MANDELSON / da Silva engagement
Richard R
From the Sunday Times of 6 Aug 2023:
Peter Mandelson ‘couldn’t be happier’ to marry long-term partner
…Mandelson, 69, has told friends that he will marry Reinaldo Avila da Silva, 50, this year after nearly three decades together… [Mandelson] will tie the knot with his Brazilian linguist partner in a small register-office ceremony at Old Marylebone Town Hall in London at the end of October, a few weeks after his party’s annual conference. They will then host friends at a reception in Wiltshire, where Mandelson rents a farmhouse in the Pewsey Vale. Da Silva, who lives in London, is a frequent visitor.
The engagement is a rare foray into the limelight for the couple, who in their 27 years together have guarded their privacy. Mandelson is the most senior Labour figure to take advantage of equal marriage legislation set in train when Tony Blair introduced civil partnerships in 2005. The couple first discussed marriage before the coronavirus lockdown but it was not until last July that da Silva suggested it was time to marry.
Mandelson said: “I couldn’t be happier. I am not sure why it has taken so long but suddenly it seemed what we both wanted to do with our families and a few close friends. Maybe we work so well together after all this time because we don’t crowd each other. Reinaldo is a London being and I am more a Wiltshire person.
The couple met via mutual friends in 1996 when Mandelson, Blair’s campaign director at the time, was “engrossed” in general election planning. Da Silva, who speaks seven languages, was studying Japanese at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
The pair did not start living together until after 1997. Mandelson’s private life was the subject of intense media attention after the Times journalist Matthew Parris named him as one of several gay cabinet ministers on live television in 1998…