Prince Harry and Cressida Bonas split after two years

PRINCE HARRY and Cressida Bonas have ended their two-year relationship following months of speculation that a royal proposal was in the pipeline.

The couple are said to have split amicably, with Daily Telegraph sources suggesting Bonas struggled to deal with the media glare.

One friend told the newspaper it was "a very amicable split" and that they "are still very much the best of friends". Another "well-placed source" said the couple had "paused for a breather", suggesting that they might eventually get back together. Several newspapers note that Prince William and Kate Middleton broke up for several months four years before they married in 2011.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Bonas, who recently completed a one-year contemporary dance course at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire in Greenwich, London, is reportedly keen to "focus on her career".

The Telegraph's Gordon Rayner says: "Miss Bonas never reconciled the fact that she would have to choose between her hopes of a career on the stage and her royal boyfriend."

Sources close to Prince Harry said recently that "if it was up to him he would get married straight away", suggesting it may have been Bonas who called for a time-out, he adds.

Rumours of a royal engagement peaked last month when Bonas joined Prince Harry for her first official royal visit. The couple sat together and hugged at a We Day UK charity event at Wembley Arena in front of 12,000 people, prompting bookmakers to slash the odds on the couple announcing their engagement in 2014 to 8/13. Two days later they were out again in public for a Six Nations rugby match at Twickenham.

The couple were due to attend a three-day wedding of Guy Pelly, a close friend of the Prince, in Memphis, Tennessee, this weekend but it is understood that Bonas will no longer attend.

The pair are said to have been introduced by the Prince's cousin and Bonas's friend Princess Eugenie. Bonas is the daughter of the well-known Old Harrovian businessman Jeffrey Bonas and Sixties socialite Lady Mary-Gaye Curzon.