Prince Harry's first love Laura Gerard Leigh to marry

Publish date: 2024-06-21

While Prince Harry is still searching for Miss Right, another one of his old flames is off the market.

Laura Gerard Leigh, with whom Harry is said to have been ‘head over heels in love’ during his time at Eton, is to marry handsome Old Harrovian financier Philip Kaye.

Philip, a former captain in the British Army who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, also happens to be good friends with the Duke of Cambridge.

Prince Harry and his first serious girlfriend Laura Gerard-Leigh at Badminton Horse Trials. The young Prince has known Laura for years but they became romantically linked only last month. Harry is wearing his brown suede hat.

Royal Ex Wedding: Prince Harry's former flame Laura, pictured with Harry in 2003, is set to marry

Laura's husband-to-be Philip Kaye is the former boyfriend of Prince William's ex Jecca Craig (pictured)

Laura's husband-to-be Philip Kaye is the former boyfriend of Prince William's ex Jecca Craig (pictured)

In a further sign of the interwoven relationships inside the royal clique, he previously dated William’s rumoured ex Jecca Craig, escorting her to the 2011 royal wedding.

   

More from Sebastian Shakespeare for the Daily Mail...

Laura, whose grandfather Colonel William Gerard Leigh was a polo-playing chum of Prince Philip, was originally thought a perfect match for Prince Harry.

But she was said not to be as besotted with Harry as he was with her. 

Love letters he wrote failed to receive the desired answers and his romantic Valentine cards were responded to with jocular ones from Laura.

An Eton contemporary of Harry’s described him as ‘heartbroken’, claiming: ‘I believe he turned to drinking copious quantities of vodka.’

Why won't Camilla's idyllic home sell? 

She described her upbringing there as ‘perfect in every way’. 

So why hasn’t the Duchess of Cornwall’s childhood home in East Sussex found a buyer yet?

The Laines , a seven-bedroom property which belonged to Camilla’s father Major Bruce Shand for 45 years, was put on the market last summer for £3.25 million when its current owner, Gosford Park actor James Wilby, decided to downsize.

But several months on, it doesn’t appear to have attracted any decent offers.

 It has since been ‘relaunched’ by its agents on Boxing Day at the revised price of £3.15 million.

If nothing else, the grade II-listed house is chock-full of royal secrets. 

Prince Charles came to visit, both before Camilla married Andrew Parker Bowles and also later while at Portsmouth during his Royal Navy service in the early Seventies.

Camilla’s late brother Mark Shand also once claimed to have plotted to murder her there with his penknife, reasoning: ‘She was everybody’s favourite. 

'She could do no wrong, and when she did, I was blamed.’

Fans brand aristocratic model Mary 'a skeleton' 

Lady Mary Charteris, granddaughter of Guinness heir Lord Moyne, has worried her fans by posting a photograph of herself in Mustique looking troublingly thin.

The 27-year-old model posed in a £130 bikini to plug her friend Poppy Delevingne’s swimwear line, but Mary’s followers seemed more preoccupied by her figure. 

Under attack: Lady Mary Charteris worred her fans with this picture posted on her Instagram

Under attack: Lady Mary Charteris worred her fans with this picture posted on her Instagram

One called her ‘a skeleton’ while another wrote: ‘Never saw someone being so skinny as tacky before this.’ A third asked: ‘Can someone toss you some bread?’

Mary, who is married to little-known rock musician Robbie Furze, laughed off the comments, calling them ‘too funny’ before pointedly posting a photo of her bed, which was covered in bedsheets printed to look like pizza.

Mary’s family has a reputation for eccentricity. Her father, the Earl of Wemyss, famously had a hole drilled in his skull to expand his consciousness.

She once served a frozen quiche to lunch guests, so Dame Esther Rantzen is the first to admit she’s no Nigella Lawson. 

But now she’s set to change all that and go on a cookery course, she tells me at a champagne party for Cirque Du Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall. 

‘I once gave my mother a horrible experience when I mistakenly served up mayonnaise as brandy cream on her Christmas pud.’

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