Ruthie Henshall Prince Edward is back in the news because memoir excerpts say the West End star had a five-year relationship with Prince Edward that ended in 1993. The timing matters because the details arrive ahead of The Showgirl And The Prince, due July 16.
Henshall said she first met Edward in 1988 at the New London Theatre when she was 20 and starring in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats. He was 23 and working as a production assistant for the musical’s production company, and she said she was “pleasantly surprised by how attractive I found him.”
Buckingham Palace in May 1988
In May 1988, Edward invited her to Buckingham Palace for dinner and a film, and Henshall said they shared their first kiss after that visit. She also said he would take her to rehearsals and kiss her goodbye on the cheek, while she got “a buzz from seeing his reaction to my cheeky, slightly irreverent sense of humour.”
Henshall recalled visits to Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Frogmore, and said they spent many Sundays at Frogmore. She described Frogmore as their “romantic place,” then said she felt “a pang of envy and sadness” when she heard the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were moving there in 2019.
Queen Elizabeth II and Balmoral
Henshall also said her first spontaneous meeting with Queen Elizabeth II left her mortified after “forgetting to curtsey,” and that she grabbed the Queen’s hand and shook it “wildly.” She added that Edward later told her the late Queen had said, “Now, that’s a pair of lungs!” after she sang “I Dreamed A Dream” during a visit to Balmoral.
The memoir’s value is in the sequence, not the gossip: it places a five-year relationship on the record, fixes its end point at 1993, and adds a set of locations that turn a private story into a dated royal timeline. For readers, the practical next step is simple — the fuller account lands with The Showgirl And The Prince on July 16, and these excerpts suggest Henshall is writing less to tease and more to document what she says happened.
The Showgirl And The Prince
Henshall’s version also sharpens the public record around Edward’s private life before his later title and the way royal spaces were folded into it. The unanswered part is why she chose to publish those details now, but the memoir already sets the frame: a five-year relationship, a 1993 endpoint, and a release date that puts the rest of her account on the shelf very soon.
