Sarah Ferguson’s reappearance in the UK after seven months spent largely out of sight, staying in private homes across Europe and the Gulf, is unlikely to be a matter of coincidence.
According to highly reliable sources, the former Duchess of York was aware that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were preparing a return of their own to Britain, even though the plans were guarded so closely that the eventual public revelation caught almost everyone off guard.
Put simply, Ferguson appears to have known more than most — and to have shaped her next move with that knowledge in mind.
The question, of course, is how she learned of it. One notable clue is the birth, four weeks ago, of Princess Eugenie’s third child, Adelaide Elizabeth Annina Brooksbank. It is widely believed Ferguson visited Eugenie and her husband, Jack Brooksbank, at their home in Portugal after the baby’s arrival, despite remaining largely hidden from public view since she and her former husband, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, were forced out of Royal Lodge in Windsor in February.
Well-placed insiders suggest that, at one point, Ferguson had even been hoping for unrestricted access to the couple’s secluded Portuguese property, allowing her to come and go as she wished. For the Brooksbanks, however, that was a step too far. They are understood to have been determined to protect their retreat from the kind of paparazzi attention that would inevitably follow.
Still, Ferguson has been received there as a guest by her daughter — and the Sussexes have also been welcomed. It is possible that Prince Harry and Meghan shared their intentions with Eugenie, including their reported plan to educate Archie and Lilibet at private schools in the Cotswolds.
A more plausible explanation, in my view, is that Meghan told Ferguson directly. There are clear reasons she might have done so. For years, both women have found themselves in bitter conflict with the Palace establishment. Few people can truly understand the pressures of that position, and each may see value in comparing experiences.
Beyond that, Meghan has long viewed Ferguson as a kind of blueprint for life on the royal margins: neither fully inside nor entirely outside the Royal Family, while using royal title, history and public fascination to build a lucrative profile, particularly in the United States.
The disgraced former Duchess of York was well aware that Prince Harry and Meghan were plotting a move back to Britain – and laid her own plans accordingly, writes Andrew Lownie
It is likely, says Lownie, that Meghan herself told Fergie of the family’s planned move. She has long seen Ferguson as an example of how to exist as a half-in, half-out royal
All the time she was a duchess, Ferguson was able to get away with blatantly flouting the rules – flogging her smoothie-blenders on QVC, appearing in adverts for Ocean Spray cranberry juice, and promoting Weight Watchers, while still living in a Crown property and brazenly showing up in the Royal Box at Wimbledon or Ascot. Even if Meghan didn’t confide all her plans, she will have dropped enough hints to convince the older woman that this was a good moment to emerge from cover.
It’s a general rule that, however insatiable the public’s appetite for royal gossip, there’s almost never room for more than one story at a time in the headlines.
That’s why the Palace diary fixers work so assiduously to ensure royal engagements and announcements do not clash – and why there’s so much resentment among courtiers when Harry and Meghan crash the limelight by staging an unofficial royal tour in Africa or Australia. Ferguson knows how to make this work in her favour.
All the public attention this week, and probably for most of September, will be on the Sussexes: where are they house-hunting; which schools have they favoured and, most intriguingly, how long is Meghan going to remain in the UK with her family before dashing back to California?
That leaves limited media time for questions about where Ferguson is going to live and how she will pay the rent.
Many have assumed she is spending the money left to her by her former boyfriend and sugar daddy, the F1 tycoon Paddy McNally, who died in July aged 88 – or, at least, borrowing money in anticipation of a bequest, once probate is granted.
But I’m told this is not the case. Whatever income she has is coming from the Gulf states, from an unknown benefactor, in all likelihood a high-ranking member of a Middle Eastern royal family. McNally did help her out when she first became homeless, allowing her to stay at his home in Verbier, Switzerland, once known as ‘the Cocaine Castle’.
Her welcome soon wore thin. Ferguson is not a woman to accept one gift without asking for more, as the world saw for itself when her money-grubbing email exchanges with billionaire financier and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein were published.
McNally grew heartily sick of her, and apparently left her nothing at all in his multi-million pound will. This must have been a bitter blow and helps explain why she didn’t bother to attend his funeral in Wiltshire earlier this month, sending her daughter Beatrice instead.
Yet reliable rumours suggest she has her sights set on a six-bedroom house in a gated community in the Home Counties, for a rent of £10,000 a month. And she appears ready to move in immediately, since the place undoubtedly comes fully furnished.
She also has crates of personal possessions in a London storage unit, though reports that more furniture has been stored by Andrew at his Sandringham lodgings, the cramped and shabby Marsh Farm, are less likely to be true.
Ferguson’s relationship with her ex-husband is, in fact, at a low ebb of mutual recrimination and distrust. He knows she has been peddling herself around TV production companies and publishers in the US, and she has already turned down a $1 million offer for an exclusive interview, in the hope of an even bigger payday. She has little left to lose – her reputation is in shreds.
A tell-all memoir about her friendship with Epstein could command a colossal advance, if she is prepared to betray her ex-husband comprehensively.
She must always have known what went on during his visits to Epstein’s homes and private island: the array of sex toys on display in every room and the photographs of naked, very young women on the walls were impossible to ignore, according to multiple witnesses.
Of course she is mindful of the need not to incriminate herself further. She potentially faces new allegations about her relationship with Epstein with the likely unsealing of court documents in the libel case between Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell and release of further material under the Epstein Files Transparency Act in the coming weeks.
So far she has not come forward to assist Thames Valley Police and other forces with their investigations into the former Prince Andrew and his alleged misconduct – allegations which he has steadfastly refuted.
Silence will not be an option now she is returning to England. One obvious solution would be to seek a legal guarantee of indemnity, a promise that she will not be prosecuted. In return, she could tell the police everything she knows.
This could be attractive to detectives who are beginning to fear that, however much they suspect Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor may have indulged in both sexual and financial wrongdoing, amassing the evidence to prove it in court might be impossible.
Sarah Ferguson could well be the witness they need to change that. This unexpected return to England is her own version of Finding Freedom… and her freedom could yet spell the end of her ex-husband’s.
- Entitled: The Rise And Fall Of The House Of York, the biography of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson, by Andrew Lownie, is published by William Collins.
