Rod Liddle feels the wrath of ex-wife

Hell truly hath no fury like a woman scorned, as Rod Liddle, the shaggy-haired Spectator columnist, political pundit and former editor of the BBC Radio 4's Today programme, is discovering to his cost. His ex-wife, Rachel Royce, has penned a vitriolic article in today's Daily Mail lambasting the writer for secretly marrying his mistress, 26-year old Alicia Monckton. Royce, 49, is furious that Liddle told their two children about the nuptials and not her. She is also hurt by the fact that Liddle, 48, arranged a proper white wedding in a country church, something he'd denied her because he said he was worried about an outbreak of foot and mouth disease.

She writes: "I believe it's usual for the ex to be offered an invitation to the wedding and to be diplomatically busy on the weekend in question. The first I knew that my former husband Rod Liddle had married his mistress was when the phone rang and someone asked me: 'Were you aware that your ex-husband got married last weekend?’ "

Royce and Liddle split up four years ago shortly after their marriage. On the honeymoon, Liddle claimed he had to return early for work, but Royce later discovered he was seeing Monckton, who was 22 at the time. Shortly after Liddle left her, Royce dumped 10 bags of manure at the Spectator offices, where Monckton was employed as a receptionist. Time has not healed the wounds.

"It is four-and-a-half years since we separated, and I had hoped that by now I would be over the pain of my marriage breaking down. But the truth is, I'm not. I still feel angry that a woman 20 years my junior has stolen my husband."

On Liddle's decision to draw her children into the subterfuge, she said: "Their father had made them promise not to tell me about the wedding. As the news sank in, I began to imagine their strained little faces at the ceremony, the confused emotions they must have felt knowing that any lingering hopes that Mum and Dad could put their differences behind them and reunite were dead."

She added: "Why had the vicar allowed the woman who had ruined my marriage to stand there in a virginal white dress making wedding vows, when she spared no thought for me when she barged in on my marriage with her little black dresses, bright red lipstick and 22-year-old body?"

But when she called Liddle to complain, she got short shrift. "He started citing the 1534 Act of Succession. The act that founded the Church of England and allowed Henry VIII to divorce his first wife so that he could go on and marry the second  -  at least until he cut off her head. I hung up on him."
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