Lord Taylor: the strange tale of the convicted peer and his 24-day marriage to a wealthy businesswoman

Lord Taylor of Warwick, the first black Conservative politician to take a seat in the House of Lords, faces jail after being convicted of expenses fraud.

The Telegraph can reveal the full extent of his spectacular demise. For as the net was closing in on him, Taylor went ahead with a marriage – including a lavish ceremony and reception at the House of Lords – that was to last just 24 days.

In a remarkably candid interview, Taylor's ex-wife Yvonne Louise, a wealthy evangelical Christian from Florida, tells of their wedding, their bizarre honeymoon and subsequent divorce.

Taylor, also an evangelical Christian, employed as his official wedding photographer the nephew whose damning evidence helped to secure his conviction. The photos of the ceremony, which took place in December 2009 but which are made public for the first time today, show Taylor smiling for the cameras. But his grin masks the scandal about to engulf him.

After their honeymoon in The Sleeping Beauty suite in Disneyland Paris, Taylor, 58, followed his new bride to the US. But within the month, she had thrown him out of her home, forcing him to return to the UK. Miss Louise obtained an annulment for the marriage – which she says was never consummated – shortly after.

Contacted by the Telegraph at her home in Orlando, Miss Louise, an estate agent in her 50s, said:

"I sent him packing about a year ago. He is an incredible actor; the best liar. I have to give him credit for that. He was making it all up. I call him the Warlock of Warwick.

"He said he was a really good guy and that he wasn't interested in money but everything he does is for money. He uses people for money."

Miss Louise, who is deeply religious, claims she was so traumatised by Taylor she underwent a deliverance ceremony to rid her self of his "demonic presence".

She met her now ex-husband through an evangelical network in the US. Flattered by his position as a member of the House of Lords, Miss Louise found herself falling for the former barrister. Taylor had been ennobled by John Major in 1996, having failed four years earlier to become MP in Cheltenham in an election contest marred by accusations of racism.

Miss Louise said: "When I first met him he said he wanted to go around the world and minister which is what I want to do. He was this senior politician in London and I was so impressed. I absolutely did fall in love with him."

But even during the early courtship – back in the summer of 2009 when allegations were first surfacing against Taylor – Miss Louise admitted she found him "extremely rude" and "so mean". In the autumn, he had informed her the police investigation into his expenses had been dropped. It lifted a cloud hovering over their relationship.

The couple married at Ealing Town Hall in west London on December 4, witnessed by a handful of friends.

That was followed with a blessing of the marriage the next day in the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft in the Palace of Westminster the next day for about 50 guests, including Taylor's three children from his first marriage.

The congregation sang "Amazing Grace" and "Jerusalem" and in between told the gathering: "We offer you our souls and bodies, our thoughts and words and deeds, our love for one another."

Afterwards, the guests enjoyed drinks in the Peers Dining Room followed by lunch in the Cholmondeley Room. The official photographer was Taylor's nephew Robert Taylor, an acclaimed photographer some of whose work is kept in the National Portrait Gallery collection, It was his partner's house in Oxford which the peer had claimed as his main residence.

In fact, Taylor had never lived there and his nephew told the court of his anger and dismay that his uncle had used him – without his knowledge – to swindle the taxpayer.

The wedding night did not go according to Lady Taylor's plan. A stretch limousine took the couple to the £70 a night Fox & Goose Hotel close to the Hanger Lane gyratory in West London.

Taylor escorted his new wife up to their room, gave her a peck on the cheek and walked out, returning to his home around the corner in Ealing, claimed Miss Louise.

The honeymoon went no more smoothly, according to Miss Louise. On the first night, the bride says she slept on the sofa wearing her coat, trousers, boots and gloves because her new husband refused to put the heating on; the second night she moved to the bath tub and on the third back to the sofa in The Sleeping Beauty Suite. Their relationship never really recovered.

"That marriage cost me $50,000," she claimed, "He took money off me to buy designer clothes. Then he would just leave them in the dinning room in boxes on the floor. He only liked the best but if he went out he would wear this really raggedy coat with loose threads. I asked him why he wasn't wearing the new coat I had bought him and he said 'I don't want people to think I am rich'."

Taylor followed his wife to America – she claims he was interested in securing speaking engagements with evangelical churches – but by then the marriage was over.

On Dec 28, Taylor flew back to the UK. Miss Louise, who drives around Florida in her 'Jesus Mobile' – a sports car emblazoned with religious slogans – attended a deliverance ceremony where she was advised to get an annulment immediately. "They just prayed for me; that my heart would be healed and I would be protected from all this," she said.

Taylor was unavailable for comment last week. He will be sentenced at a date to be fixed following his trial at Southwark Crown Court and is likely to go to jail. His lawyer on the court steps pointed out the peer had devoted 20 years of his life to public service.

Taylor had denied the charges against him but was found guilty on six counts of theft of more than £11,200 by false accounting during a period from March 2006 to October 2007. During the expenses scandal, it came to light that between 2001 and 2007, he claimed £70,000 in expenses by saying his main residence was outside London.

Before 2001, he claimed to live – as his first marriage was disintegrating – for some of the time with his mother in Birmingham, where he was born in 1952. The flat his mother lived in was a property owned by a family trust linked to Taylor's first wife. The flat was sold in 2001, shortly after Mrs Taylor died. Taylor is understood to have then switched addresses to Oxford, where his nephew lived.

Taylor's father Derief was a professional cricketer who played briefly for Warwickshire, having arrived in England in about 1948. His mother Enid was a nurse. The marriage failed, and Taylor was brought up single-handedly by his mother.

He was head boy at his local grammar school and followed that with university and a career at the Bar. Married in 1981 to Kathy, a community health doctor, the couple were both committed Christians and went on to have three children.

They divorced in 2005 but not before Taylor had risen to prominence as a Tory activist, becoming a councillor in Solihull but failing to be elected as an MP in the 1992 election. His reward however was to be made a peer in 1996, although in the Lords he cut an increasingly isolated figure.

At some stage in the 1990s, he was contacted by Robert Taylor, whose father Ronald was Taylor's half brother. The photographer wanted to know more about his cricketing grandfather and had hoped his uncle would fill him in.

Theirs was not a particularly close relationship but in 2009, when Taylor was facing difficult questions about his expenses claims, the peer was eager to rekindle their relationship. By now, Robert Taylor was living with his partner Tristram Wyatt, an Oxford academic, at Wyatt's two-bedroom home in the university town. Both men were invited to the wedding.

"We were surprised he was so keen to be so friendly," said Mr Taylor last week, "It seemed lovely he wanted to get closer but I realised it was part of his plan to have this spurious connection.

"He left frantic messages asking me to call his lawyer but I didn't want anything to do with him.

"There are all sorts of things to speculate about his character but I don't know much about him. It always seemed odd that this born-again Christian wanted to connect with his gay nephew. But now we know why."