A few months ago, I noted that Peter Phillips’ girlfriend Harriet Sperling seemed to have the approval of not just his family, but the British media. There was a sense of togetherness, that everyone was working in tandem to make Harriet happen and give her a big rollout. The only thing surprising about their engagement news last week was that it came together so quickly, roughly 14 months after they started dating. The Mail and other outlets have been raving about Harriet’s style, and they’re already doing big fashion articles with affiliate links. Commenters said that Harriet has been getting free/comped clothes this whole time, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all. I haven’t seen any outlet confirm it though – probably because everyone expects Peter to make deals wherever he can. Speaking of, there’s some chatter about Peter and Harriet’s engagement photos, which Hello Magazine carried exclusively. Meaning, Hello almost definitely paid for those photos. But sources told the Telegraph that Hello didn’t pay for the pics?
In June Harriet Sperling made her royal carriage debut in the procession at Ascot, accompanying Peter Phillips in carriage three. That suggested Sperling, who appears to have slotted naturally into the Firm, had been given the official seal of approval.
Even so, it was a surprise on Friday when she and Phillips announced their betrothal. The news came via Hello! magazine, which published two photographs of the couple (in which Sperling showed off her diamond engagement ring, estimated by one expert to cost at least £10,000) shortly after Phillips and Sperling spoke to the King and Queen.
The choice of magazine prompted reminders of Phillips’s first wedding, in 2008, when he caused controversy by selling the exclusive photographic rights to Hello! for a reported £500,000, allegedly angering the late Queen, who was not consulted in advance.
The pictures marking Phillips and Sperling’s engagement, however, are said to have been taken privately and it is understood that no commercial arrangement was made with Hello! or any other publication.
The couple have yet to announce a date for their wedding. However leading designers will surely be champing at the bit to dress Sperling. She has already won praise for the elegant way in which she mixes high-street brands such as Zara with royal-approved British designers. In her engagement photos, Sperling is wearing a white cheesecloth top and skirt set by Me+Em, a home-grown label favoured by the Princess of Wales.
As both an elegant figure, coolly unfazed by public duties, and a hard-working NHS nurse and single mother, Sperling is the ideal fit for a gradually modernising institution. It appears she’s not just a great match for Phillips: she could be the Royal family’s shining new star.
“She could be the Royal family’s shining new star?” “Unfazed by public duties?” I wasn’t aware that Peter had public duties – he just shows up for fun stuff like Ascot and Wimbledon, and some of the family events. Perhaps they’re talking about the “public duty” of being a royal-adjacent figure for the tabloids to talk about. Anyway, the tabloids are playing nice right now, which speaks volumes about the glamour-vacuum which exists in the Windsor clan right now. I strongly suspect that whoever briefed the Telegraph about the Hello exclusive wasn’t telling the truth. And honestly, why does it matter? Peter doesn’t have a title, he isn’t a working royal, and he’s already been caught monetizing his royal-adjacency many times. “Selling engagement photos to Hello” is a pretty nothingburger scandal.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images, Hello’s IG.
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- Londres, UNITED KINGDOM Peter Phillips and his partner Harriet Sperling were seen attending the Wimbledon tennis tournament in London, enjoying the high-level competition and relaxed summer atmosphere together during one of the sport’s most prestigious events Pictured: Peter Phillips, Harriet Sperling BACKGRID USA 9 JULY 2025 BYLINE MUST READ: Best Image / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Londres, UNITED KINGDOM Peter Phillips and his partner Harriet Sperling were seen attending the Wimbledon tennis tournament in London, enjoying the high-level competition and relaxed summer atmosphere together during one of the sport’s most prestigious events Pictured: Peter Phillips, Harriet Sperling BACKGRID USA 9 JULY 2025 BYLINE MUST READ: Best Image / BACKGRID USA: +1 310 798 9111 / usasales@backgrid.com UK: +44 208 344 2007 / uksales@backgrid.com *UK Clients – Pictures Containing Children Please Pixelate Face Prior To Publication*
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- Arrivals on Day 4 of Royal Ascot. Featuring: Peter Philips, Harriet Sperling Where: Ascot, United Kingdom When: 21 Jun 2024 Credit: Cover Images
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- Arrivals on Day 4 of Royal Ascot. Featuring: Peter Philips, Harriet Sperling Where: Ascot, United Kingdom When: 21 Jun 2024 Credit: Cover Images
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- Harriet Sperling and Peter Phillips attend the tenth day of the Wimbledon tennis championships held at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club Featuring: Harriet Sperling, Peter Phillips Where: London, United Kingdom When: 10 Jul 2024 Credit: Ray Tang/Cover Images **STRICTLY EDITORIAL USE ONLY**
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- Harriet Sperling and Peter Phillips attend the tenth day of the Wimbledon tennis championships held at the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club Featuring: Harriet Sperling, Peter Phillips Where: London, United Kingdom When: 10 Jul 2024 Credit: Ray Tang/Cover Images **STRICTLY EDITORIAL USE ONLY**
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- Royal guests during day one of Royal Ascot at Ascot Racecourse Featuring: Harriet Sperling, Peter Phillips Where: Ascot, United Kingdom When: 17 Jun 2025 Credit: Cover Images
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- Royal guests during day one of Royal Ascot at Ascot Racecourse Featuring: Harriet Sperling, Peter Phillips Where: Ascot, United Kingdom When: 17 Jun 2025 Credit: Cover Images
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- Members of the royal family on Day Three of Royal Ascot Meeting 2025 Featuring: Harriet Sperling and Peter Philips Day Three of Royal Ascot Meeting 2025 Ascot, United Kingdom 19th June 2025 Where: Ascot, United Kingdom When: 19 Jun 2025 Credit: Cover Images
I wouldn’t be surprised if HELLO paid Peter Philips. The magazine has certainly paid Zara and Mike Tindall over the years. They also hired Lady Gabriella Windsor for a few years, and her brother and wife have also been featured heavily in the magazine. You can’t tell me that it was for free.
He and autumn sold their wedding reception photos—100 pages—where Kate made her entry sans William. And William and others reportedly hit the roof as the deal wasn’t known at the time. Including the Queen.
https://www.hellomagazine.com/royalty/20080520616602/peter-autumn-wedding/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1021316/Peter-Phillipss-Hello-wedding-Autumn-grasping-vulgar-damaging-Queen.html
They’re still desperate to fill that Duchess Meghan sized hole they have. Harriet isn’t a star and never will be, because the likes of Camilla and Kate would never allow it.
And she doesn’t seem interesting enough in my opinion.
People have long forgotten now, but it was a fairly big royal scandal at the time when he sold the rights to his first wedding to Hello and even did a cheesy photoshoot with them. I think he got $500k? There were a bunch of articles about him insulting the Queen, which in hindsight, is hilarious. Just goes to show how fickle the British press is and how they can make any relative an enemy when they want.
I posted a couple links up above. HUGE scandal at the time.
“As both an elegant figure, coolly unfazed by public duties, and a hard-working NHS nurse and single mother, Sperling is the ideal fit for a gradually modernising institution.”
Oh dear, Lazy and mother won’t be happy. There’s a more intriguing woman on the scene who will modernise the institution!
As for Peter, he’s the one who shilled milk in China. Of course he got paid. If not £500K, then probably at least a tenth of his first marriage Hello mag cost. Peter seems to be the Duchess of York of that generation. He doesn’t seem to have a profession? So where does he get money from? Anne?
A company he worked for got a big contract for one of the Queen’s jubilees. I think he has dabbled in other things also. Didn’t he have some sort of deal going during Covid? He also gets money from Anne’s estate by managing events there, I think.
Do royal brides of people as far down the LoS as Peter normally get glowing, thorough write-ups in the Telegraph? It’s not as if she was famous previously.
And Hello! definitely paid for those pics. I’m not sure why they’re pretending otherwise. This seems somewhat fishy.
I’m laughing at the idea of Peter and “that he just shows up for fun stuff like Ascot and Wimbledon, and some of the family events.” Technically, those are pretty much royal duties, especially if you’re the Wales. Ascot, Wimbledon, sporting events…that’s the bulk of their royal events right there.
Having the mark of being the next royal star never bodes well but she’ll probably be fine as she’s British, blonde and white. As long as Carole and Kate don’t get too jealous. And honestly why shouldn’t they sell their pictures to Hello? It’s not like the Wales aren’t borrowing a freaking yacht.
very good points @Jais…I agree with all of them! And why doesn’t Harriet just open a ShopMy page and be done with it? Why go through the Mail if it isn’t to pretend as if she and Peter don’t get a cut. Modernizing the institution indeed…
and they have two choices. Either it’s a full royal wedding in Windsor complete with loaned tiara and carriage ride for QEII’s “favorite grandson” and Friend of William, or a “private” wedding with all the pics sold to Hello and all the kit (marquee, fancy toilets and honeymoon destination etc as with Pippa Middleton’s wedding) sponsored in exchange for gushing articles in the DM. You won’t get something discreet and privately paid for by Anne, that’s for sure!
Lol, a shopmy page would be too Meghan.
She’s a lovely woman, and who doesn’t admire that she’s actually done real work as a pediatric ICU nurse, and I’m not saying her dresses are ugly or really old-fashioned, but “style icon”? These dresses are fine for church, but nobody is crashing a website to buy mid-calf Easter dresses with mutton sleeves.
You’d be surprised. The mutton sleeve crowd longs to think of themselves as fashionable.
She looks very English and dressed in the way you would expect members of the royal family would dress. Think Sophie and Zara and even the Yorks. She and Peter looked like a nice conservative well-dressed English couple, and isn’t that what the Windsors really represent at the end of the day- the English royal family? That’s what they will eventually be reduced to. They’re not the thought of as the kings of the Scots, or the Welsh- they’re are technically heads of state. Anyway, I think Peter and Harriet made their debut at Ascot on a day that Kate was not present and they became one of the couples to look at. In terms of Ascot pictures, I think they could give the Wales’s a run for their money. I think Harriet looked good and posed well. And she looks at least as stylish as Kate. Harriet’s family background seems solid as well.
If Hello! paid for them, Hello! got screwed. Those are some boring ass engagement pictures.
It’s a scandal if the government pays for the royals and it’s a scandal if they make money! This whole facade is falling apart because everyone seems to want fancy royals, but no one can figure out how they should be able to afford it all.
The Windsors marketing themselves as just an ordinary family, really, may have worked for the Queen and her young family in the 1960s. However, since the rich became flashy again in the 80s, it hasn’t worked at all. And no one in any of the palaces seems to even realize it’s a problem.
They know they’re running out of ways to spin old Meghan stories. Now they have an acceptable white, blonde, British woman marrying far down the succession line. Low enough to not be threatening, but new enough to distract from issues with the others.
I’m looking forward to the stories when they finally turn on Kate and William again. Comparing Kate being exhausted and worn out and needing a vacation after riding in a carriage to a 12 hour shift as a pediatric ICU nurse.
They might not ever turn on the Wales again, but if they do, they have a perfect foil.
Most people don’t know who Peter Phillips is. no one is going to care about his wife. She’s not filling any kind of glamour void lmao. She will be included in pictures from events like Ascot and Wimbledon as part of the “also there were….” carousel of pictures that fashion sites and the like post.
That’s not a slam on her or Peter. They’re just not going to make fetch happen no matter how much they want to.
Yeah I agree. They tried the same thing the late last year with Gabriella Kingston, but you have to really be either a society person or a royal watcher to know who these people are. And if their goal is to drive the same sort of interest that Meghan gets, and that Kate used to get circa 2012-2016, this isn’t going to cut it.
I knew who Zara, Beatrice, Eugenie and Pippa were because they were included in photos at Ascot, etc in the 2000s not because I was following them so closely. Until I did redhead and brunette in my head as a separation I was still confusing the York sisters until about 2014.
Didn’t they try that recently with Lady Gabriella? She seems to have faded to the background already. Wonder if by choice or not.
I think it will work, because if there’s anything that motivates Kate other than keeping William is competing with other women. The rota is definitely firing a warning shot (perhaps egged on by Charles and/or Camilla) at Kate and the Middletons, saying: We’re ready to crown Kate 2.0! Just like Kate only functional! And described in the same words (fashion icon, cares about children, distantly aristo adjacent, thin, pretty and willing to play the game, youngish)
The glowing press coverage of Harriet will provoke a reaction from Kate/The MIddletons and then we’re all off to the races for clicks and giggles. No matter that in terms of the succession Peter and Harriet are nobodies. It’s the images that count, and I think Harriet is prettier/more charismatic. Plus Gabriella was/is probably much less willing to play the game especially after all she’s been through.
Kate, you better come out with your Summer Video toot sweet, complete with images of kids cavorting at Balmoral to prove your Future Queen bona fides and put Harriet in her place!
I think it might work to get Kate up off her butt and working – but it might not. we didn’t see that when they tried to make Gabriella Kingston happen. And if the new Mrs Phillips doesn’t bring in clicks or a lot of chatter then the press will stop talking about her. They didn’t really make a big deal about Autumn Phillips outside of things like the Christmas walk or the occasional polo match.
History has shown us that Kate does not tolerate sharing the spotlight or being outshown, outworked or out praised. She’ll get Harriet shunned by DM and in several other underhanded ways. Never underestimate our Kate. She’s one tough cookie, not the fragile English flower she pretends to be.
Forgot about that. Where is the summer video? The children are going back to school, isn’t it overdue?
In terms of chess pieces, Peter ticks a lot of boxes, too. If William is so incapable of being King without someone propping him up, since Harry is no longer available, Peter and Harriet may serve that role well enough for the BRF/tabloids. Far enough away from the throne to not be a threat, younger and more attractive than Ed and Sophie and willing to do all the royal “work” William and Kate don’t want to do especially if paid by the Duchies.
Even better, being under William’s thumb for money will put them under his complete control. I can’t see Anne being able to support Peter, Harriet, the exes and the children plus Zara, Mike and all those children no matter what she may have inherited from QEII…
The fact Harriet exists, is upper class, useful, and looks fabulous, is surely going to make Carole’s teeth grind.
I wonder if that was the real reason for the last minute no-show at Ascot? Harriet would be getting attention.
You might be on to something– Kate’s no-show was the day after Harriet rode in the procession. Wonder if someone got jealous and threw a tantrum?
Oooh you may be on to something there. 🍿
Yeah I don’t believe they weren’t paid for the photos and exclusive announcement.
How did I miss this??
Gooooood luck Harriet.
Is it my imagination or does he somewhat resemble Andrew?
He’s the spitting image of Mark Phillips imo.