Mark Field and Liz Truss were entangled in an 18-month love affair starting in 2002. The 60-year-old politician has now recalled the moment things came to an end and he knew his ‘own marriage was over’
A former politician has described the bombshell moment his love affair with Liz Truss finally ended after 18-months of infidelity.
Mark Field, who was MP for Cities of London and Westminster between 2001 and 2019, has recalled how he first met the UK’s shortest term Prime Minister at the Conservative Party Conference in October 2002 at Highcliff Hotel in Bournemouth. Writing in his new book, serialised in the Mail on Sunday, Mark, 60, said it wasn’t until the end of 2003 that their friendship turned into something more.
At the time, he and Liz, who wasn’t an MP at that stage, were both married and living with their spouses. Despite the “anticipation and elation” that came with the secrecy of their affair, Mark explained he knew deep down that their existing relationships were on “different” pages.
“Nevertheless, in my heart, I was painfully aware that our marriages were in very different places. Indeed, every three or four months, beset by what I took to be a mixture of guilt and indecision, Liz would try to cool things down,” he wrote.
By early 2005, Liz 49, embarked on a three-month general election campaign in the Yorkshire constituency of Calder Valley and it appeared that things between the pair wouldn’t go on for much longer. As she worked on her campaign, Mark travelled to Yorkshire a couple of times to see her in action.
After Liz lost by under 1,400 votes, the pair carried on as before when she returned to London. Although they had what Mark called “an intense couple of months” where they “saw a lot of each other”, they didn’t see each other for almost two months when Parliament went into recess. And at this moment, things began to fizzle out.
“I am not sure I have ever really subscribed to the theory that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I remember feeling unsettled that summer. Clarity came in September when Liz told me that she was staying with her husband,” Mark revealed. “I knew in an instant that my own marriage was over. Liz’s marriage, however, had, and still has, endured.”
In 2006, reports of the torrid affair came to light. At the time Liz said: “I am really sorry about that [affair]. It’s a mistake I made and as far as me and my husband are concerned, it’s water under the bridge,” the BBC reports.
Three years later, Liz spoke to You magazine in 2019. During the interview she opened up on her relationship with accountant Hugh O’Leary. The pair, who share two children together, met at the 1997 Tory Party Conference and went ice skating for their first date – though Hugh ended up with a sprained ankle. “I invited him ice skating and he sprained his ankle,” she said. “I’ve always enjoyed winter sports.”
Liz and Hugh tied the knot in 2000, with Liz telling the publication that she was “really happily married” 19 years on. That same year she shared a rare Instagram snap of herself and Hugh on Valentine’s Day, captioned “Love of my life. #happyvalentinesday.”
