PETER Green - investor, deep-pocketed contributor to Britain's ruling Labour Party and long-time Bermuda resident - is to divorce his wife of less than one year, Hillary Geary, according to an article carried by the this week.

The newspaper said there was no known cause behind the failure of the "relatively short marriage" but that it was sure to come as a "shock many of their friends who thought it was a union made in heaven.

Hillary and Peter had each lost a spouse and their children are of similar ages. They even "met cute" as Hollywood calls it. Katherine Bryan - whose husband Shelby Bryan ran off withAnna Wintour - briefly dated Peter and took him to a party at Hillary's place. They fell in love on the spot."

This was Mr. Green's second marriage. It was his first, to Mary-Jean Mitchell, which led him to Bermuda. The only child of Sir Harold Mitchell, one of the world's wealthiest men, Mary-Jane brought her husband to the island soon after they married to holiday at her parents' multi-million-dollar home on Marshall's Island in Hamilton Harbour. She died in 1990.

Sir Harold, whose fortune was founded by his mine-owner grandfather in the mid-19th century, arrived in Bermuda in 1947 with his wife, Mary Pringle.

In an article in Britain's a few years ago, it was reported that Sir Harold left his homeland in disgust after the Labour Party nationalised his railway and coal mining interests. Interestingly enough, it was Mr. Green's financial backing of the Labour Party in an election year that caused the story to be written.

"Within a few years (Sir Harold) had established homes and ranches wherever he had business interests," the article said. "In addition to Bermuda, these included Jamaica, Brazil, Canada, Portugal, Guatemala, Honduras and also Switzerland. A family estate in Fiji was originally bought as a bolt-hole in the event of nuclear war but is now just one of the many family watering holes available to (Mr. Green)."

Mr. Green was born into a hard-working family in Crumpsall, Manchester. His father turned his business talents to textile manufacturing and also developed a chain of grocery shops. The stores were sold to the Tesco chain in 1965 for ?1 million.

After his death, his two eldest sons - Peter and Martin - became business entrepreneurs, buying the David Greig supermarket chain. That, and subsequent businesses, failed.

"He still had money - but it was thousands rather than millions", one old friend was reported as saying in the . "He was always generous and good fun. He didn't take life very seriously."

It was after a failed venture into the Chinese porcelain business, while on a tout to Peking, that Mr. Green met his future wife. "He was 16 years older than she was, was not good-looking, had no real style and was not well read," reported Geoffrey Levy. "He was a man who, as one old friend friend laments, 'always served the right wine but the wrong vintage'.

"She, on the other hand, had been educated at America's Brown University in Rhode Island, at the Sorbonne in Paris and finally at St. Anne's, Oxford."

According to the , Mr. Green was never accepted by his mother-in-law, who had groomed her daughter to mary Prince Charles.

"Now, as Prince Charles was coming to the age where he would be seriously looking for a wife, (Mary-Jane) had been sent for a final polish on a cultural trip to China by her pushy and royally ambitious mother. . . . Peter was totally a fish out of water and Lady Mitchell hated him. She wanted Prince Charles and, frankly, no one who was not a member of the aristocracy would have done for her."

Guests to the Mitchells' home on Marshall's Island included Princess Margaret and Henry Kissinger. Such visits only fuelled Lady Mitchell's resentment that her son-in-law was Peter Green and not the Prince of Wales, who by this time had married Lady Diana Spencer.

The island, which contains two houses and a guest cottage, was in the news most recently after an electrical fire erupted there. At the time, Mr. Green praised the quick action of firefighters who were ferried to the island by Marine Police shortly after they were alerted of the fire at 6.26 a.m. Once there, water from the homes' swimming pool and tanks were used to douse the flames, which were under control by 7.30 a.m.

Wayne Burgess, who manages the homes in Mr. Green's absence, spoke at the time of the devastation to the property and its art collection.

"The two bedrooms in the main house are totalled - there's nothing left. Tragedy. You don't like to see such a classic home damaged. There's damage to the two bedrooms and the hall and smoke damage throughout the house. The Andy Warhol (paintings) aren't in the house. (They) never have been. Mainly it's antique furntiture, tapestries, and paintings - most of it is a lot of personal effects of the family."

Today, Mr. Green runs the Mitchell empire including the investment company, Berco, located mainly in Dublin.