Actress Ruthie Henshall is set to release her memoir, The Showgirl and the Prince, in July. The book recounts her on-and-off relationship with Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, before he met Sophie Rhys-Jones, now Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh.
Now 58, Henshall said the idea for the memoir came after she discovered old diaries and letters while cleaning out her garage five years ago.
“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 20s, form the emotional core of the book.
When they met in 1988, Henshall was making her West End debut in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats. Edward was working within theatrical circles at the time, and their worlds connected backstage before their relationship deepened.
“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. So here it is — a look behind the curtain of a crazy life in musical theatre and what happens next when a showgirl falls in love with a prince,” she recalled.
Behind palace doors
In the beginning, their 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.
When the relationship became public, the Evening Standard famously summed it up with the headline, “Prince and the Showgirl.”
Despite tabloid portrayals, Henshall has insisted the romance was meaningful. “I genuinely fell in love with him,” she has said, rejecting suggestions it was simply a brief youthful affair.
According to publisher Pan Macmillan, the memoir follows the relationship from its discreet start to more formal occasions, including visits to Buckingham Palace and tea at Windsor Castle with Queen Elizabeth II. It has been described as “a funny, intimate, and touching memoir” and even “a real-life Cinderella story — if Cinders is a lycra-clad chorus girl from Bromley who drinks and smokes too much.”
The couple parted ways in 1993, with Henshall choosing to focus on her career.