West End star Ruthie Henshall is set to release a tell-all memoir about her romance with Prince Edward, the late Queen Elizabeth II's youngest son. The 59-year-old actress and the Prince dated in the late 1980s, describing their relationship as her first love. They were together for five years before splitting amicably.
Meeting the Queen
In her upcoming book, The Showgirl and The Prince, Henshall recalls a major blunder during her first encounter with the Queen. Despite her father's advice to curtsy and address the monarch as 'ma'am', she forgot to curtsy and instead grabbed the Queen's hand, exclaiming, 'I'm really pleased to meet you, really pleased to meet you.' She admitted, 'Here I was, this chorus girl dating her youngest son - it must have been her worst nightmare!'
Relationship with Prince Edward
Henshall described Prince Edward as 'kind and thoughtful' and 'a lovely bloke'. She said, 'I genuinely fell in love with him. I suppose I was not like anyone he'd dated before, a warm and flirty leotard-clad chorus girl, prone to telling risque jokes and drinking and smoking too much.' The pair split due to her demanding schedule as a leading lady in the West End but remained on good terms. She was later invited to his wedding to Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, in 1999.
Life After the Prince
Henshall married Canadian-born British singer Tim Howar in 2004, but the marriage ended in 2010. They met while starring in Peggy Sue Got Married and have two daughters together. Ahead of her book's July release, she shared the cover on Instagram, writing, 'To release another dream in my life is bonkers but here it is. My book. The Showgirl and the Prince. A deep love, brutally honest and a life beyond my wildest dreams.'
Speaking to The Telegraph, she added, '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. 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.'
