Secrets of Prince Edward’s first love to be revealed in West End girl’s tell-all memoir
Love letters written by Prince Edward have inspired a new memoir that documents his romance with West End star Ruthie Henshall.
The Showgirl and the Prince promises to reveal ‘the bittersweet joy of first love’, as it delves into Edward’s on and off relationship with the five-time Olivier Award nominee.
The book is set to reveal details from the pair’s romance, which began with secret visits to Buckingham Palace and tea at Windsor with Queen Elizabeth II.
Edward dated Ruthie between 1988 and 1993, just before he met then-Sophie Rhys-Jones, the now Duchess of Edinburgh.
The book is ‘likely to create angst amid courtiers and the wider Royal Family as it reels from the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’, The Telegraph reports.
It is not known if the royals were given a preview of the book.
The famous actress said she was inspired to write the book, which will be released in July, after finding boxes of memorabilia as she cleared 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,’ the 58-year-old said.
Ruthie Henshall and Prince Edward dated in the 1990s
Ruthie seen backstage at Crazy For You in London in March 1993
The Showgirl and the Prince promises to reveal ‘the bittersweet joy of first love’, as it delves into Prince Edward’s on and off relationship with Ruthie Henshall (pictured in 2025)
‘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.’
Ruthie was making her West End debut as a chorus girl in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats in 1988, when Edward, then 23, was working as a production assistant for the company, and romance blossomed against a backdrop of chats about rehearsals.
For a time, the couple managed to keep their burgeoning romance under the radar — something that led to a particularly tricky conflict of interest for Ruthie’s father, David, then a local newspaper editor in the family’s home county of Kent.
Ruthie, who is understood to have remained on good terms with both Prince Edward and his wife, raised eyebrows when she opened up about her Buckingham Palace sex sessions with Edward when she appeared on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! in 2020
During the conversation, singer Ruthie also revealed she gave an intimate musical performance to the Royal family, after she got ‘p****d on martinis’ during a trip to Balmoral.
Speaking with Shane, Ruthie boldly said: ‘You performed in Buckingham Palace, you sang in the gardens, I sh****d in the bedrooms.’
Ruthie also revealed that she had been to Windsor and Balmoral, the Queen’s estate in Scotland, with her ex – and even ended up performing for the family.
Edward dated Ruthie between 1988 and 1993, just before he met then-Sophie Rhys-Jones, the now Duchess of Edinburgh. Pictured: Prince Edward is pictured with his wife Sophie
She said: ‘He invited me to Windsor for the weekend as we’re walking I’m seeing a table outside and there’s people sitting round it and I’m thinking that looks like the Queen and I remembered my dad had said to me that if you ever meet the Queen he said you curtsy and call her ma’am.
‘I grab her hand like this [handshake], forget all about the curtsy and I’m like really really pleased to meet you, really pleased to meet you.’
Shane then asked: ‘Did you know Diana much?’
Ruthie replied: ‘I met her a couple of times and one of my favourite times was we were at Balmoral, there was Diana, The Queen, Margaret, the Queen Mother, Charles, Edward, myself.’
She added that Diana was ‘lovely’, however she doesn’t ‘remember an awful lot because Charles gave me my first martini.’
‘I’d never tried it before so I was fairly… I had two of them and I was like woah…’, said Ruthie prompting Shane to tease: ‘Don’t tell me you go into show tunes’.
‘Let me tell you. Margaret she goes “yes, yes, oh sing us a song from that show you’re in” and I was in Les Mis at the time. So I sang I Dreamed A Dream and I must have changed key three times because I was so p****d on martinis.’
Ruthie also reflected on how she met Edward. She said: ‘It’s funny, it’s such a long time ago.. [he’s a] Lovely bloke. And I genuinely fell in love with him.
Shane then asked: ‘There was a headline years ago wasn’t there? The prince and the showgirl. Where did you meet him?’
She responded ‘He was a production assistant at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s. And he then called me himself [Andrew] and he wanted me to play the lead in A Star Is Born. And Edward was my point of contact.
‘He was the one who’d call me up and say you’re rehearsing at 2 o’clock or whatever.
‘And he said to me would you like to come to mine and watch the film of A Star Is Born with me and you can have some dinner. I was like what, at the Palace, is that where you live?’
Ruthie dated Prince Edward on and off for five years and remains good friends with him, even attending his wedding to Sophie, Countess of Wessex.
However, Ruthie admitted she regretted making the comments in retrospect, saying: ‘I only said it to make Shane laugh. Then I quickly became aware everything is being recorded. ‘
Ruthie and Edward separated in 1993, as she chose to focus on her career and went on to star in hit musicals, including Chicago, Billy Elliot, Oliver! Miss Saigon and Cats,
She went on to marry Canadian singer Timothy Howard and have two daughters.