Princess Margaret Lets Rip on Fergie - 'You Have Done More to Bring Shame on the Family Than Could Have Been Imagined'

An extract from Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters (2021) by Andrew Morton, published by Michael O’Mara Books in the UK and Grand Central Publishing in the USA. Also available as an e-book and audiobook.

The Queen’s miserable year was rounded off by the separation of the Prince and Princess of Wales in December. In between came the publication, in June, of Diana: Her True Story, which revealed Diana’s difficulties inside the Royal Family, as well as her husband’s long-standing affair with another man’s wife. A few weeks later came the embarrassment of the so-called ‘Squidgygate’ tapes, in which Diana was secretly recorded on the telephone talking to an amorous admirer, James Gilbey, who called her ‘Squidgy’, while criticising the Royal Family.

While this made for some blushing royal encounters, nothing matched the hide-behind-the-sofa embarrassment of the publication of photographs showing the Duchess of York having her toes sucked by her ‘financial adviser’, John Bryan, beside the pool of a villa in the south of France while her two daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, looked on.

Unfortunately for Fergie, the photographs appeared in a weekend tabloid just as she arrived at Balmoral Castle to discuss future arrangements following her separation from Prince Andrew. She came down to breakfast to find everyone silently reading the pictorial exposé splashed across the newspaper front pages.

Years later, Fergie described the awkwardness of the breakfast scene. ‘It would be accurate to report that the porridge was getting cold. Eyes wide and mouths ajar, the adults were flipping through the Daily Mirror.’

Margaret pointed out that Fergie had no real way out. ‘What do you all do?’ she observed. ‘We all had to come down to breakfast anyway.’

After reading the newspapers privately in her sitting room, the Queen summoned Fergie. As her friend, the writer Ingrid Seward, recalled, ‘The Queen was furious, absolutely furious. I think partly because she loved Fergie so much. She just couldn’t believe Fergie could have been so stupid to allow this to happen.’

Philip was even blunter: ‘You should get to a nunnery or a madhouse.’

That was only the opening salvo. Margaret, no stranger herself to compromising photographs, sent Fergie a withering letter: ‘You have done more to bring shame on the family than could have been imagined. Not once have you hung your head in embarrassment even for a minute after those disgraceful photographs. Clearly, you have never considered the damage you are causing us all.’

There were obvious double standards here, as Fergie immediately recognised. She had no idea the photographs were being taken by a French paparazzo hiding in nearby bushes for days. By contrast, Margaret herself had been the photographer when three naked men pranced before her on Mustique. There had been other embarrassments too, notably the publication of the love letters she sent to her piano-playing lover, Robin Douglas-Home. The hypocrisy was not lost on the errant duchess. Looking around the assembled company, she thought to herself, ‘There but for the grace of God go the lot of you.’

Nonetheless, Margaret’s letter reduced Fergie to tears. She sent Margaret a huge bouquet in the hope of winning her forgiveness, but it was returned.

Margaret had never warmed to the boisterous, bouncy redhead, considering her coarse and greedy. As she grew older, Margaret became grander, looking down her nose at the daughter of Prince Charles’s polo manager. She was noticeably absent from the christenings of Fergie’s daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, and would doubtless have agreed with the withering verdict of the Queen’s former Private Secretary, Lord Charteris: ‘Sarah Ferguson was not cut out to be a royal princess in this or any other age.’

He went further still, describing her as ‘a vulgarian, vulgar, vulgar, vulgar’—a judgement Margaret would almost certainly have shared.

Elizabeth & Margaret: The Intimate World of the Windsor Sisters (2021) by Andrew Morton, published by Michael O’Mara Books in the UK and Grand Central Publishing in the USA. Also available as an e-book and audiobook.