Princess Diana and Sarah, the Duchess of York, who were once close friends and publicly dubbed the "Merry Wives of Windsor," stopped speaking after Sarah Ferguson’s 1996 autobiography included references to Diana and her sons, according to Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell in his new book.
In Royal Insider, Burrell writes that Ferguson — known familiarly as Fergie — had formed a friendship with Diana from 1982 and that Diana had offered guidance about life inside the royal household. Burrell says Diana supported Ferguson’s decision to publish but asked that she not discuss Diana, her children or their relationship; when the autobiography, My Story, contained references to Diana, William and Harry, Diana felt "used" and refused to speak to her.
Burrell recounts that the relationship deteriorated further when Diana received what appeared to be a letter from Ferguson’s younger daughter, written and addressed in a child’s hand to "HRH The Princess of Wales." According to Burrell, Diana regarded the envelope as an attempt to use a child to intervene and was "incandescent with rage," after which their friendship ended permanently. Burrell quotes Diana as telling him that she was happier than she had been, and suggesting Ferguson should not use her child in that way.
Biographers and former aides have offered additional episodes they say contributed to the rupture. Andrew Lownie, in his book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, wrote that a long-standing fascination Ferguson had with John F. Kennedy Jr. created friction. Lownie recounts that Ferguson invited Kennedy Jr. for drinks in 1996, and that staff later watched his apartment to verify his account when the invitation was cancelled. He also reported that Diana met Kennedy briefly in New York in December 1995 — an encounter some later described as partly intended to make Ferguson jealous.
A 2024 biography co-written by RoseMarie Terenzio, a former assistant to Kennedy Jr., and accounts by Diana’s private secretary Patrick Jephson have said Diana’s meeting with Kennedy was discreet and that Diana enjoyed the private intrigue of the encounter. Jephson is quoted in that book describing the meeting as having "all the makings of a great gossip story," and saying Diana was curious to meet the world's then most eligible bachelor.
Some contemporaneous reports had suggested the public split was triggered by a more trivial anecdote — that Ferguson blamed verrucas on a pair of shoes given to her by Diana — but Burrell dismisses that as not the core cause. He writes that the key issue was Diana’s sense of being spoken about and used in a memoir she had been asked to keep out of public discussion.
Diana and Ferguson’s friendship had public and private dimensions: they vacationed together with their children and shared regular lunches, and their close social ties dated to childhood, when their mothers attended school together. Burrell says Diana, having been in the royal family since 1981, had warned Ferguson about "the dour men in grey suits" within the household and advised whom to trust.
When Diana died on Aug. 31, 1997, the pair had been estranged for months. Burrell writes that Ferguson was left "all at sea" by Diana’s death and missed the companionship she had lost. Ferguson herself reflected on the relationship in her 2011 memoir, Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself, writing that Diana was one of the quickest wits she knew and that she had not spoken to Diana for about a year before her death, saying she never knew the full reason for the estrangement.
The accounts from Burrell, Lownie and others draw on memoirs, private recollections and previously published biographies. They offer a portrait of two women who were once close but whose friendship unraveled amid competing public roles, memoir disclosures and interpersonal grievances. The precise mix of causes and the private emotions involved are presented in these books as recollections and interpretations by those close to the principals rather than new contemporaneous documents.
The story of Diana and Ferguson’s friendship and final rupture remains a topic of public fascination, in part because it touches on the intense scrutiny the royal family faced in the 1990s and the ways personal relationships intersected with media attention. Authors and former aides continue to revisit those years in recently published works, providing fresh interpretations of the ties and tensions that shaped the period.