Advertisement
Home Royals

Sarah Ferguson on living life to the fullest

"I live my bucket list every day."

In the spring of 2024, The Weekly sat down with Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson to chat through the Duchess’ family life, her cancer diagnosis and recovery and her new ventures into publishing.

Advertisement

Over the past two years, Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson, the Duchess of York has defeated breast cancer and melanoma. As she tours Australia, she shares how staring down death has given her a new lease on life.

The Duchess is late. It’s a steamy spring day, so hot and humid the air feels wet. And Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, is in the middle of a tightly scheduled press tour. She has a tendency, a member of her entourage explains, to stop and chat with everyone. Indeed, before The Weekly’s time with her is done, Sarah has signed books for the children in our lives and spoken about grandchildren, publishing, family traditions, guilty pleasures, and the threat that has loomed over the entire Royal family in recent times: cancer.

“I live my bucket list every day,” the Duchess says. “I just go for it. If I stop to think I’m 65, then I’m 65. Don’t think about it. Keep going. My energy is really about keeping going.”

A very proud GiGi-Mum today. Such an incredible blessing and an embrace to my heart. Wolfie, August, Ernie and Sienna will be over the moon to have the fifth member of the five as
Advertisement

Sarah Ferguson has a knack for reinvention. Since marrying into the Royal family in 1986, she has had plenty of run-ins with the press. Some of the negative coverage has been of her own making. Some of it has been the tabloid papers’ penchant for scoring points off royal women’s fashion sense, weight, and relationships. These days, she says, she is done with agonising over such noise.

She survived breast cancer and was recovering from a mastectomy she had when confronted with the news that she had a malignant melanoma. It was removed “just in time”. But there’s a hollow chill in her voice when she mutters that the diagnosis was “terrifying”. The effect of the ordeal has been a clarity of purpose, and an emancipation from self-doubt.

“I think it cut away the rubbish of my mind,” the Duchess says. “Thinking I was too fat or never good enough. It clarifies things…It just sort of takes away the self-sabotage and self-doubt. And you think to yourself, why did you waste so much time worrying about things that aren’t true? That’s what’s changed.”

Now she channels her energy into advocacy and storytelling. She spent the previous day at the Children’s Medical Research Centre in Sydney speaking with researchers and families tackling childhood cancer. She loves to learn about scientific advancements so she can share them with her large audience.

Advertisement

“People say, why are you talking about your health? Why don’t you just shut up and be quiet? The thing is that if I can help somebody go and get screened, and go through the fear factor, and then realise they’re okay, or if they’re not okay, at least [they] may have caught it early enough …” she breaks off. “The health solutions now are so immense.”

There was a nurse counsellor, Amelia, she says, who guided her through the worst of her diagnosis and treatment. “You can’t possibly be with someone who doesn’t quite understand that fear of the demise of your life, and she did, and she understood how to help me through it.”

“She is my friend,” she says gently.

Advertisement

It was a steadying companionship she wanted to extend to as many others as possible, and she is grateful to have a platform to do so. Her interests in advocacy and stories serve each other. Furthermore, she says that if she hadn’t married a prince, she would have pursued a career in storytelling “without any question of a doubt in my blood.”

“Creative writing or creative PR or advertising … anything to do with creativity would have been my pathway,” she says.

Not that her royal status stopped her from writing. She is in Australia to promote a suite of books with independent WA publishing house, Serenity Press, and her new children’s book Flora & Fern: Wonder in the Woods, out through Frontier Publishing.

Sharing stories is far from a new pursuit for the Duchess, who has published more than 80 books, going back to 1989. More recently, she has released two historical romance novels with co-writer Marguerite Kaye through Mills and Boon. The imprint has a reputation for steamy books. Did she need to clear the project with the palace? Is there a royal censor? There is not.

Advertisement

“I think I keep to my value system and the integrity of what I believe,” the Duchess says. “Every single person reading Her Heart for a Compass thought it was going to be Fifty Shades of Grey.” They were disappointed. The first novel was quite chaste, however, Sarah embarked upon the second book, A Most Intriguing Lady, with “a bit more confidence and sassiness”.

When it comes to her picture books, she says her grandchildren are her greatest critics. “They certainly speak their mind about what they like,” she laughs. Reading with Princess Beatrice’s daughter Sienna, three, and Princess Eugenie’s boys August, three, and Ernest, one, is one of her great joys.

While the Duchess is chatty, she does not answer questions she does not want to. An inquiry into raising daughters in the palace, under the constant, waiting glare of the tabloid press is met with a short monologue regarding a character in one of the children’s books named Jeffrey.

Advertisement

“He really just eats worms and he’s always grumpy,” the Duchess says. “Anyway, yes. Next question.”

When her tour of Australia is over, she will return to her home at The Lodge on The Windsor Estate, where she lives with her ex-husband, Prince Andrew, and begin preparations for Christmas.

“We always do an extraordinary tree,” she says. She is particularly looking forward to this year’s festivities. August and Sienna are old enough to fully understand what the day is all about, and Princess Beatrice is pregnant again.

“Reindeer do tend to eat rather a lot of carrots and spit them out all over the floor,” she opines. “That’s a big tradition of ours to have to sweep up the carrots and Father Christmas tends to drink a rather large glass of brandy. And we sort of really immerse ourselves into the imagination of it.”

Advertisement

This article originally appeared in the Christmas 2024 issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Pick up the most recent issue at your local newsagents or subscribe so you never miss a new issue.

Related stories


Advertisement
Advertisement