Sarah Ferguson is feeling “better than ever” after being diagnosed with cancer twice. Last summer, a routine mammogram revealed she had breast cancer, leading to a single mastectomy.
Six months later, she was diagnosed with malignant melanoma. While her doctors advise against using the term “cancer-free” and she continues to have regular check-ups for any recurrence, the prognosis is positive.
In an exclusive interview and photoshoot at the aptly named Royal Suite at the Fairmont Windsor Park hotel, Sarah discusses her past year and shares whether she is still undergoing treatment.
“I have to be checked regularly and I have to put cream on my face to get out past sun damage, which means big blisters on my face, chest and hands for three weeks. But I’m not doing immunotherapy, taking any drugs or doing chemotherapy, for which I’m very grateful.”
She got through that time, she said, with the help of her closest loved ones: her children Princess Beatrice, 35, and Princess Eugenie, 34, along with Beatrice’s stepson Wolfie, eight, and daughter Sienna, two, and Eugenie’s sons, three-year-old August and Ernest, who turned one last week.
“I have the most exceptional family and I have an extraordinarily great team and I have an enormous ability to turn to joy,” she said.
“I have always brought up my girls to be so honest and frank that they know I’m going to tell it to them straight, however difficult it is,” she continues. “So, when they said: ‘Mummy, tell us the absolute truth – have they got all the cancer out?’ and the answer was yes, they knew they were safe.”
Sarah has since made it her mission to encourage people to be vigilant about their health and says the experience has influenced her outlook on life.
“I think it woke me up,” she says. “It gave me a swift kick in the butt and told me: ‘Right, are you going to start living now, at 64, or are you going to keep on not quite living?’ You don’t have to be what everyone wants you to be: just be yourself.
“One of the only people who saw me properly was the Queen [the late Elizabeth II] and before she died, she said: ‘Sarah, being yourself is enough.’
“I haven’t shown my huge personality properly, because I’ve tried to keep it under the cushion. ‘It’s too much,’ or: ‘Shut up, no one wants to hear from you.’ I remember my father telling me: ‘You’re a bore.’ And now I’m just not excusing myself anymore.”
Speaking about the importance of spreading awareness, the Duchess adds: “I really don’t want people to go through what the past year has meant to me, mentally as well as physically. I want readers to think: ‘I mustn’t wait, I must get screened.'”
Passionate about her charity work – she has established Sarah’s Trust to work with organisations that match her values and has been a patron of the British Heart Foundation and the Teenage Cancer Trust for decades – she is also immensely proud of her career as a writer.
She is about to publish the paperback version of A Woman of Intrigue, her second work of historical fiction for Mills & Boon and a follow-up to 2021 bestseller Her Heart for a Compass.
“I really feel as if I have embarked on a new career in my 60s; I am proud to call myself an author,” Sarah tells us.
Touching on the success of A Women of Intrigue when it came out in hardback last year, under a different title, the Duchess adds: “To have a book out which comes from your imagination is pretty extraordinary. My novels have been very well received by readers, which was immensely gratifying. It was such a proud moment for me when both made the Sunday Times bestseller list.”
