The widowed husband of murdered MP Jo Cox is to become a dad again eight years after she died.
Brendan Cox and his new wife Anna Ryder are expecting their first baby together around Christmas.
The couple married in Lambeth Palace last June, with the blessing of Jo and Brendan’s children Cuillin, 13, and Lejla, 11.
It is understood that the ‘whole family is delighted’ by news Brendan and Anna are expecting.
Ms Ryder, 38, is a campaigner on violence against women and girls.
Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who officiated at their marriage, said Mr Cox’s union brought him particular joy.
Mr Cox, 45, ‘never thought’ he would find love again, but said: ‘I am incredibly lucky that I have.’
It is believed he only recently started telling friends that he is to become a father again.
Mr Cox’s close friend is Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips, and Ms Ryder works in her constituency office.
He was introduced to his new wife, director of the Killed Women’s network which works to support the bereaved families of women and girls, four years ago.
Labour MP Jo Cox was shot and stabbed by right wing extremist Thomas Mair as she attended her Batley and Spen constituency surgery in Birstall, West Yorkshire, during the referendum on EU membership in June 2016.
That year Mair, a white supremacist, was jailed for life for her murder.
Since her death, Mr Cox founded the Together Coalition and has worked to support survivors of terror attacks.
The Jo Cox Foundation, set up in her memory, works to spread the MP’s message of unity from her maiden speech in Parliament where she said: ‘We have more in common than that which divides us’.
Mr Cox said he and Jo had talked about what they would do if either one of them ever died and claimed she would have ‘always wanted’ him to remarry if she passed away.
He said on Lorraine; ‘I always knew that she would want that. But I never thought it would happen because when you lose someone like Jo, you never think you’ll find somebody with the energy and the love and the enthusiasm and the excitement that Jo had. I’m incredibly lucky that I have.’
When he told his children he was going to propose to Ms Ryder, they said: ‘You’re never going to do any better than Anna’.
Mr and Mrs Cox married in 2009, and their children were aged just five and three at the time of her death.
Last night Mr Cox declined to comment.