How canny Cressie picked the right Harry after all...
Rich. Handsome. Impeccable breeding. No, not the prince — but her new fiance, who’s an even better match
AS ACTRESS and model expression of head-overheels joy. Cressida Bonas shows off her diamond engagement ring, there is no mistaking her starryeyed
Her new betrothed is Harry — although not, of course, Prince Harry, who she ditched in 2014 after he ungallantly quibbled over whether he should pay €700 for her to fly to accompany him to a wedding. At that point they had been dating for two years.
Now, she is engaged to Harry Went worth Stanley. Tall, blonde and handsome, ‘Wents’ has been dating Cressie for little more than two years — before that, they were an item at university, too.
Wealthy, impeccably connected and sporty, he is a fun-loving young man whose life was shaped by the tragic suicide of his older brother James in 2006.
His mother is Clare Milford Haven, an international polo player and former social editor for Tatler magazine who was friends with both Princess Diana and Fergie.
His father is a Lloyds underwriter Nick Wentworth-Stanley, while his stepfather George Mountbatten, the 4th Marquess of Milford Haven, is worth around €150 million.
Harry is also relaxed in the limelight and supports Cressida’s acting career. So, whisper it, has Cressie bagged the better Harry? ALISON BOSHOFF reports...
POSH BUT NOT A PRINCE
HARRY Wentworth-Stanley has been raised in privileged luxury. His stepfather is George Mountbatten, the 4th Marquess of Milford Haven. He is a nephew of Queen Elizabeth II and a descendent of Princess Alice, Queen Victoria’s daughter.
George Mountbatten founded the utility comparison site USwitch, and subsequently sold it for more than €200million. Home for George and his second wife Clare, who is Harry’s mum, is on the 1,000-acre Great Trippetts estate in Hampshire.
Meanwhile Harry’s father, Nick WenworthStanley, is a debonair Old Etonian and Lloyds underwriter who married a wealthy Dutch solicitor whose family owned C&A.
Old Harrovian Harry lives in a London flat, shared with Cressie, 30, for the past six months. He’s posh enough to be privileged but not so posh that he has to endure public duties.
Prince Harry, meanwhile, found his royal status was a hindrance to the relationship.
A family friend said: ‘He would quite definitely have married her if she would have had him.’
Instead, she broke his heart. A friend of Cressie’s said: ‘She found him so much fun to be with but she couldn’t deal with the attention. She also knew marrying Harry would mean the end of her acting career. She wanted to be a success on her own terms.’ Perhaps this was one of the reasons that Harry found Meghan Markle so appealing — it’s said his sad experience with Cressie convinced him that the next woman he dated needed to be famous in her own way in order to take on the ‘job’ of being his wife.
PROUD OF HIS GIRL
PRINCE Harry has a deeply suspicious attitude towards the media, whom he partly blames for the death of his mother in a car accident in 1997. He likes to insists on privacy as far as he can.
By contrast, the other Harry has given numerous interviews in support of the charity set up in his brother’s memory and doesn’t turn a hair when Cressie grabs the headlines.
In 2017, Cressie starred in a play and was featured on the front of a newspaper. Harrry W-S proudly took a picture of the paper on the newsstand and wrote: ‘Read all about it! So proud of you Cressida Bonas… after months of hard work!’
Prince Harry and Cressida conducted their romance discreetly. He used to entertain Cressie to suppers at Nottingham Cottage, his bachelor pad in the grounds of Kensington Palace.
He only once went out with her in public — to a charity concert Engaging: A sparkling diamond ring and smiles from Harry and Cressie in March 2014. They split up the following month.
TALL AND TONED
PRINCE Harry is 6ft 1in and, before Meghan Markle exerted a positive influence on his diet, had the beginnings of a ‘dad bod’ at 31. Harry Wentworth-Stanley, 30, is a towering 6ft 6in. Some of his extreme physical fitness may be a legacy of a 4,800km charity row across the Atlantic in 2016.
CHARITABLE CHAP
ON December 15, 2006, Harry’s brother James Went worth Stanley took his own life.
Since then his mother Clare has devoted herself to raising awareness about suicide and opened crisis centre James’ Place in Liverpool last year. Harry raised €700,000 on his Atlantic row for it.
The prince has been associated with two charities: the Invictus Games for wounded veterans and Sentebale which supports young people affected by HIV in Botswana and Lesotho.
SPORTY AND FUN
HE may be double-barrelled but Harry Wentworth-Stanley seems pretty down to earth in his tastes. He supports Spurs, and goes to matches. He also went to the Euro championships in 2016 — posting pictures on social media. Prince Harry is more keen on rugby.
POP CULTURED
FREE-SPIRITED Cressie is crazy about music and in Harry W-S she has found a twin spirit. Both are veterans of Glastonbury among other festivals.
Harry isn’t known to have any enthusiasm for pop music.
STEADY WORKER
SIX months after Harry and Cressie started dating, he served for 20 weeks as an Apache helicopter co-pilot in Afghanistan. He left the army in 2015 to concentrate on charity work.
Harry Wentworth-Stanley went to Argentina for a year after completing his degree in Spanish and business studies in 2011. There, he worked for a property developer.
Now he is a rising star at top estate agents Savills. He seems to have applied that same work ethic to wooing Cressida back after she and Prince Harry split.