How Petra’s gilded world crumbled to pixie dust
HAve I mentioned before that James and Petra Stunt are my near neighbours in London? well, darlings, they are — although we have never been emotionally close.
Put it this way. Petra has never invited me behind the 12ft stone walls to view her art purchases, swimming pool, colonnaded garden, wine vault, gym and designer handbag room. Meanwhile, I’ve never felt the need to ask her over to see my latest knitting project, brace of basil plants or recently tidied sock drawer.
Our paths have only ever crossed at the local Italian cafe, which her dad, Bernie ecclestone, adores. Sometimes when I’m waiting for the bus I see her sailing past, her face a blank behind the bullet-proof windows of one of her luxury cars.
eight months ago, everyone in the neighbourhood was shocked when a petrol bomb was thrown into the grounds of her mansion. Thankfully no one was hurt, but it suggested a darker hinterland to the Stunts’ opulent, jet-set lifestyle.
what was her life like, I’d often wonder, behind the grand walls of the Grade II-listed mansion that dwarfs everything in the area.
From a distance, her existence seemed gilded, enviable.
However, in the Central Family Court in London this week, that notion was put to rest as the Tupperware lid was peeled back on the rancid leftovers of the Stunt marriage. According to Petra’s statements read out in court, James Stunt was an ‘abusive, violent’ husband who ‘took overdoses’.
In court, he behaved like an utter idiot, swearing at his father-in-law, making a gun shape with his fingers and storming out of the room.
AFTERWARDS, she left in tears and spent the evening at the birthday party she’d arranged for her older sister, Tamara. Apparently it soon turned into a ‘ freedom’ party, although Petra seems to have little to celebrate.
with the High Court hearings due to start next month, the stage is set for what is being billed as the divorce of the century. High-powered lawyers are being lined up on both sides as the couple fight over a £ 5 billion fortune that — ironically — they each appear to have done little to earn.
Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a huge shock that nearly six years after they married in a £12 million fairytale ceremony in an Italian castle, James and Petra are so very over.
The impish gods of matrimonial conflict and rascally divinities of nuptial conniptions have few surprises left for us now. For the Stunts have effortlessly lived up to the modern adage that the bigger and more flamboyant the wedding, the shorter and more brutish the marriage.
The couple may have produced three children — daughter Lavinia, four, and twin sons James Jr and Andrew, two — and a multi-mansioned property empire; but that clearly wasn’t enough. They say money can’t buy happiness — the Stunts seem to have proved that at the current rate of exchange, money can’t even buy you a watery smile.
After 11 years together, six of them as man and wife, four of them as parents, their life together appears to be over before it even began. James is someone that even his fatherin- law calls ‘ an idiot’. He describes himself as a bullion trader and a professional wine buyer (aren’t we all?) and seems to spend an inordinate amount of time on a jet-ski — always a worrying sign.
Petra is an heiress to billions, a woman whose desultory business ventures into the fashion and beauty worlds have crumbled to pixie dust. She devotes herself to the dull prairie of charity works, her children and buying shoes — what else is she going to do?
watching it unfold has been an education. In 2010, the couple bought their home from tycoon Lord Bamford for around £66 million. Petra spent the next five years rebuilding and refurbishing the already immaculate property, at a further cost of £25 million.
All that effort, upheaval, all that insistence on the best, on custom-built everything, on designer silver sofas for the inhouse cinema and 500-thread count luxury everywhere you look — for what purpose?
You can cocoon yourself in extravagance to your heart’s desire, but it is a mirage, not an armour. And in the short period they lived in the area, it was impossible to ignore the Stunts’ comings and goings.