Some royal secrets live in palace archives. Others, it turns out, live in cardboard boxes in a suburban garage. Actress Ruthie Henshall is set to release a memoir recounting her on-and-off romance with Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh, and the book - already stirring debate months before publication - began with a rediscovery she never planned.
The Garage Discovery That Started It All
The memoir, titled The Showgirl and the Prince, is due out in July from publisher Pan Macmillan. It recounts Henshall's relationship with Prince Edward during the late 1980s and early 1990s, before he met Sophie Rhys-Jones, now the Duchess of Edinburgh.
Now 58, Henshall says the idea came five years ago, when she was cleaning out her garage and stumbled across materials she had long forgotten. "I found old diaries which I began writing in the 1980s and then found all my letters from Prince Edward, and I was struck by how precious this time in my life was," she explained. The letters, written when Edward was in his early twenties, form the emotional core of the book - a young royal's private voice, preserved on paper for more than three decades.
How a West End Debut Became a Palace Romance
When they met in 1988, Henshall was living every musical theater performer's dream. She was making her West End debut in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, and Edward - then a young prince exploring his own interests in theater and television production - was working within theatrical circles. Their worlds connected backstage, as many show-business romances do, and the relationship deepened from there.
"I was on the West End stage - my dream since I was a girl - and shared a love with a man very few people even know. If this was someone else's story, I would think they had made it up," she has said. "So here it is - a look behind the curtain of a crazy life in musical theater."
Behind Palace Doors
In the beginning, the romance was largely private. Henshall has said Edward would call her during rehearsals and invite her to Buckingham Palace for dinner, or to see musicals together - a remarkably ordinary courtship conducted inside one of the world's most extraordinary buildings. For a young actress fresh from provincial theater, the experience of walking through palace corridors for a quiet dinner was, by her own account, surreal.
When the relationship became public, the tabloids pounced. The Evening Standard famously summed up the story with the headline "Prince and the Showgirl," a label that followed Henshall for years and, she has suggested, reduced a genuine relationship to a saucy caricature.
Despite the tabloid portrayals, Henshall has always insisted the romance was meaningful. "I genuinely fell in love with him," she has said, rejecting suggestions that it was merely a brief, youthful fling with a convenient headline attached.
From Private Dinners to Tea With the Queen
According to Pan Macmillan, the memoir follows the relationship from its discreet start to its more formal moments, including visits to Buckingham Palace and tea at Windsor Castle with Queen Elizabeth II. The publisher has described the book as "a funny, intimate" account of two young people navigating love under improbable circumstances - one learning royal protocol, the other learning palace etiquette, both trying to be normal in settings where nothing ever is.
Those passages are likely to attract the most attention. Firsthand accounts of one-on-one time with the late Queen are rare, and a young showgirl's impression of royal private life offers a perspective no courtier's memoir can replicate.
The 1993 Breakup and the Life That Followed
The couple parted ways in 1993, with Henshall choosing to focus on her career - a decision she has described as difficult but necessary. The choice proved wise professionally: she went on to become one of Britain's most celebrated musical theater stars, with leading roles in Chicago, Les Miserables, Miss Saigon, and Oliver!, along with television work and a West End career spanning more than three decades.
Edward, meanwhile, met Sophie Rhys-Jones in 1993, the same year the romance ended, and the couple married in 1999. The timing has never been commented on by the Palace, and Henshall has largely avoided the subject in interviews - until now.
Why the Book Is Already Controversial
Even before publication, the memoir is dividing opinion. Supporters argue that Henshall is telling her own story, from her own diaries, about a chapter of her life that tabloids distorted for years. Critics counter that publishing private letters written by a sitting member of the royal family raises questions about consent and privacy that cut both ways - particularly from an author who has herself experienced invasive coverage.
What seems certain is attention. A first-person account of palace romance, anchored by decades-old letters and diaries, is exactly the kind of book that dominates serialization deals and breakfast TV. Whether it reshapes how the public sees Prince Edward, or simply adds a warm human chapter to royal history, will depend on what those pages contain when the curtain finally rises in July.
