The day may still yet be to come when we can announce a fully fledged Jewish princess, but the newest member of the Royal Family has Jewish ancestry.
Harriet Sperling, who married Princess Anne’s eldest son Peter Phillips in Kemble, Gloucestershire, on Saturday, is a descendant of the Dutch de Zoete family, according to Doreen Berger of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain.
Harriet, a paediatric nurse in the NHS and a devout Christian, has worked at the Evelina Children’s Hospital in south London, which was opened in 1869 by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild in memory of his wife Evelina, who died aged 27 in 1866.
King Charles arrives for the wedding of Harriet Sperling to Peter Phillips at All Saints Church in Kemble, Gloucestershire on June 6, 2026 (PA)Ben Birchall/PA Wire
Her paternal grandmother, Eleanor de Zoete, was a scion of a banking family that became part of Barclays and married Major Geoffrey Sanders, who became the High Sheriff of Gloucestershire.
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