Prince Philip: Princess Anne recalls hilarious fishing swipe

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This Sunday marks 48 years since the wedding of Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips at Westminster Abbey in London. A global estimated audience of 500 million watched the ceremony, with large crowds lining the streets on the wedding day. The ceremony featured many ceremonial aspects, including the use of the state carriages and roles for the Household Cavalry, Irish Guards, and Coldstream Guards. A tall, iced wedding cake with silver tiers was prepared for the ceremony.

Following the service, the couple then returned to Buckingham Palace for the traditional balcony appearance and a wedding lunch.

Anne and Mr Phillips’ wedding day preceded a difficult marriage, however, and they ultimately split in 1989 before the divorce in 1999.

It was reported that Anne had become become “overly familiar” with her royal protection officer, Peter Cross, who was swiftly transferred away from royal duties.

The Sun’s late royal reporter Harry Arnold previously said: “I was told from an amazing source he [Mr Cross] was having an affair with Princess Anne.

“I couldn’t use the word ‘affair’, so I invented the phrase that he became ‘over-familiar’ with Princess Anne.”

The Daily Mail reported last year that, by 1980, Mr Phillips had become angered by rumours of the relationship.

The Sun also reported last year that Mr Phillips had branded allegations of an affair “rubbish and fantasy” and added: “Nevertheless, they are hurtful. You’ve just got to be able to take these things in your stride.”

Mr Cross, 37, and married with two children at the time, had formed an unlikely bond with Anne, then a 30-year-old married mother with a young son.

Mr Cross’s ex-wife Linda once said: “He couldn’t resist women and they couldn’t resist him. Over the years of our marriage I had two of his girlfriends weeping on our front door.

“But with Princess Anne it was different. It was obvious he was playing with fire there and could get seriously burnt.”

Speaking to the News of the World, Mr Cross once explained how he began to talk to Anne: “We started to talk. Then somehow we were sitting together on the back stairs which led from the kitchen up to my room.

“Her arm, I noticed, was leaning against my knee.”

Mr Phillips’ also had an affair during the couple’s marriage and even had a secret child with another woman.

In 1991, an art teacher from New Zealand, Heather Tonkin, told the Daily Express that Mr Phillips fathered her daughter Felicity five years before.

She said: “My ambition is to get Mark’s public acceptance of her and to be able to enter his name on her birth certificate.”

Mr Phillips denied the claim but it was soon revealed that he had been making payments ‒ a total of £6,000 per year ‒ to Ms Tonkin for five years under the guise of officially hiring her as a consultant on “equestrian matters”.

Anne went on to marry her second husband Sir Timothy Laurence in December 1992, and they remain together today.

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Mr Phillips would marry equestrienne Sandy Pflueger, but they split in 2012.

Sir Timothy is a retired Royal Navy oficer who was enquerry to the Queen.

He was born in Camberwell and attended the New Beacon Prep Sevenoaks School in Kent before going to the University of Durham on a Naval Scholarship.

The couple met while Anne was still married to her first husband, Mr Phillips.

In 1989 The Sun published private letters between the Princess and Sir Timothy.

In a statement at the time, Buckingham Palace said: “The stolen letters were addressed to the Princess Royal by Commander Timothy Laurence, the Queen’s Equerry.

“We have nothing to say about the contents of personal letters sent to Her Royal Highness by a friend which were stolen and which are the subject of a police investigation.”

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