Royal pal: My husband seduced my mother

AROYAL confidante and hostess of some of London’s most elegant soirees, Basia Briggs is about to cause a major shock among her well-heeled friends.

For Prince and Princess Michael of Kent’s chum has written her memoirs — and they include a startling revelation about her private life.

Basia, 57, is to disclose that her first marriage collapsed after she discovered that her husband, Graham Nichol, was having a passionate affair with her Polish- born mother, Camilla.

‘It really is shocking,’ one of her friends tells me. ‘She was in her 20s and her husband in his 30s. Graham seduced her mother, who was a very glamorous figure in her 40s.

‘The affair went on for some time. It was her mother who eventually confessed to it. Basia and Graham divorced soon afterwards.’

Basia (pictured below), who has two grownup children from her first marriage, refused to comment on the revelation yesterday, saying: ‘You will have to wait for my book.’ Her publisher, Quartet Books, says Mother Anguish: A Memoir will be a ‘ gripping, noholds-barred’ account of the socialite’s life.

‘In this candid memoir, Basia lays bare the many vicissitudes of her youth, and examines her tumultuous relationship with her mother; a dazzling, riotous and truly eccentric character with an explosive dark side.’

Soon after divorcing Graham at the end of the Eighties, Basia married property developer Richard Briggs.

The pair now run Hyde Park Stables, from where royals and famous figures such as Madonna have enjoyed riding.

During her marriage to Dick, Basia enjoyed an intense, 13- year friendship with charismatic rowing coach Daniel Topolski. Her closeness to the dashing oarsman, who guided Oxford t o an unprecedented ten consecutive victories in the Boat Race and later worked as a BBC commentator, continued until his death in 2015 at the age of 69, which left Basia heartbroken. She and his 62-year- old widow, former Howards’ Way actress Susan Gilmore, did not speak to each other at the service at St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square to celebrate Topolski’s life.