Robert Peston: I didn’t think I’d fall in love again
ROBERT PESTON has revealed that he thought he would ‘never find love again’ after his wife Siân died from lung cancer at the age of 51.
In a moving interview in today’s Event magazine, the ITV Political Editor – who is dating fellow journalist Charlotte Edwardes, 45 – says: ‘For a long time after Siân died, I didn’t think [finding love] would be possible.
‘I just wasn’t remotely in the territory where I could have any kind of relationship. So it’s a surprise when you discover that you can fall in love.’
The 57-year-old host of Peston On Sunday also speaks frankly of the moment of Siân’s death in September 2012. ‘She died in my arms – it was by far and away the worst thing that’s ever happened to me,’ he says. ‘But there was no question in my mind that one had to get on, particularly since [the couple’s son] Max was just 15.’
He also recalls how his home was burgled soon after his Siân’s death while he, Max and his son’s half-brother Simon went for a Christmas meal. He says: ‘I don’t really care about material things but they’d stolen her rings. I had taken those rings off her fingers and I wanted to give them to the boys so that when they got married or whatever they could give them to their partners... but they were gone.’
After the burglary, Mr Peston, who was then business editor at the BBC, was hospitalised. ‘They diagnosed reactive arthritis,’ he says. ‘All my joints swelled up and I was very weak for a period... I think I did have post-traumatic stress for a period. It took me a while to get through it.’