Peter Phillips has today revealed that he and his girlfriend Harriet Sperling are engaged.
Princess Anne’s eldest son, who is 19th in line to the throne, will marry the NHS paediatric nurse after a year of dating.
Peter, 47, has two daughters – Savannah, 14, and Isla, 13, from his previous 12-year marriage to Autumn Kelly. Harriet, 45, has a daughter Georgina, 13, from her first marriage to a fitness instructor.
They have not yet set a date for the wedding but informed the King and Queen as well as Prince William and his wife the Princess of Wales ahead of today’s announcement.
The couple said in a statement: ‘Mr Peter Phillips, the son of HRH The Princess Royal and Captain Mark Phillips and Ms Harriet Sperling, daughter of the late Mr Rupert Sanders and Mrs Mary Sanders of Gloucestershire, have today confirmed their official engagement.
‘Both families were informed jointly of the announcement and were delighted with the wonderful news of their engagement. Their Majesties The King and Queen, The Prince and Princess of Wales have been informed of the announcement. No date has been officially set for the wedding.’
Harriet has been warmly welcomed by the Royal Family over the past year.
Six weeks ago she was seen laughing with King Charles and chatting with Peter’s sister Zara and his cousin Princess Beatrice at Ascot after she travelled in the official carriage procession with senior royals.
Ms Sperling also affectionately and publicly planted a kiss on her fiancé’s lips as they watched the horse racing from the royal enclosure.
Harriet Sperling flashes her engagement ring as she and Peter Phillips announce they are to marry
The happy couple have been dating for a year
Peter Phillips has today revealed that he and his girlfriend of a year Harriet Sperling are engaged. Pictured together at Ascot as she curtseyed to the King and Queen in June
Harriet and Peter seen sharing a kiss in the royal enclosure
Ms Sperling was seen in animated conversation with an amused King Charles
Peter and Harriet enjoy a drink and a chat at Ascot in 2024
The couple announced they will marry and showed her diamond engagement ring in an exclusive interview and photoshoot with HELLO!
They revealed their relationship to the world last May when they were seen strolling hand-in-hand at Badminton Horse Trials in Gloucestershire.
Peter embarked on their new romance just weeks after his split from his previous partner Lindsay Wallace, after reportedly meeting Harriet at a sports event.
The smitten pair have since attended an array of high society events together, including Wimbledon and the Badminton Horse Trials – as well as Cheltenham Races in January.
Then there was Ascot in June.
Peter was 5th in line to the throne when he was born but is now at 19th.
Princess Anne rejected royal titles for her two children, meaning neither Peter nor Zara are ‘working royals’.
After his split from Autumn Kelly in 2020, Peter had a three-year relationship with Scottish divorcee Ms Wallace.
NHS nurse Harriet, 45, who herself boasts wealthy connections and is related to the Duke of Gloucester through her late father, has previously opened up about a ‘tough’ battle she’s faced behind the scenes.
Peter and Autumn Phillips on their wedding day at St George’s Chapel in Windsor on May 17, 2008
Peter Phillips and previous girlfriend Lindsay Wallace at Ascot in 2022. They dated for three years
Harriet was recently given the ultimate symbol of royal approval as she arrived at Ascot in the official carriage procession with senior royals.
Behind the scenes, she is mother to one daughter, Georgina, born in 2012, from her previous marriage to private school-educated fitness instructor Antonio St John Sperling.
A paediatric nurse specialist, Harriet is said to have commuted to London from her home in Gloucestershire for many years for her job in the NHS.
In a piece written for Christian magazine Woman Alive last year, she admitted that she’d often found life as a single parent difficult, but found comfort after turning to her faith.
Writing under her maiden name – Sanders – Harriet referred to comments comedian Katherine Ryan had made about parenting as a single mother to her daughter.
She said: ‘In the earlier years of my journey as a single mother to my daughter, resources were scarce, and the future was uncertain. Yet, in the absence of material security, I discovered the strength and life that comes from true selfless love. A love that is able to be solely devoted to your child.
The couple have already made the debut at a number of high society events. Pictured attending Wimbledon together last year
Last week, Harriet seemed to have been given the ultimate symbol of royal approval as she arrived at Ascot in the official carriage procession with senior royals
‘My daughter and I journeyed 10 years with only each other. I liken us to an island and it has often felt hard to imagine anyone joining that island.
‘But of course beauty comes from relationships, relationship with our maker and relationship with each other. It is often tough parenting alone but although there is a stigma to endure, God is able to step in and turn it for good.’
Harriet trained as a nurse in London where, by her own admission, she was something of a ‘party girl’, going to nightclubs and spending her summers in Ibiza.
‘My faith was always in me, but it was kind of dormant,’ she revealed in an interview in 2009.
‘Somehow it didn’t seem relevant to my life in London. But the end of a seven-year relationship was the turning point for me. I went to church as I felt there was something missing.’
According to an online bio, Peter’s fiancée Harriet lives in Gloucestershire and works as a Paediatric Nurse Specialist for the NHS.
She is ‘passionate about early brain development in babies and seeing children thrive,’ the bio notes.
In 2010, Harriet was a key member of a team of medics, doctors and clinicians who helped save the life of a critically ill baby, named Phineas, after he was struck down by a deadly virus aged just three weeks.
Like her boyfriend Peter (Princess Anne’s son and the late Queen’s first and favourite grandson), Harriet also boasts connections of a very high status.
A paediatric nurse specialist, Harriet is said to have commuted to London from her home in Gloucestershire for many years for her job in the NHS
It appears Harriet has been fully welcomed into the royal fold, as she embraced Zara upon arrival at the Berkshire racecourse
Harriet (pictured second left) already appears on good terms with many of the royals, and was pictured chatting to the King
Harriet Sperling and Peter Phillips during day three of Royal Ascot at Ascot Racecourse on June 19
Pictured: Princess Beatrice and Harriet Sperling at Ascot Racecourse
The Mail revealed recently that her late father Rupert was the ‘only son of Mr and Mrs Geoffrey Sanders, of Buckhorn House, Bisley, Gloucestershire’.
Rupert, who died in 2023, was a well-known solicitor who ran his own firm in the Cotswold town of Cirencester.
His father Geoffrey, Harriet’s late grandfather, served during the Second World War with the Royal Artillery and was a D-Day veteran – reaching the rank of major, going on to become High Sheriff of Gloucestershire and a long-standing church warden, as well as editor of the Stroud News and Journal for 20 years.
Harriet’s paternal grandmother Eleanor was the daughter of Dorothy Courage, of the Courage brewing dynasty.
Dorothy’s brother Raymond was Lord of the Manor of Edgcote, in Northamptonshire – an 18th century estate, once owned by Anne of Cleves (wife of Henry VIII).
Harriet herself attended Dean Close School, a Christian boarding and day school, in Cheltenham.
