Page 177 : For years I hauled the emotion around as my own furtive burden - the hard gauge of loneliness, after all, is the lack of someone in whom you can confide. But I was losing control over what feelings I showed and where I showed them. My private anguish began seeping into my public persona, that flossy shell that was supposed to be all-right-Jack at all times.
Pages 178 -179 : On November 2, 1989, four months pregnant, I arrived in Houston to pay tribute to that city's Grand Opera. I stayed at the home of Lynn Wyatt. For five days I attended to duty... I also met Steve Wyatt, Lynn's son, and a friend of his named Pricilla Phillips. We fell to talking -- about the mountains, I think, which they loved as much as I did - and within minutes we seemed like old cronies.
Steve and Pricilla were less inhibited than the people I knew in London, more open to matters of the spirit; they both meditated which I found intriguing. When they were around, the darkness lost its power.
Page 197 : For the Merry Wives of Windsor, as the press called Diana and me, 1991 would be a year of unrest. The two of us were groping in the dark - we were the blind leading the blind out of our Brother's Grimm nightmare. We had no idea where we were headed, but we knew that we could not sit pat.
Page 202 -203 : The events of annus horriblis were a long time germinating. In May of 1990, I had taken a brief holiday on the Moroccan coast with Pricilla.... I had no way of knowing that an anonymous tipster had called the London tabloid Today and reported that Steve Wyatt was with me in Morocco - an absolute falsehood.... The whole invention was flimsy and ridiculous, a web of fabricated facts" and harmless pictures. ... New Scotland Yard was called into investigate and came up with nothing. But one police source told the press the obvious - that the photographs might have been planted to embarrass me, "as part of a conspiracy to tarnish her image and destroy her marriage."
Page 205 : At the Palace, I now realized, I had sold myself into a package deal. To be married to Andrew was to be we to The Film, and I had to get out. No longer could I feign to respect, honor, and obey that institution. It was one thing to live in a gilded cage; people trade freedom for security all the time. it was another when they electrified the bars of that cage and aimed their heartless sights your way, as though it were Saturday at Sandringham and you were the prize pheasant..... On January 21... I told Andrew at dinner that I thought we should separate. We were both very sad; it was the last thing we had wanted. But he saw my resignation and did not try to argue: If this will make you happy, then I still stand by you."
Page 207: Nothing had changed. But everything had changed. Within days of our trip to Sandringham, I was cut out of the Court Circular. Engagements were canceled without notice or explanation. .... (When Diana was separated from Charles later that year, her calendar was unaffected.)
Page 208: Apparently non gratis throughout the Western World, I was an absolute nonperson in Buckingham Palace.
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Sarah had been warned by Andrew that it would be difficult, but as they were separated but not divorced, he still considered her his wife. She had her titles. With two children now, Beatrice and Eugenie, she did move out of Sunninghill to a rental house called Romeda Lodge knowing her housing allowance would not cover the rent. She had ambitions to turn her Budgie books into more - perhaps film or television. And when she re-met John Bryan in 1992, who she and Andrew first met in 1990 at a dinner party, she asked him to be her agent. The man was full of fresh ideas. Trusting him, she even gave him power of attorney. It never occurred to her that he might be using her as a passport to a higher social circle where he could sell high-technology investments. It was while on a vacation to St. Tropez, booked under assumed names, that the infamous toe-sucking pictures were taken and they were just joking around at the time. Her daughters were there. It wasn't sexual, she says. Once again there was a possibility that she was set up. She says she believes a photographer and his assistance photographed them for three days, basically spying and waiting for a scandalous photo She believes The Firm colluded with the press by leaking details of her whereabouts.
***
Sarah, the Duchess of York's book has had an effect on me that I didn't expect. It strengthens the complaints of Princess Diana about the Firm and frankly the suspicions that Dodi Fayed's father and others have had that the accident that killed Diana was a set up- not that Sarah discusses that but because she reports having a truly horrible time with The Firm. It also strengthens the complaints of Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
Now, the the other book I've looked at, which I'll review soon, suggests that Fergie had an affair with Steve Wynn and then exchanged him for John Bryan, and that John Bryan was an opportunist. It suggests that Sarah was clever and had these affairs to get back at her husband, who is depicted as a bit hapless in the situation.
Stay tuned!
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