'Dr Love' Alain de Botton leaves wife of 23 years

He's the television philosopher who acquired the nickname ‘Dr Love’ on account of his best-selling books including The Romantic Movement and Essays In Love.

Now, however, Alain de Botton has left his wife of more than two decades, Charlotte, with whom he founded The School of Life, an organisation to help people ‘find serenity and meaning and make a new group of kind and emotionally intelligent friends’.

A friend confirms: ‘It’s all over. Alain has a new girlfriend now.’

The author, 56, whose books include How To Think More About Sex and The Consolations of Philosophy, is being consoled by an unidentified woman whom he is understood to have taken to the wedding of film producer Jemima Goldsmith and financier Cameron O’Reilly in Oxfordshire earlier this month.

Swiss-born Alain and Charlotte, 54, who have two children, married in 2003, having met at at Zucca restaurant in London’s Notting Hill. ‘She was actually quite unfriendly towards me,’ he later recalled. The pair are now said to be living in different houses in the same street in north London.

It has been noted in the past that Charlotte is long-suffering. For example, her husband once posted the aphorism online: ‘If a man hasn’t found other reasons to love his wife by the time her looks fade, the bond is hardly worth saving.’

Alain de Botton has left his wife of more than two decades, Charlotte, with whom he founded The School of Life

This prompted his female followers to rise up to condemn him, with novelist Jojo Moyes remarking, ‘Poor Mrs Botton’.

Not only did Charlotte establish The School of Life with Alain, but she also ran the financial and legal side of Seneca Productions, the TV company behind his Channel 4 documentaries Status Anxiety and The Perfect Home.

Last November, Alain declared: ‘I’m a big believer in good endings of relationships.’

Both Alain and Charlotte decline to comment.

Will Mountbatten's girl survive Apocalypse?

Lord Ivar Mountbatten slept among snakes and tarantulas in the jungle competing on Treasure Island with Bear Grylls.

Now, his middle daughter Alexandra Mountbatten has volunteered for prolonged hardship on another Channel 4 survival show. I can disclose that Alix, 28, will join other contestants tomorrow on Apocalypse, a seven-part series in which two teams compete for survival in an ‘abandoned town’ in the US without electricity, water or food. Alix, an ambulance care assistant and avowed ‘adrenaline junkie’, joins former Made In Chelsea star Freddie Browne on the show.

Alexandra Mountbatten has volunteered for prolonged hardship on another survival show, a seven-part series in which two teams compete for survival in an ‘abandoned town’

Lord Ivar Mountbatten slept among snakes and tarantulas in the jungle competing on Treasure Island with Bear Grylls. Now, his middle daughter will join Channel 4's Apocalypse

This is serendipitous. Yesterday, I disclosed that the Prince of Wales was considering appearing in a television documentary to mark the 30th anniversary of his late mother Princess Diana’s death.

Now, I learn that Prince William held private talks at Kensington Palace yesterday with the new Director-General of the BBC, Matt Brittin.

On the 20th anniversary of his mother’s death in 2017, William appeared with his brother, Prince Harry, in the same BBC documentary – Diana, Our Mother: Her Life And Legacy. That won’t happen again given the brothers’ estrangement. Harry is planning to make his own programme, probably for US streaming giant Netflix. I know which one I would rather watch.

Claire’s recipe for happiness: her own private chef

Claire Foy admits that there’s one royal perk she wouldn’t have minded keeping for herself

She played Queen Elizabeth II in Netflix drama The Crown, and Claire Foy admits that there’s one royal perk she wouldn’t have minded keeping for herself: a private chef.

‘I’d like someone to cook for me, but not live in my house,’ says the 42-year-old star of The Magic Faraway Tree and A Very British Scandal, who has a daughter with her ex-husband, the actor Stephen Campbell Moore.

‘That would be nice. Wouldn’t that be most people’s dream? I don’t ever want to cook dinner ever again.

‘It’s the worst thing in the world.’

Aware of his destiny, King Charles practised signing his autograph for years – and the evidence has just sold for £400. A sheet of Buckingham Palace-headed notepaper bearing four pencil signatures by Charles and his sister, Princess Anne, was sold by auction house Spink. It had been kept for decades by a nurse who worked for his mother. Dating from around 1960, when Charles was 11 and Anne nine, it came from the collection of ‘Nurse Rowe’, who Spink says attended Queen Elizabeth II around her children’s births. 

Pal praises Prince Harry and Meghan’s ‘courage’ 

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex appear to revel in their role as royal rebels. Mandana Dayani, 44, the former president of their Archewell organisation, says watching the couple ‘dissent against this institution’ – referring to the monarchy they left behind – was one of the reasons she agreed to work for them.

Dayani joined Archewell in 2021 and had previously co-created podcast The Dissenters. ‘Watching them dissent against this institution and say, “This isn’t right for us”, that to me felt really brave,’ she says.

‘I had a lot of respect for how they had the courage to do that, because I think that’s really hard to do.’

She stepped down at the end of 2022, but says: ‘We actually had a really great relationship. We still do.’

(Very) modern manners 

The late 8th Earl Bathurst once branded Prince William ‘some young yob in a beat-up car’ after he was overtaken on his Gloucestershire estate by the future king’s VW Golf. His daughter-in-law Countess Bathurst takes no prisoners either.

Sara Bathurst fines guests at Cirencester Park who use their mobile phones at the table.

If anyone ‘answers a call, makes one – or so much as sneaks a glance at the screen – there’s an immediate fine, payable to the Wooden Spoon charity collecting tin’, she says.

‘There have been some wonderfully startled expressions when a visitor’s telephone rings halfway through lunch – and before they quite know what’s happening, the Wooden Spoon tin is plonked firmly in front of them. “Pound, please!” ’