Former royal butler Paul Burrell recounts in his new book Royal Insider that Sarah, Duchess of York, and Diana, Princess of Wales, were once close friends but fell out after the publication of Sarah Ferguson’s 1996 memoir My Story, a rupture Burrell says left the two women never speaking again.
Burrell writes that Fergie and Diana had a friendship dating back to early 1982, sharing lunches and social circles and joking about the “dour men in grey suits” of the royal household, whom they nicknamed “the enemy within.” According to Burrell, Diana had advised the younger Sarah on whom to trust and cautioned her about court etiquette. When My Story appeared, Burrell says Diana was angered that the book contained references to her and to Diana’s sons, and felt “used,” which prompted a long silence between them.
Burrell describes a final incident that, he writes, cemented the break: a letter that arrived purportedly from Princess Eugenie addressed to “HRH The Princess of Wales” with an envelope written in a child’s hand. Burrell quotes Diana as responding with fury on seeing the envelope, saying, “She is now using her children to intervene. It’s her last resort?” Burrell writes that Diana told him she would not continue the relationship and that they never spoke again.
The widely reported theory that the quarrel stemmed from an anecdote in which Fergie said she had contracted verrucas from shoes given to her by Diana is mentioned by Burrell but dismissed by him as not the true cause of the fallout. Burrell’s account frames the rupture as rooted in Diana’s sense of being betrayed by a friend who had been counselled to avoid discussing family matters publicly.
Authors Andrew Lownie and Patrick Jephson have described other tensions between the two women in separate books. Lownie, in Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, recounts episodes in 1995–96 in which the Duchess of York’s reported interest in John F. Kennedy Jr. and subsequent social manoeuvres created friction. Lownie writes that Sarah invited Kennedy to drinks in 1996 and reacted badly when he cancelled; he also reports anecdotes about staff being ordered to check Kennedy’s apartment and claims Sarah used a nickname, “Number Nine,” for him. Those anecdotes are presented as part of Lownie’s broader account of the Yorks.
Patrick Jephson, who served as Diana’s private secretary and equerry, is quoted in a 2024 oral biography of JFK Jr. as saying Diana met Kennedy partly to make Sarah jealous, describing the encounter as discreet and noting Diana’s curiosity. Jephson’s comments, like Lownie’s and Burrell’s, are presented in biographical works and reflect the perspectives of those authors and interviewees.
Diana and Sarah’s public closeness was well documented in the 1980s and early 1990s; the pair were frequently photographed together and were nicknamed by the press as the “Merry Wives of Windsor.” The friendship included vacations and family gatherings, and both women later reflected on the relationship in memoirs and interviews. In her 2011 memoir Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself, the Duchess of York wrote that Diana had “the quickest wits” and that no one made her laugh like Diana, while also noting that by the end of Diana’s life they had not spoken for about a year.
Diana died on Aug. 31, 1997, having been estranged from several former close friends and family members at the time. Burrell writes that Diana’s death was particularly hard on the Duchess of York, whom he said felt “all at sea” and missed having someone to rely on. The accounts in Royal Insider and the other cited biographies draw on recollections and documents held by former staff and contemporaries and reflect differing interpretations of private events within the royal family.
The new passages in Royal Insider add to an existing body of memoirs and biographies that have explored friendships, rivalries and personal relationships among members of the royal family. Burrell’s book frames the friendship’s collapse around the publication choices made by Sarah Ferguson in 1996 and the emotional response those choices provoked in Diana, according to the former butler’s account.