RICHARD EDEN: After splitting up with wife of 22 years, Duke of Marlborough is pictured for the first time with new companion at his ancestral home Blenheim Palace, birthplace of Winston Churchill

Blenheim Palace appears to have a new chatelaine.

I disclosed in May that the Duke of Marlborough had separated from Edla, his wife of 22 years. Now, he’s been parading his new companion, Doune Murray.

As my exclusive photograph shows, the Duke, 68, better known as Jamie Blandford, and Doune were driven round the Game Fair at the weekend at his ancestral home, Blenheim in Oxfordshire, where Sir Keir Starmer entertained European leaders earlier this month.

‘Jamie and Doune are a couple,’ a friend tells me.

Jamie had met Edla Griffiths while she was living in Chelsea, perfecting her craft as a ceramicist. They have a son and daughter, both teenagers.

The pair were driven round a Game Fair at the weekend at his ancestral home, Blenheim in Oxfordshire

Pictured: The Duke of Marlborough, and Edla Griffiths together in 2017 

The Duke of Marlborough and Edla Griffiths – they have a son and daughter, both teenagers

Blenheim Palace is the Duke of Marlborough’s ancestral home

Their marriage was not without its squalls, such as in 2007 when a series of motoring and ‘road-rage’ offences saw Jamie jailed for six months. 

By then, Edla had already been credited by many – Jamie included – for ‘settling him down’ after his turbulent 20s and 30s, during which, at his lowest point, his desire for drugs regularly led him to the notorious Mozart Estate in North London.

She made it plain that he was going to lose her unless he reformed for good. He duly did – aware that his first marriage, to Becky Few Brown, with whom he had a son, George, now the Marquess of Blandford, had foundered because of hard-partying ways which once saw him shoot out Verbier’s streetlights with a shotgun, perhaps destabilised by McNally’s hospitality.