I have made endless wrong decisions... but they have got me to today
Sarah, Duchess of York, offers her views on Harry and Meghan, the King, and looking after the late Queen’s corgis. By
SARAH, Duchess of York, is reflecting on how wonderful it is to be looking after the late Queen’s corgis, Muick and Sandy, since the death of the monarch in September.
“They really make me laugh and they follow me around,” says Sarah, ex-wife of the Duke of York.
“Sometimes I break a little bickie – a digestive biscuit – in the same way the Queen broke it into little pieces, and give it to them and tell them to remember their boss.”
There’s a kookiness about the bubbly, gregarious duchess, or Fergie as she is known to millions – a charity founder and philanthropist, one-time Weight Watchers spokesperson, prolific children’s author and now Mills & Boon romantic fiction writer – as she veers from one subject to the next, oozing warmth and humour.
But there are conditions to this interview. No questions about her exhusband, the Duke of York, please; only one about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Sarah, 63, clearly doesn’t want to drop any clangers, given the raft of royal scandals she has sparked over the years – from being cast out from the Firm amid a toe-sucking scandal in the 1990s, to reportedly falling deeply into debt in those early years.
But she was invited to spend last Christmas with the royal family at Sandringham, so it seems relations have thawed. Meanwhile, she still lives in the same house as Andrew at Royal Lodge, Windsor, even though they’ve been divorced for more than 25 years.
Today, though, we are here to discuss A Most Intriguing Lady – her second historical romantic novel co-authored with Marguerite Kaye, who has written more than 50 Mills & Boon books.
It’s inspired by the duchess’s great-great aunt, Lady Mary Montagu Douglas Scott, who in the fictional tale is born into the highest society, fighting to define her place in life. There are similarities, Sarah agrees. Like her character, “I’m very steadfast and stoic,” she says. “I won’t let anyone down. I’m very loyal.”
She says people don’t know the real Sarah, but she is strong and happy in herself. “I’ve done the work to get to myself. I’ve done masses of mental therapy. I probably reached to the wrong places and the wrong people and made, as you call it, mistakes. I don’t call them mistakes. I call them enormous learning curves.
“I think the obstacles are the way, as opposed to in the way. I feel very strongly that I completely and utterly own my very naive self and made endless different wrong decisions, whatever they may be, but in the end, it’s got me to today as an author,” she reflects.
Having given her own interview to Oprah Winfrey after her divorce in 1996, when she declared that royal life was ‘not a fairy tale’, what does she make of Harry and Meghan’s decision to move to the US and publicise their lives, both in their TV interview with Winfrey and Harry’s book, Spare?
“I
divorced, went to America, wrote a book, went on Oprah and did 12 years as the longest running spokesperson of Weight Watchers. I looked to America to support me and to help me and I really can’t thank the American people enough for what they gave me.
“So I believe very strongly that I have absolutely no judgment on any other person’s life, and I look at how much she [Meghan] loves him [Harry] and loves the children and gives him a love that he’s never had before. That’s how I look at it.
“The most important thing is that the sun will come up tomorrow and the day will move on,” she continues. “The most important thing is, Diana would be so very proud of Archie and Lili.”
She is happy to share recollections of the late Queen. “I’m so lucky. All my life, I was lucky enough to know ‘The Boss’, HM. Like the nation and the world, she was always there.
“It just made you always strive for being better and trying to be better, learning from her, whenever you were with her just taking
everything she said as a memory.”
She recalls in the final months before her death, she would send the Queen pictures of flowers and shrubs from her garden.
“For me, she was more a mother than my own mother. Aren’t I the luckiest person alive to have had that great honour? When I was with her, I used to say, ‘I can’t believe it.”’
She also has nothing but praise for the King. “It’s incredible what he’s done for the environment. He was a trailblazer and many years ago, everybody said, ‘What’s he talking about?’ But he’s right. I’m a great believer and supporter of him, as I am of the Queen Consort.”
She is extremely close to her daughters, princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, and the fact she has always been there for them contrasts with her own childhood anchors. After her parents divorced in 1974, the duchess’s mother Susan Barrantes left when Sarah was 13 to start a new life in Argentina with polo player Hector Barrantes.
She was killed in a car crash in 1998, the year after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
“My daughters come first in my life, they always have. Because I lost my mum so early, I’m subconsciously very present with them. We laugh together a lot. We are just very close.”
She says she sees a lot of them, as she does the grandchildren, Sienna and August (Princess Eugenie is also pregnant with her second child).
“I’m ‘Super Gran’,” she says, laughing. “When my grandchildren see me, they immediately laugh because they know I’m going to be up to something, up to no good somewhere.”
How has she been able to co-parent so successfully?
“By being grateful,” she suggests, vaguely. “Every time I think about co-parenting and co-grandparenting and about divorce, marriage and all these different things, I still come back to the principle that the sun will come up tomorrow, and be grateful, just get on with it.”
Having penned romantic fiction, she admits she’s a sucker for romance, but dismisses any suggestion that, despite living in the same house, she may get back together with Andrew. “Oh bless your heart,” she retorts, laughing. “No, I think we’re great as we are.”
There have been reports that Andrew could be evicted from Royal Lodge due to cuts in funding, but Sarah remains vague about their future there. “Honestly, I operate from living in the present.”
Her next novel will be centred on Victorian female detectives – she calls it “Sherlock Holmes meets Peaky Blinders” – and there’s a TV series adaptation planned for both her published novels.
Meanwhile, there’s the Coronation coming up, although she says she doesn’t know if she’ll be attending. “Never presume, never assume. I don’t know. But I’ll be there at the end of the drive with a cup of tea if I’m not there.”
Diana would be so very proud of Archie and Lili
The Duchess of York on Meghan and Harry’s
children