AN "emasculated" dad was spared jail for trying to set his ex-wife on fire by dousing her in lighter fluid and chasing her with an open flame after their divorce, a judge was told.

Christopher Mayhew from Wellington Road, Sandhurst and his wife Sarah had tried to keep their relationship amicable when their 24-year marriage came to an end, a court heard.

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A judge, who spared him jail, said: "You have had difficulty in accepting that the marriage was over.

"In my view, you felt to a degree emasculated by the circumstances but that plainly represents no excuse whatsoever for this deeply unacceptable behaviour."

When an argument erupted on September 25, prosecutors said, Mayhew had walked out of his home and returned with a bottle of lighter fluid, shouting: "I'm going to burn down the house."

The former naval officer had then sprayed the flammable liquid over his wife's tee-shirt.

Opening the case against Mayhew, the prosecutor said: "She ran towards and out of the back of the house, calling 999.

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"He followed her at this time with a lit lighter which he held in an outstretched arm, pointing it at her."

Sarah Mayhew managed to run away from her husband, who was arrested by police and charged with administering a noxious substance with intent to annoy and aggrieve and making threats to destroy or damage property - charges which Mayhew admitted.

In a victim impact statement read out at Reading Crown Court, Sarah Mayhew said: "I genuinely believed he was going to set fire to me. I was absolutely petrified. I really thought he was going to light me up.

"I am relieved my husband is no longer in the house, he was a brooding presence which could erupt into anger at any point. I feel like I do not know the person he has become. I believed he would never hurt me physically, but now I am not so sure."

The court heard Mayhew had started drinking a bottle of gin every day after his divorce and had done so before he committed his crimes at the family home.

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Judge Edward Burgess, sentencing Mayhew, told him: "These are both very serious offences, as I think you appreciate, offences that were fraught with the risk of causing very serious injury if not death to your wife, from whom you are now estranged.

"You appreciate the relationship is well and truly over. I accept that you acted in a way that was out of character - of course there was a background, in particular in recent times, of verbal abuse by you."

The judge spared him immediate jail, giving him instead a jail term of 18 months suspended for 18 months, which included a requirement for him to attend 32 sessions of a Building Better Relationships programme.

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Mayhew also had to complete 25 days of Rehabilitation Activity Requirement and 200 hours of unpaid work.

He was made the subject of a restraining order for five years, preventing him from contacting his ex-wife, attending the family home or at an address on Thames Valley Park Drive in Reading.

Judge Burgess told him: "If you breach any aspect of this suspended sentence order during its duration, if I am here you will come back in front of me and I will activate sentence for 18 months custody."