The Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, opens her heart about her family, her battle with cancer and her future dreams of TV stardom, including a role in Bridgerton!
Words: Gemma Calvert, Images: Katrina Lawson Johnston, Christopher Horne.
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It’s a sunshine-filled May bank holiday Saturday when Sarah Ferguson breezes into a luxury hotel in Berkshire to honour a promise. After a series of eleventh-hour aborted telephone interviews, including one meant to happen days earlier before her dazzling appearance at the amfAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research) charity gala in Cannes, the Duchess of York proposed a face-to-face meeting over tea. It’s a thoughtful gesture.
Fresh off the back of visits to America and southern France, her best-selling historical romance novel “A Woman Of Intrigue” is just days away from paperback release. Despite the huge demands on her time, as she settles down with Platinum, her attention is fully ours.
‘I was so relieved you could come,’ says the Duchess before offering a sweet explanation for today’s ever-so-slightly tardy arrival. ‘I was just doing a treasure hunt with my grandchildren and then suddenly I had to come and get ready. I have the best time with my girls… seriously, the best time,’ she says, throwing open a window into her life in Royal Lodge, the Windsor mansion she shares with ex-husband Prince Andrew, her five Norfolk terriers, and the two corgis she adopted from the late Queen Elizabeth II.
‘Our priority has always been the happiness of the girls,’ she replies when asked how the ongoing strength of her relationship with Prince Andrew and their solidarity has benefited them as both parents to their daughters, Princesses Beatrice, 35, and Eugenie, 34, and as grandparents.
Sarah insists she could not have wished for more love or care from her family after being diagnosed with skin cancer this year and facing breast cancer last summer. ‘The whole York family has rallied round, and I couldn’t have got through it without them. My girls in particular have been rock solid in their support. We always call ourselves “the tripod” as we are there to prop each other up through thick and thin, and they have certainly demonstrated that in recent months.’
Beyond her boundless love for her daughters and three grandchildren, for three decades the Duchess has been committed to bettering the lives of children all over the world. As such, she’s lovingly referred to as “Super Gran”. ‘I really love giving. It’s not an addiction. It’s a blessing. It’s a real blessing. It feeds me. Kindness is my superpower.’
As the Duchess shares her plans for future TV stardom, she opened up about her health worries following breast and skin cancer treatment, plus her ever-evolving role as a mother.
“How is my health right now? I look at every bit of skin and think, ‘Ah! Is that melanoma? Is that something?’. Then you book an appointment to see the dermatologist, and by the time you get there, it’s gone. My father and my best friend Carolyn [Cotterill] died of melanoma.
“When I got the call on December 31 at 4 pm from the dermatologist saying I was needed at the Royal Marsden on Tuesday morning at 8 am, it was a long weekend – but I’ve been very lucky because it hadn’t gone into the lymph glands.
“I take care of my body very sensibly. Once you’ve had a mastectomy and experienced all these different fears, you don’t want to go through that again or for anyone else to go through it. It’s why I’m so open about saying, ‘Go and get breast checks’. Don’t think, ‘I can’t go to the doctor because I’m sure it’s nothing’. I’ve been a patron for The Teenage Cancer Trust for 32 years, and they used to have a conference in Birmingham called Find Your Sense Of Tumour.
“It’s okay to make light of your situation, so when I talk about Derek and Eric, I really mean that I’m proud of them. Derek is the reconstruction, and Eric was rather down, so they match now.
“When people ask what it’s like to be a grandparent, I say it’s lovely and everything’s perfect. What I really want to say is that I’m so proud of my girls and how they’re such good mothers – and I do say it because they are exceptional. As a mum, you wear lots of hats, and it changes minute by minute. If we were down the pub later, I would be fun friend; another time, I might be fun granny or the agony aunt.
“You just feel the different hats, so when they ring up and are ranting about something, instead of just saying ‘It’ll be alright,’ I listen to them. My advice is to listen to people, learn from them, think ‘That’s an interesting way of looking at it. What do you feel about this?’ and have a discussion.
Sometimes you go to the bottom of the barrel. Certainly, they know that I can go to the depths of self-hatred, so when I say, ‘You really feel that bad about yourself? Let’s go there,’ it’s pretty grim, but as soon as you shine light on the situation, you’re not alone. Then, a problem doesn’t seem so bad.
“I said to my girls today, ‘Does it take having cancer to stop the self-hatred, self-doubts, and the mental anguish?’. I was born in 1959 with this bath-hat of red curls. And in those days, there was no sun cream, hence melanoma now. I used to sit in the pram, and Mum was dark, looking very Spanish. I remember everyone saying, ‘Where’s she come from? Look at her with her red hair and blue eyes,’ and Mum saying, ‘The postman’. Well, imagine what I must have thought, that ‘Oh, I don’t belong’.
“The last thing the late Queen said to me was ‘be yourself’. That was the best gift, apart from the corgis, that she gave me. She also said: ‘I cared for you, Sarah, and I love you and that you’re good enough. Just be it.’
When you’re permanently compared to Diana or always in the newspapers seen to be doing something wrong, called “Bad Fergie”, “Furious Fergie”, “Fat and frumpy Fergie”, “Frolicking Fergie”, you eventually believe it. I’m much better now, but you still have to work through things. Life is about working through things.
At 64, I finally feel free to be myself. Rather than trying to please all of the people all of the time, I can accept that isn’t possible and get on with living my life. The mind is a very volatile place. Every single person has a lot of mental anguish. We just have to work through it and be brave and strong and resilient.
I’ve done 32 years of mental therapy. Anything to learn how to be a better person every minute of the day. Learn to be enlightened. Don’t wait until death. Don’t wait until just before you die to see the light. See it now. Make the journey. It’s so easy to complain. The most important thing to realize is how lucky we are and to return to joy.
I train three times a week with my buddy Josh Salzmann. He’s from America and has trained me since I was 29 years old. He comes to my home because he lives nearby, and we talk as well as exercise. I don’t go to the gym; I don’t have to put on lycra. We just walk up and down the stairs for an hour, then do press-ups and weights.
We should listen to Gen Z when they talk about what we’ve done to the planet. You want your children to see elephants in the wild, to see basking sharks off the coast of Ireland. The key to the future is to stop this extraordinary tide of plastic waste going into the oceans.
I talk publicly about the fact that we need to stop the doom and gloom. I once asked Sylvia Earle [American marine biologist, oceanographer, explorer] ‘Do you not get angry?’ and she said, ‘I haven’t got time’. Then when I interviewed Jean-Michel Cousteau [oceanographic explorer] he said, ‘Don’t be upset. Mother Nature will win in the end’.
Resilience powers you through feelings of fear. I can’t stand troll warriors. I’ve had ups, downs, ins, outs, I’ve made mistakes and been completely and utterly open. I’ve fallen into so many Pooh traps because I think, ‘Oh hi, you’re nice’, like a big puppy. Even at 64, I believe that. I’ve written 87 books, and 48 are children’s books because I still think that life is magical and that everyone has a good heart.
That’s what Creighton Brown [international managing director for McLaren International] taught me. In the early 80s, I was dating Paddy McNally and at the Formula 1 Paddock Club, I was sat in the hospitality unit watching Creighton and eventually I went up to him and said, ‘You’re so charming to everybody. How do you do it?’. He replied, ‘I always believe that everyone has a heart’. I’ve never forgotten that.
The initial ideas for the characters and key events in my latest novel were based on my historical research into my own ancestry. I worked with author Marguerite Kaye to develop the characters and storylines and to get them onto the page. Marguerite has written dozens of novels, so clearly has tremendous writing skills, but I’m no slouch either – I have written more than 80 books, including historical tomes and lots for children. Our text goes back and forth between us, and we’ve met in person on multiple occasions.
We chatted on the phone pretty much daily. We spent so much time discussing the characters and plot. Lady Mary, the heroine, is like me – acutely observant and fascinated by people. She only lets people see what she wants them to see. She presents herself in such a way that everyone thinks they know her, but they don’t!
I am now writing cosy crime – it’s Bridget Jones meets Women’s Institute after World War II. Jeffrey Archer takes himself off for six weeks and sharpens the pencils. But I don’t write in a little bolt hole. It sounds romantic, but then who’s going to do the washing up and cook the food?
Right now, I’m writing all the time. I also love porcelain, so I want to design my own China line and sell it on the home shopping network in America. I’m going to call it Love Sarah. At the moment, I’m obsessed with meadows, so I’m putting that on my new range. It’s got to be magic but affordable.
I’ve asked my agent to get me on Bridgerton! The set designs are incredible! I could be a long-lost friend for Penelope. I just have to be on Bridgerton!
I’ve already had five lines in “An American In Austen”, which is a TV show about this American girl that dives into Austenland where she meets Mrs. Bennett and the daughters who arrive at the ball to meet the Duchess, who’s me. I’m in my big dress.‘Oh, good evening, Mrs. Bennett…’ I’ve been asked to go on “I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!” hundreds of times, and the answer is always no. I’m sure it’s lovely for lots of people, but not for me!
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A Woman Of Intrigue by Sarah Ferguson, Duchess Of York (£9.99, HQ) is out now in paperback.
