“I’m now 77 books into a writing career that has spanned several decades, so for people to say I am only published because of my title or I couldn’t be smart enough to write a book is a little uncharitable.”
Sarah, the duchess of York, is responding to one of the eight questions I have been asked to submit via email. My question to her which prompted the above answer was: “ Do you think the fact you are the duchess of York helped you to secure a book contract?”
I confess, it was news to me that Sarah Ferguson had written 77 books. I'd only heard of one other: a children's book about a helicopter called Budgie. This latest one, Her Heart for a Compass, is both her 77th title and her first novel for adults. The book is a proper doorstopper of 550 pages, and published by Mills & Boon, with the help of co-writer Marguerite Kaye.
The raciest action is a couple of risible kisses. In my day you passed the Mills & Boon romances around the dormitory. We would have been raging at the ratio of pages to risque content – zero – in Her Heart for a Compass
Her Heart for a Compass is published this week. Reader, I read it all. It's the story of red-haired Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott, set in Britain, Ireland and the US in the 1860s, and her insipid adventures in search of love and the meaning of her entitled life.
As a generic historical Mills & Boon book, it is insufferably long and unforgivably dull, with the raciest action being a couple of risible kisses. It’s decades since I’ve read a Mills & Boon, and I was expecting more. In my day, you passed the – forbidden by the nuns – Mills & Boon romance novels around the boarding school dormitory, relevant interesting pages folded down. We would have been raging at the ratio of pages to risque content – zero – in Her Heart for a Compass.
Every one of the 550 pages is studded with cliches: “rod of iron”, “hauled over the coals”, “smiling through gritted teeth”. It wears the work of two additional researchers very heavily indeed.
On another level, Lady Margaret's musings on the royal court of the day, and the press, take on a very different shade when read as an insight into the current royal family. Should anyone need reminding, Sarah Ferguson married into the British royal family in 1986. (I was not permitted to submit questions about her former husband, Prince Andrew, whom the FBI wish to interview in relation to his association with the now deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.)
There's this, uttered on a train to Scotland. "You know how it is with Her Majesty when she is in Scotland. She will say that she wishes the call to be quite informal with no ceremony, and has no notion of the amount of preparation it takes to receive her, informal or not." Ouch. Even I know that the queen loves Balmoral, and spends months there each year. Is her former daughter-in-law having a dig here at how out of touch the monarch is with the real world?
And this gleeful observation: “A princess trumps a mere duke’s daughter.” The book is dedicated to her two daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.
There’s also a lot about the pesky newspapers of the 1860s, which simply would not leave Lady Margaret alone.
“The newspapers love nothing better than to knock someone from her pedestal, especially when they put her there in the first place.”
“I wish the press would leave me alone.”
At one point, Lady Margaret says to a journalist: “Is there such a thing as a harmless gossip column?”
The journalist replies: “Oh, dear, that is the reaction of one who has been badly burned.”
The dogged British tabloids have uncovered in the past several things about Sarah Ferguson that she would rather not be known. I asked Sarah Ferguson how much of her novel had been informed by the experiences of her own life
And so on. The dogged British tabloids have uncovered in the past several things about Sarah Ferguson that she would rather not be known. They include a secretly filmed tabloid sting in which a chequebook journalist dressed as a sheikh convinced her that he was willing to give her £500,000 (€600,000) in exchange for being introduced to her ex-husband.
I asked Sarah Ferguson how much of her novel had been informed by the experiences of her own life.
“We share some characteristics aside from the red hair. Lady Margaret takes up a career in writing, cares about children’s charities and gets written about in the press ... Of course my experiences have shaped some of hers, though I’ll leave it up to readers to decide which.”
I asked if she had found it peculiar, or familiar, to write about royalty and the aristocracy when she was part of this society herself.
“I have always been interested in royal history, long before I married into the family, so it wasn’t peculiar for me to write about that world.”
In addition to her co-author, there were also the two researchers at their disposal. So how much of the 550 pages did she write herself?
“This book is the result of a genuine collaboration with my co-author, Marguerite Kaye. I don’t know what that word means for other authors, but Marguerite and I worked together very closely on every single part of the book, from plotting right the way through to the editing and production process.
“I’ve written countless books for children, but I recognised that writing for adults is very different, and that’s where I benefitted from Marguerite’s experience.”
I asked her to describe a typical writing day.
“I’m very old-fashioned and I always write in longhand, using a Montegrappa fountain pen that I designed myself. [Montegrappa is a luxury Italian brand.] Marguerite and I had coffee-time phone calls in the morning, which could last from half an hour to several hours, depending on the subject matter. At the end of each call we’d agree what we would work on next – our homework.
“That could be writing, reading, editing, research, plotting, thinking up names, thinking up a history for a secondary character or an ending for one we already had.”
A large chunk of the novel is set at Powerscourt – a place Sarah Ferguson knows very well. It was there she went to lie low when her marriage collapsed. She has family links to the place
When Lady Margaret is banished in disgrace to Ireland by her father for a minor societal transgression, she goes to the Powerscourt estate in Co Wicklow. A large chunk of the novel is set there – a place that Sarah Ferguson knows very well. It was to Powerscourt she went to lie low when her marriage collapsed. She has family links to the place.
In 2005, she gave an interview in Ireland, stating that she had decided to be buried at Powerscourt. Are those still her wishes?
“I have said that in the past, but now I think the question of where I am buried is best left to my children. I am so proud to be Celtic and my maternal grandmother came from Southern Ireland. Powerscourt, where she lived, is the most entrancing place.”
There will be a 78th book from the duchess of York. Marguerite Kaye says that the two of them enjoyed the collaborative process so much, “we’re doing it again”.
