In his later post-BBC years, as his influence waned and after an acrimonious divorce, his second wife gleefully reported that MacBeth himself was the source of the occasional rumour that he was on the shortlist to become England's next poet laureate.
In his later post-BBC years his influence waned and, after an acrimonious divorce, he married the novelist Lisa St Aubin de Terán, by whom he had a child, Alexander Morton George MacBeth. Lisa St Aubin gleefully reported that MacBeth himself was the source of the occasional rumour that he was on the shortlist to become England's next poet laureate.