In her lengthy and at times colourful career balancing royalty with earning an income, the Duchess of York has taken on roles from selling Wedgwood china to Americans to representing Weightwatchers. Now it would seem she is adding “romantic novelist” to her CV.
Mills & Boon, the longstanding titan of bodice-busting fiction, has announced it is to publish Sarah Ferguson’s debut work of adult fiction in August after she delved into her own family history in search of inspiration for a suitably epic tale of romance to scale the best-seller lists.
The divorced duchess, who famously continues to co-habit with her ex-husband Prince Andrew on the royal Windsor estate, is already a successful author of children’s books, and non-fiction works and television documentaries focusing on Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Her first novel, with the appropriately squishy title of “Her Heart for a Compass”, is a co-authored “immersive historical saga” based on the duchess’s great-great-aunt, Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott. In a perhaps curious act of art imitating life, the book will tell the story of Fergie’s forebear and her relationship with the offspring of a monarch, in this case Victoria’s sixth child, Princess Louise.
The duchess said: “I drew on many parallels from my life for Lady Margaret’s journey. I have long held a passion for historical research and telling the stories of strong women in history through film and television. I am proud to bring my personal brand of historical fiction to the publishing world.”
Mills & Boon, which is owned by publishing giant Harper Collins and accounts for 16 per cent of the UK’s romance fiction market, said the book would “sweep the reader from the drawing rooms of Victoria’s court… to the slums of London and the mercantile bustle of 1870s New York”, all the while telling the story of a heroine “who desires to break the mould – and falling in love along the way”.
Quite whether Fergie will emerge as a 21st-century Barbara Cartland remains to be seen. Lisa Milton, executive publisher for Mills & Boon, said it was an “honour” for the imprint to publish Fergie’s work, suggesting it would satisfy its existing readers as well as appealing to fans of established historical novelists such as Philippa Gregory.
Either way, although it is Fergie’s name which will appear on the cover of the book, the novel is in fact a “collaboration” with Marguerite Kaye, an established Mills & Boon author who has penned more than 50 novels for the imprint. The publisher confirmed to i that Ms Kaye is a co-author of Her Heart for a Compass>
The duchess’s venture into amorous historical fiction is the latest in a long line of money-spinning initiatives, some of which have met with more success than others. In 2010, she fell foul of a News of the World sting in which she appeared to offer a businessman access to Prince Andrew in return for £500,000. However, she has elsewhere met with success, selling 1.5m books while also pursuing her work for good causes.
Mills & Boon, meanwhile, would not be drawn on further details of the plot for its forthcoming royal work, other than to point out that all its novels promise a “happily-ever-after ending every time”.