LONDON (AP) - Is the love affair over between Britain and the superstar that people here like to call Madge?
Recent press reports claimed adopted Londoner Madonna has decamped to Los Angeles, defeated by the dreary English weather.
But Madonna's spokeswoman said the absence is only temporary.
"She'll be back in London in the spring," Liz Rosenberg said Wednesday. "Madonna has homes in the States, she has homes in England, and she moves between the two."
A spokesman for Madonna's British husband, Guy Ritchie, said the couple split their time evenly between Britain and the United States.
British newspapers reported this month that Madonna had withdrawn her 6-year-old daughter, Lourdes, from a London school, and quoted the singer as telling friends she was fed up with "everything that is English."
One magazine quoted Madonna's father-in-law, John Ritchie, as saying: "Madonna is very happy to be out of London because the harsh winter weather was getting her down."
The reports of Madonna's departure cheered some sections of the British press.
"Madonna the Brit," wrote David Thomas in Wednesday's Daily Mail, was "a classic case of the rich, crass, clueless American playing at English tradition."
How things have changed since the singer married Ritchie - the 34-year-old filmmaker behind the gangster flicks Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - in December 2000 at a Scottish castle.
Soon, Madonna sightings were as common as double-decker buses in London. The 44-year-old began speaking in a mild "Mockney" accent and was photographed wearing tweeds, flat caps and - a more down-market British fashion favourite - track suits.
Madonna and Ritchie bought a London house and a mansion in the English countryside, where the vegetarian star briefly took up pheasant shooting. Scottish tourist authorities even gave her her own tartan as an anniversary gift.
But critics trashed Madonna's West End acting debut in the satire Up for Grabs last May. And distributors decided not to release last year's Swept Away in Britain after the film - directed by Ritchie and starring Madonna as a spoiled socialite marooned on a deserted island - failed spectacularly in the United States.