Now the Duke of Rutland ditches his live-in lover
WHEN the Duke of Rutland’s 20year marriage broke down after he embarked on an affair with a woman who lived on his 15,000-acre estate, his wife, Emma, made a surprising announcement.
The Duchess declared she would continue to live under the same roof at their marital home, Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire, in her roles as mother of their five children and chief executive of the estate. And she added that she had also embarked on a romance of her own — with her estate manager.
Now, however, the aristocracy’s most extraordinary living arrangements have come to an end.
I can reveal that the 59-year- old Duke, David Manners, has split up with his Brazilian-born lover, Andrea Webb, and she is now living 120 miles away in London. ‘I can confirm that I have broken up with Andrea Webb amiably recently,’ David tells me.
The break-up comes nine months after police were called to Belvoir (pronounced ‘Beaver’) following a row that flared up when Andrea was told by staff that she was excluded from a shooting party on the estate.
Andrea, who is believed to be in her 40s, had reportedly refused to leave the castle grounds unless the Duke told her himself that she should go. Eventually she relented and left the castle followed by the police officers.
It was far from the only colourful incident in the love life of the Duke, who separated from his wife in 2012 when she found out about his affair — the second such straying in their relationship. The couple, whose estate is said to be worth £125 million, are the parents of Ladies Violet, Alice and Eliza Manners, stalwarts of the London social scene.
When Emma, 55, fell in love with her estate manager, Phil Burtt, 65, it prompted comparisons with the upstairs/downstairs romance in D. H. Lawrence’s novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, in which the aristocratic heroine has a passionate affair with the gamekeeper Oliver Mellors.
‘We’re all friends and we have the occasional meal together,’ Burtt said of the two couples’ unusual domestic circumstances. ‘Emma and I will always be together, but we will never get married.’