Charles Spencer reveals ‘immensely sad’ divorce from third wife who he met on blind date – amid strain of writing harrowing memoir

Charles Spencer and his third wife are divorcing, The Mail on Sunday announced.

The Earl’s relationship with the Countess of Spencer broke down amid tension over the writing of his harrowing memoir, which details the physical and sexual abuse he suffered at boarding school, it is understood.

The couple announced their impending separation in March to staff at Althorp, the Spencer family estate in Northamptonshire.

“It’s extremely sad,” Earl Spencer told the MoS last night.

‘I just want to work for all my children and my grandchildren, and I wish Karen the best of luck in the future.’

Earl Spencer and Karen Gordon, a Canadian philanthropist, were married in June 2011 on the grounds of Althorp, where the earl’s older sister Princess Diana is buried. The couple had met last year on a blind date at a restaurant in Los Angeles.

Earl Spencer and Karen Gordon, a Canadian philanthropist, were married on the grounds of Althorp in June 2011

Speaking to The Sunday Times in 2020, the Count said: ‘Karen and I both appreciate what the other does and take care of what we have. Neither of us has found such happiness before.”

His wife was conspicuous by her absence from events held at Althorp and Spencer House in London in mid-March to launch Earl’s book, A Very Private School.

Charles Spencer told the MoS that the five years he spent working on his memoirs affected him deeply and led to him undergoing residential treatment for trauma late last year.

He is believed to have been particularly traumatized by the discovery of his 1976 schoolboy diary, in which the assistant matron, who he claims sexually abused him, had written a long-forgotten entry.

The diary was discovered on the high shelf of a room in Althorp that was being renovated after he completed the main body of his book.

Earl Spencer wrote that he was ‘shocked’ by the discovery and described how the woman, whom The Mail on Sunday today identified as 67-year-old grandmother Sally Jane Carr, simply wrote ‘I’ along with her address and telephone number.

‘There is something about the word ‘I’ that now seems to me not only wildly inappropriate, but also intensely intimate – and of course slyly anonymous.’

The Count’s memoirs also revealed the trauma of his mother leaving him and Diana when he was three years old, and how being raised by a succession of nannies also affected him.

Charles married his second wife Caroline Freud in 2001, but the couple divorced in 2009

Charles and his first wife Victoria Lockwood married in 1989 and subsequently divorced in 1997

During an interview with the Therapy Works podcast in March, Earl Spencer said abuse as a child had a profound impact on his choice of romantic partners in adulthood. He said he was prone to women not being able to love him.

“I think I went for good-looking people who weren’t really into love,” he said.

‘I take a good look at myself and everything around me and I think I would be a lot easier to live with now than ever before.’

Earl Spencer, meanwhile, has recently become close with Norwegian archaeologist Cat Jarman. The pair, along with Rev. Richard Coles, present The Rabbit Hole Detectives, a history podcast.

Dr. Jarman, who is separated from her husband, has appeared on BBC Two’s Digging for Britain and was named ‘Nordic Person of the Year’ by the Confederation of Scandinavian Societies last month.

She also helped Earl Spencer excavate a Roman villa in the Althorp grounds. Friends say they look very happy together, but it’s still early days.

Karen’s first husband was millionaire Hollywood producer Mark Gordon, known for his work on Saving Private Ryan and The Day After Tomorrow, whom she met while working the front desk at the Four Seasons in Toronto in 1994.

The couple married three years later but separated in 2003 and Karen reportedly received a $1.3 million settlement. She was later linked to billionaire George Soros.