“They had several very big offers,” says a friend of the son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, “but they decided that they wanted the wedding to be a private event.”
Mandrake can disclose that Lord Freddie, 30, will marry the 28-year-old actress, who played a princess in the ITV drama The Palace, on September 12 in the Chapel Royal at Hampton Court, where Henry VIII was betrothed to Catherine Parr, the last of his six wives.
Sophie, who is the daughter of the publisher Barry Winkleman, a non-practising Jew, is understood to have been raised as an Anglican by her mother, Cindy Black, an author of books for children.
New tune
When Andrew Lloyd Webber decided to search for an actress to play Maria in a West End production of The Sound of Music using a reality television show, there was no more vociferous critic than Sir Trevor Nunn.
The former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company said a leading lady could not be found through a “distasteful” talent contest. Such programmes demeaned the participants, he claimed.
When it came to choosing the young female lead for his latest show, A Little Night Music, there could, therefore, be only one possible choice: Jessie Buckley, who was the runner-up in Lord Lloyd-Webber’s television programme I’d Do Anything.