If the first few years of Princess Anne and Mark Phillips' marriage had shown cracks, six years in, a chasm was appearing.
23:46As Mark diverged from his main equestrian career into creating his own business, making courses and jumps,
23:54and Anne, of course, was committed to her royal schedule and diary,
23:58it seemed very much that they spent a lot of time apart.
24:01It was also beginning to be noted that Anne seemed to have grown very close to one of her bodyguards.
24:0932-year-old Royal Protection Officer Peter Cross was a married father of two from Sheffield.
24:18His background, plain, northern, brought up in South Yorkshire, completely different from that of the Princess.
24:25But I don't think that mattered that much.
24:28A strong action man, Cross was very unlike Mark Phillips, with whom Anne appeared to be growing tired.
24:34He was amenable, he wasn't a dominating kind of character.
24:39And what she was really looking for, she found in Peter Cross, who would have seemed exotic to her with his background.
24:47By his account, she was lonely, Phillips was not around very much, and she missed companionship.
24:53And he provided that companionship. As they say, one thing led to another.
24:58And he said that they began an affair.
25:01They would chat a lot on the back stairs of Gatcombe House.
25:06And Mr. Cross explains it, that they were sitting there one day chatting,
25:13and he looked into her eyes, and she looked into his eyes, and they clasped hands, and they kissed.
25:22Photographs of Peter Cross and Anne from his time as her protection officer hint at their close relationship.
25:32Cross and Princess Anne do seem incredibly comfortable in each other's company,
25:37overly familiar for the role that they were in.
25:40You do get the impression that Anne was enjoying that attention.
25:44But also, Cross was really quite distracted.
25:47He doesn't look like somebody who's there to protect her from a potential threat.
25:51He looks lost in the moment.
25:55He began to dress rather like the sort of tweedy, horsey people that Anne surrounded herself with.
26:02He wore tweed caps, moleskin trousers.
26:05He began to look the part.
26:07And so the rumour mill began to work.
26:11When it was suspected that they were having an affair,
26:14Peter Cross got removed from his position and sent away.
26:19And there's an interesting scene in The Crown where Anne and her mother have a conversation about it.
26:25You can't. Here's the one thing that makes me happy.
26:29You have so much to make you happy.
26:30Then how come none of it does?
26:32Of course, this drama surrounding the romance is imagined.
26:35But experts think it still had a big effect on Anne.
26:38He was obviously quite important to her at a time when her emotions were quite high.
26:46But allegedly, Anne wasn't about to give up on Cross that easily.
26:52Summoning him to Gatkin Park after his dismissal, a day in the country became code for them meeting up.
26:59It is said that they still met from time to time.
27:02And that Anne had a code word so that people wouldn't know it was her when she was telephoning
27:07and if she would say it was Mrs Wallis, was this, we all wondered, a reference to Wallis Simpson,
27:14another rather notorious figure linked to past world misbehaviour.
27:19What's quite interesting is that she's quite defiant about this relationship as well.
27:23She is a rebel. She isn't going to play by the rules.
27:26And even though he's been sent away, she still wants to see him. And she does.
27:32Peter Cross maintains he stayed in touch with Anne for several years.
27:36And whilst Anne chose not to comment on these allegations publicly,
27:40she and Mark were forced to address questions about the state of their marriage
27:43during that revealing interview with Michael Parkinson for Network 10 in 1983.
27:49When Parkinson asks about the rumours, you see Princess Anne flinch ever so slightly.
27:56That suggests that she was afraid of what's coming.
27:59She also instantly averts her gaze, looks downwards.
28:03And you do see her eyes flitting right and left as though she's accessing emotions
28:07and also thinking, gosh, what am I going to say in this moment?
28:11There have been rumours recently about divorce and happiness. Are they true or untrue?
28:17In informed gossip has been, you know, going on for years in one thought or another.
28:27You can really feel how awkward that was.
28:31But how do you react when you read these stories? I mean, what is your feeling?
28:38There was much of a pause before either she or Mark gave comments in response to that question.
28:44It's difficult question to answer. It depends.
28:50There's a moment where he starts speaking.
28:52You can sort of see her swallowing and just looking visibly uncomfortable.
28:56I think, to a large extent, you ignore them.
29:01But then they start to persist and go on and on and on.
29:04Then it starts to become a bit trying and you eventually feel that...
29:06You really didn't need to say anything. She's left it in a good place.
29:11But then he comes in. He responds with that nervousness.
29:15And in explaining himself actually just makes them look guilty of hiding something.
29:22And essentially kind of undoes what she says.
29:27The body language between them was absolutely terrible.
29:31They did not look like they even liked each other, let alone happily married together.
29:39After keeping quiet about the alleged affair at the time,
29:42in 1985 Peter Cross sold his story to the news of the world.
29:47He blurted out all the details of their intimacy and their closeness
29:52and the fact that she had taken a real shine to him.
29:55I interviewed Mark Phillips and this was shortly after the scandal.
29:59He said, policemen, don't talk to me about bloody policemen.
30:04She didn't like the idea that this relationship between his wife and a lowly policeman
30:09had been splashed all over the newspapers.
30:12Anne would have been mortified to have heard these stories shared about herself,
30:16whether they were true or not.
30:18You know, we only have Peter Cross's word for all of this.
30:22Anne has never uttered a scintilla of comment about it or not.
30:26Anne's ability to remain tight-lipped about her private life may be one of the reasons
30:35why she escaped this scandal pretty much unscathed.
30:38I think Anne didn't get a huge negative response from the public was because she didn't say anything.
30:46She didn't confirm it. She didn't deny it. She just got on with her daily life.
30:53She just didn't feel the need to actually address it because it was her private life that the public were not entitled to know about.
31:02I think the public's view was that this is just scandalous, muckraking, and they were prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.
31:14Another reason Anne's reputation remained largely intact following these revelations was thanks to the private life of her brother Charles,
31:22who in the summer of 1980 began his relationship with Lady Diana.
31:26Once Diana arrived, Princess Anne was out of the picture.
31:31Here was this young, glamorous, shy, extraordinary young woman,
31:38who we imagine was going to marry the heir to the throne after a very long time.
31:44It probably quite suited Anne in many ways that there was somebody to sort of deflect attention away from her.
31:56Rumours may have circulated about Anne during her marriage, but husband Mark Phillips was far from the innocent party.
32:03Mark was linked to a number of women throughout the course of his marriage.
32:07All of these affairs were denied, but nonetheless, he was followed round by these rumours for a large part of his marriage.
32:13Mark Phillips was leading a fairly, how shall I put it, a raggedy life.
32:18He was going off around the world.
32:21He had all sorts of opportunities to misbehave.
32:27But one liaison which took place in New Zealand in 1984 was to become especially significant.
32:34Mark Phillips had an affair with a art teacher called Heather Tonkin in Auckland,
32:40and he met her at a riding clinic and took a shine to her, and they had a one-night stand.
32:47It is said that Mark Phillips left his boots outside his door to signal to Heather Tonkin which room he was staying in.
32:57This fling had serious consequences. Heather had fallen pregnant with Mark Phillips' secret love child.
33:06He tried to persuade her to have an abortion which she wouldn't have, and then he denied that he was the daughter's father.
33:14It really was a huge potential scandal that the princess's husband had got this child on the other side of the world.
33:22But it would be another seven years before this news broke.
33:26The Daily Express revealed home footage of Heather with their daughter appearing a world away from her royal relatives.
33:32First, a 1989 theft exposing another secret would push the marriage even closer to breaking point.
33:41Anne was having an affair while still married.
33:44He had echoes of the sort of practical action man that she'd found in Peter Cross, and I think that was very appealing.
33:50By 1989, Princess Anne's 16-year marriage to Captain Mark Phillips had been dogged by rumours of numerous infidelities on both sides, and the couple were now rarely seen in public together.
34:12Although still married, they were leading completely separate lives by then.
34:16Now a theft that Windsor Castle was about to spell the end of the marriage once and for all.
34:23But it would also allow Anne to finally settle with a man who'd make her truly happy.
34:29In 1989, a set of letters were actually handed to The Sun newspaper, having been stolen from either Anne's office or her briefcase.
34:38The Sun, unusually, wouldn't publish their contents.
34:41Instead, they passed the letters on to Scotland Yards and an investigation was launched to figure out exactly how these letters had been taken.
34:49The Sun might not have published the letters, but they still got their story.
34:54Although The Sun newspaper hadn't published the content of the letters, it was known that they were affectionate.
35:01They used terms like darling, so it would have set tongues wagging that there was potentially something going on.
35:09With the rumour mill swirling, in a surprise move a week later, it was the palace who named the author of these letters.
35:15This is the man now known to have written the stolen letters to the Princess Royal, Commander Timothy Lawrence, Equery to the Queen.
35:23They issued a statement, but they denied that there was any inappropriate relationship.
35:28They were trying to suggest it was entirely innocent, but the Queen's daughter and the Queen's Equery, as a rule, don't tend to exchange letters.
35:3834-year-old Tim Lawrence had joined the royal household from the Navy in 1986.
35:48At the seventh attempt, Anne had chosen a man who could be strong, but also knew how to allow a princess her space.
35:55His job as Equery was to accompany the Queen on her official engagements and on unofficial engagements to sort of make himself useful in the background.
36:04I mean, one of his great skills, apparently, is mixing a very good martini.
36:10And what's interesting is that he got this rule coming from, you know, quite a humble background.
36:17He is a man who was born in Camberwell, didn't go to one of the great public schools, wasn't linked to the royal family at all, and certainly wasn't part of the horsey world.
36:29Tim really couldn't care less about horses, which, of course, was something that we've seen in many of Princess Anne's relationships, that they were all equestrians.
36:44During his time as Equery, Bachelor Tim had become a great favourite of the Queen and Prince Philip, and obviously, though no one knew it, the Princess Royal herself.
36:53But why had Anne fallen for a royal attendant five years her junior?
36:58Equerries are chosen as much for their charm and their ability to get on with the royals as they are for any other military disciplines they might have.
37:06So in many ways, it kind of came as no surprise that Anne should be attracted to a man like Tim Lawrence.
37:13He had echoes of the sort of practical action man that she'd found in Peter Cross, and I think that was very appealing.
37:20Whilst the palace tried to insist Anne and Tim were nothing more than friends, when news of the letters broke, Tim Lawrence's neighbours gave a different story.
37:31They could see her come and they could see her go, but they never told the press about it, they just accepted it.
37:37And when the press discovered and rushed down there to talk to it, oh, it's been going on for a long time, she's here nearly every weekend.
37:46Anne was having an affair whilst still married. I think that tells us that really she wanted to take fate into her own hands.
37:53She wasn't willing to let life pass her by without the support of a loving partner or the joy that comes with having a relationship.
38:00She doesn't let societal norms or even royal protocol hold her back and she's quite modern from that point of view. She's quite sort of forward.
38:12The couple's secret was out, and while the Queen apparently gave Tim her full support, Philip was rumoured to be less than happy about his employee's betrayal.
38:25And he wasn't the only one.
38:27Anne was still married to Captain Mark Phillips. Not one to miss a story, reporters dashed up to Mark and asked him about these letters and what he thought.
38:36He found it very embarrassing for him and possibly even humiliating because he wasn't aware of what was going on.
38:46While the letter thief was never caught, this revelation sealed the fate of Anne and Mark's marriage.
38:52And just months later, in August 1989, they separated. But once again, Anne's reputation emerged intact.
38:59It was by then no secret that her marriage to Mark Phillips was not happy, that they were largely staying together for the sake of Peter and Zara.
39:11And so I think the public kind of saw this when all these details came out and thought, you know what, we can't blame her for wanting to have a bit of happiness.
39:21Tim Lawrence wasn't married to someone else.
39:22Tim Lawrence wasn't married to someone else. He didn't have a past. He was such a solid character that it didn't have all the elements of scandal that the papers need. And so I think Anne got away with it.
39:35At the time, Anne was adamant there would be no divorce.
39:39Divorce?
39:41Never been mentioned.
39:43By anybody.
39:44But this all changed in 1991, when news of Mark Phillips' love child finally emerged in the Daily Express, accompanied by intimate home footage of Heather and their daughter Felicity, revealing their modest lifestyle.
40:01While Mark still denied he was the child's father, a paternity test proved otherwise.
40:07It gave Anne a legitimate excuse to get out of the marriage. For that to be splashed across the papers,
40:13I think she knew that the public would be on her side. And although divorce was still a bit of a scandal, they very much would have understood that decision.
40:22It must have solved a problem that had perhaps been worrying her for quite some time.
40:31She may have been the first of the Queen's children to divorce, but the news was overtaken by other much more traumatic events.
40:371992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure.
40:45Their unhappiness was evident from the moment they arrived. The Waleses, now dubbed the Glums by the tabloid press.
40:51The Andrew Morton book on Princess Diana came out, which was absolutely huge.
40:57While the royal couple continued to appear in public with their children, the first of a series of scandals had already made the headlines.
41:04And of course, there were those infamous photographs of Sarah Ferguson, Fergie, having her toes sucked, which everybody just went nuts about.
41:13It just turned out to be an anus horribilis.
41:17Anne got slightly lost in all of that and for which I'm sure she'd be very, very pleased.
41:27Only one month after her divorce, Princess Anne and Tim Lawrence were photographed as an official couple for the very first time.
41:34That was her own way of controlling the news and revealing to the world through these photographs that she and Tim Lawrence were now an item.
41:43It was an exuberant Anne who was photographed dancing Highland flings at a Caledonian ball in central London.
41:52Whilst Mark Phillips had been accused of lacking a backbone and Andrew Parker Bowles too wild, Princess Anne had finally found her Mr. Right and Tim Lawrence, the perfect combination to suit her needs.
42:04I think he's the sort of man that Princess Anne was looking for actually, you know, stable, thorough, reliable, honourable, who would let her take the royal position and he was there.
42:19But he didn't seem to be somebody who would be walking way behind, uninvolved and feeling neglected.
42:26Tim and Anne were married by the end of the year and this intimate footage of their wedding, captured by a small film crew, reveals the day was a basic affair in stark contrast to the pomp and ceremony of her grand nuptials 19 years earlier.
42:43It was, on the Princess Royal's insistence, a private family occasion at Crattie Church today, a church just outside Balmoral Castle and one she's been going to since she was a small child.
42:53The Princess and Tim went to Scotland to get married because at that time the Church of England refused to marry divorcees again in church and she wanted to get married in church.
43:06She would have preferred it, of course, if there hadn't been a single photographer there. I was up there for it.
43:11I mean, at the times it was characterised as being rather joyless.
43:16I think that was largely because of the time of year, the weather and the number of guests in contrast to her grand wedding at Westminster Abbey all those years earlier.
43:25But I think that's very unfair. It was the wedding that the two of them wanted.
43:29I do think Princess Anne has found her true love.
43:32She looked genuinely happy. Some people said they haven't seen her look as happy for years and years.
43:41At 28 years and counting, Anne now has the second longest running marriage in the royal family.
43:47Although her love life has courted controversy at times, she can also boast an unblemished public image.
43:53Anne has been shaped by each and every one of her seven relationships, all of them influencing the Princess Royal we know today.
44:00I think they show us, in a sense, Anne's journey from this innocent, willful, slightly rebellious girl to the very solid, dutiful woman we have now.
44:12Because they were, in a sense, mistakes from which she learned enormous amounts.
44:18She has experienced different types of men, but she's come to quite a strong conclusion about what works for her.
44:27She did seek out the sort of love that she wanted, despite many of the constraints that were on her from a young age.
44:35I think she's a bit of a beacon for modernity and modern marriages and modern relationships to be.
44:44Next Saturday at 9, we reveal the truth behind the private relationship between the Princess Royal and her daughter.
44:53In brand new Zara and Anne, like mother, like daughter.
44:56And there's more documentaries about our monarchy on My5.
45:00Before they were royal, streaming now on My5 for free.
45:03Next tonight, Megan, where did it all go wrong?
45:07Thanks, Megan.
45:08Thanks for joining us to be here.
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