King’s nephew Peter Phillips takes date to event attended by the Queen after split from girlfriend

Peter Phillips, the King’s nephew, has been photographed with a new girlfriend just weeks after separating from his partner of three years.

The father-of-two is understood to be dating Harriet Sperling, a paediatric nurse and freelance writer.

The pair spent the weekend together at the Badminton Horse Trials, where they were spotted strolling hand in hand.

On Saturday, the couple watched the cross-country horse riding from a sponsor’s tent before leaving in a vehicle with Mr Phillips’s two daughters, Savannah, 13, and Isla, 12, who he shares with his former wife Autumn Kelly.

They returned to the Gloucestershire event on Sunday, when Mr Phillips was seen chatting to the Queen as Miss Sperling looked on:

A friend of Mr Phillips told the Telegraph that the royal had met someone “recently” and that the couple had been “spending time together” but that it was still too early to be anything more at this stage.

Gerard Franklin, Mr Phillips’s spokesman, declined to comment, stating that it was a “private matter”.

It comes just a month after it emerged that 46-year-old Mr Phillips, who is the Princess Royal’s son and 18th in line to the throne, had separated from his girlfriend Lindsay Wallace, 43.

The relationship has become sufficiently serious that Ms Wallace had been introduced to the Royal family and invited to numerous public events, including the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations, Royal Ascot, Wimbledon and the Coronation Concert.

But it was said to have “run its course”, with sources suggesting the separation was amicable and that no one else was involved.

Ms Wallace, who has two children from a previous relationship, went to school with Mr Phillips’s sister, Zara Tindall.

The couple made their first official appearance in June 2022 at the Epsom Derby.

Mr Phillips had finalised his divorce from Autumn Kelly a year earlier.

He works as managing director of Sports & Entertainment Ltd (SEL), head of partner acquisition for the rights agency CSM Sport & Entertainment, chairman of City Racing, and is patron of ISPS Handa, which sponsors golf tournaments.

In an interview in March, he revealed the King was in “good spirits” following his cancer diagnosis but “frustrated” that his recovery was taking longer than “he would want it to”.

He also praised the Princess of Wales as “remarkable” and said she and Prince William had “got it right” in balancing their public life and family life.