Meet the new Middleton marriage tribe
Guy Kelly looks at the Matthews family, who will be joining Pippa’s and Kate’s in just six weeks
It is a truth as old as the institution of marriage itself: you can’t ever wed just one person, you’ve got to take their whole family, too – for better or for worse.
There are now just six weeks until Pippa Middleton walks down the aisle of St Mark’s Church in Englefield, Berkshire, to marry 41-year-old hedge-fund und manager James Matthews, and d final preparations appear veryy much under way. The stag andd hen dos – the bride-to-be’s involveded a weekend skiing with her sister, er, the Duchess of Cambridge, and friends riends in Méribel last month – and theirheir attending hangovers are all done one and dusted; venues are set; and nd a milliner was even spotted visitingiting Pippa and James’s shared west t London mansion on Thursday, swiftly followed by the mother of the bride.
At the same address a week earlier, an even more important event occurred when members of the two families, the Middletons and the Matthews, met for supper. Carole and Michael Middleton didn’t attend, but their counterparts were there, as were various relatives – including the Cambridges, James Middleton, and Matthews’s infamous reality TV star brother, Spencer. By the look of things, all was cordial… but who exactly are Pippa’s new in-laws?
For all the suddenness of Pippa and James’s engagement announcement last year (when he proposed, in the Lake District, with a £250,000 Art Deco-inspired Asscher-cut diamond ring, they had been dating for just a year), the pair are, in fact, old flames. They dated briefly in 2012, before going their separate ways after a few months, yet remained close friends through her three-year relationship with the stockbroker Nico Jackson. When that ended in 2015, Matthews came back on the scene. An ultra-marathon runner in his spare time, Matthews, who is eight years older than the 33-year-old Pippa, was once a promising motorracing driver, eschewing university and competing up to Formula 3 level. He now works as CEO of Eden Rock Capital Management, the Mayfairbased hedge fund he founded in 2001, making him an independent multimillionaire. Pippa’s new father-in-law will be 73-year-old David Matthews. A handsome, straight-talking son of a coal miner, Yorkshireman David left school to join his father’s garage business, before becoming a door-todoor salesman and eventually – like his eldest son – a racing driver. It was in the sport he met his first wife, glamorous fellowf driver Anita Taylor, whom he marriedm in 1966. The pair had a daughter,daugh Nina, but divorced three years later.l Retiring f from racing in 1973, David made millionsmillio through the sale of his car dealershipdealersh business, and married the Zimbabw Zimbabwean-born artist Jane Spencer Parker. Together, they purchasedpurch Caunton Manor, an 18th-century18 mansion in 30 acres of Lincolnshire countryside,co before startingst their own family. He has made a few cannyc canny in investments. In 1995, he and Jane purchasp purchased Eden Rock Hotel on the idyllic Caribbe Caribbean island of St Barth Barths, and spent a d decade b building it into on one ne of the most luxurious ho hotelsotels in th the region, as well as the f family home. It has si since played host to ev everyone from Jay Jay-Z and Beyoncé, to Leo Leonardo Di Caprio and and, on multiple occ occasions, the Mid Middleton family en m masse. T The couple added to t their portfolio in 20 2008 with the
Both families have the odd rogue – Spencer might like to chat to Uncle Gary
purchase of Glen Affric, a Victorian lodge and estate just north of Loch Ness, which is beloved of its esteemed guests: in 1897, the Duke and Duchess of York, later George V and Queen Mary, are reported to have visited, while a teenage Winston Churchill learnt to drive on its private roads.
In purchasing the property, David became Laird of Glen Affric, and the title – which isn’t a peerage – will be passed down to his eldest son. The future Pippa Matthews could call herself Lady Glen Affric one day.
James Matthews, who attended Uppingham School during a peripatetic childhood split between Lincolnshire and the Caribbean, is the eldest of three brothers. In 1999, tragedy befell the family when the middle brother, Michael, died climbing Mount Everest. He was 22 years old and had become the youngest Briton to manage to summit the peak, only to disappear after becoming separated from his guides in Everest’s “death zone” while descending. His body was never found.
“When you lose someone, their memory lives on,” Spencer, the youngest of the brothers by 12 years, said last year. “Whenever you feel like giving up, you always think of them and it stops you. Mike was a very tough person to live up to. We try to treat every day like he did.”
The family continue to celebrate Michael’s birthday every year, and set up the Michael Matthews Foundation, an education charity, in his memory. Most of James’s numerous fitness challenges have been in aid of it, including his participation in the 2008 Marathon des Sables in the Sahara, and a third place in the 2012 North Pole marathon. Pippa now joins him. Among other things, in recent years they’ve donned his’n’hers Lycra for a 3,000-mile bike race across the United States and a swimming race across the Bosphorus.
Eton-educated Spencer is regularly called the “black sheep” of the Matthews family, for which there are many reasons. While the others have diligently gone about their business, 27-year-old Spencer, a graduate of London’s Slade School of Art, who once had to flee for his life when he accidentally offended Colonel Gaddafi’s late son, Mutassim, in a bar on St Barths (long story…), has chosen a decidedly different route.
Spencer is a former PR and finance worker, but found fame in 2011 in E4’s scripted reality show Made in Chelsea, which follows the ups and downs of a group of wealthy twentysomethings as they navigate the challenges of dating one another, spending their inheritances early and avoiding work in the royal borough. Spencer embraced the part of love-rat-in-chief, and claims to have slept with more than 1,000 women.
In his autobiography, published at the tender age of 24, he wrote admiringly of his siblings – particularly James.
“As a boy, I wanted Nina’s heart of gold, Mike’s general character, and James’s girlfriends. Although both my brothers had good taste in women, James was always the pickiest of the two. He had some absolutely incredible girlfriends.”
Since leaving Made in Chelsea, Spencer has appeared on other reality shows including The Bachelor, The Jump and I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!, from which he was forced to withdraw after tabloid reports that he had taken illegal steroids. Helpfully, he is good friends with Pippa’s younger brother, James Middleton, and his TV presenter girlfriend, Donna Air.
It is not yet known if Spencer will be best man next month, but he was present at last week’s planning dinner and seems to be the favourite; given the possible maid of honour, Kensington Palace officials must find that faintly terrifying. Pippa, meanwhile, is said to have found no space on the seating plan for Spencer’s new girlfriend, the Irish model Vogue Williams.
Still, logistics shouldn’t trouble the Middletons. Party planning is the family business, after all, and Pippa once wrote a book on the subject. Having had to pass over most organisational duties to the state for their eldest daughter’s nuptials, they will relish it.
In the Matthews, Pippa has introduced her family to a motley crew with several parallels to their own story. There’s the same entrepreneurial bent, the odd rogue (Spencer might like to chat to Pippa’s uncle, Gary, who was once the target of a tabloid drugs sting at his Ibiza home, Maison de Bang Bang) and similar jet-setting lifestyles.
On May 20, the gaggles will come together for the society wedding of the year. After the church service in the estate of Englefield House, residence of Richard Benyon, the MP for Newbury and wealthiest member of the House of Commons, they’re expected to drive a few miles to a marquee reception in Carole and Michael’s 18-acre garden in Bucklebury, the same village in which they raised the children.
From then, as the Middletons meet the Matthews, anything could happen. Just don’t miss Spencer’s toast.