Sarah Ferguson Returns to the Limelight After a Year Out of View

Few expected Sarah Ferguson to remain away from the spotlight indefinitely—and, as astute as ever, she chose a striking moment to return.

Thursday’s memorial service for her former lover and long-time confidant was an event from which few could reasonably have expected her to stay absent.

Even so, some may question whether her appearance at the thanksgiving service celebrating motor-racing figure Paddy McNally’s life crossed the line from bold to brazen.

Ferguson had prudently skipped McNally’s funeral in July, choosing instead to send her daughter Princess Beatrice as her representative. But for the woman known within the Royal Family as the “red setter”, the Knightsbridge service offered an ideal chance to reconnect with the public—and remind the public of her presence.

If the timing was merely coincidental, it was nevertheless remarkable. The service came almost a year after the privileged world Sarah Ferguson had long taken for granted collapsed around her. In that time, she lost both her position and her title as Duchess of York, as well as her home and sense of purpose, while charities and businesses hurried to cut ties.

Unlike her former husband, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Ferguson was offered no alternative refuge. Although Andrew was stripped by his brother, the King, of his princely title and HRH style and required to leave Royal Lodge, he was given a home on the Sandringham estate. Ferguson, by contrast, was left to manage on her own. Many believed that, without the royal trappings to which she had become so attached, she would struggle to survive.

Yet the former duchess has always shown a notable resilience. Her royal life has been a long story of overcoming adversity—much of it stemming from troubles she helped create herself.

After such a bleak year, there was something impressive about her decision to appear at such a prominent gathering. She was not alone: both daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, attended alongside their husbands.

The fallout from their parents’ disgrace has also affected the sisters, whose loyalty has at times been pushed to breaking point. They, too, have been drawn into the turmoil created by their mother and father’s ruinous decisions.

Still, as Ferguson took her seat in the pews at St Paul’s Church, close to Harrods, her familiar self-belief was unmistakable. She did not retreat from the cameras, although the smile she offered came from a visibly weary face, reflecting the strain of the past 12 months.

For a woman so strongly drawn to royal ceremony and the attention that comes with it, the disappearance of that spotlight must have been difficult. So, too, must the secluded and almost secretive existence she has led over the past year.

Before Thursday, she had been seen in public only once in 15 months. On that occasion, she was found staying at a remote £2,000-a-night spa in the Austrian Alps, where loyal friends described her voluntary isolation as a period of “recalibrating”.

Ferguson’s sudden retreat from public life prompted considerable speculation. Was she preparing another memoir, following the two books she had already written? Was she rehearsing a revealing interview that some claimed could “blow the doors off” the House of Windsor? Perhaps she was planning a comeback—or finally undertaking the sustained period of introspection that had seemed absent for so long.

Her appearance—battered but not defeated—just a short distance from Buckingham Palace points to another possibility: that she hopes to reclaim a version of royal life. Her daughters were not the only royals present. Princess Anne’s son Peter Phillips also attended, sharing McNally’s interest in motor sports.

It may have been fortunate for Ferguson that the King was thousands of miles away on a Commonwealth tour of the Caribbean when his former sister-in-law chose to re-enter London society.

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Even so, some will argue that her return has come too soon. The shadow of the Jeffrey Epstein affair continues to hang over her former husband, and Ferguson’s presence serves as an uncomfortable reminder that she was not entirely removed from the sordid saga herself.

The cache of emails published by America’s Department of Justice earlier this year revealed deep financial, personal and affectionate ties between Sarah and the paedophile businessman.

In one she described him as ‘the brother I have always wished for’; in another she gushed: ‘You are a legend. I really don’t have the words to describe, my love, gratitude for your generosity and kindness. ‘Xx I am at your service. Just marry me.’

But much more damaging were communications in which she described Epstein as her ‘supreme friend’ and apologised for publicly criticising him.

Her most damning dealings, which earned her considerable public opprobrium, involved her daughters. Just days after Epstein was released from a 13-month sentence for soliciting an under-age girl for prostitution in 2009, Ferguson took Beatrice and Eugenie, then aged 20 and 19, to meet him, flying to the US on air tickets he had paid for.

On Thursday, she looked less edgy than she had back in April at the Mayrlife health clinic in Austria, where the super-rich and supermodels are drawn to its expensive mollycoddling. Perhaps it was the security of being with family and friends, or maybe it was simply that she was honouring the man who represented a less chaotic time.

Before Andrew, Paddy McNally was the man at her side. They met after Fergie was recruited to look after McNally’s young sons Sean and Rollo after the death of his wife Anne in 1980. The two became lovers, but he never asked her to marry him. He was simply too busy. McNally was then on his way to amassing a fortune earned in partnership with F1 tycoon Bernie Ecclestone with whom he revolutionised corporate entertainment on the world’s racetracks when he launched the Paddock Club.

This enabled him to live in some splendour, often in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier where he owned no fewer than three chalets, one of which was euphemistically known as ‘Cocaine Castle’. He had his own Scottish grouse moor, a Wiltshire spread – James Bond creator Ian Fleming’s former country home – and a substantial villa in St Tropez.

Over these past months, McNally put both his homes in Switzerland and the South of France at Fergie’s disposal as she flitted from safe house to safe house lying low. Some have wondered if his final gift was to bestow some of his £600 million fortune on her too.

‘Paddy was my father figure, 22 years older than me’, Fergie once said. ‘He taught me so much about life. Whenever I wanted advice, I turned to him because he was so worldly wise. He seemed to have seen and done everything.’

As she makes her first public appearance back in her homeland, Fergie could do with that advice more than ever.