Publications
She’s never been one to do things by halves, has Sarah Ferguson – and now the Duchess of York wants to create her own opulent, Bridgerton-style period drama series based on her first book.
Fergie (61) has reportedly been talking to streaming giants about a potential deal to get her upcoming book, Her Heart for a Compass: A Novel, onto the small screen.
The Mills & Boon book, which is set to be published on 3 August, is a fictional account of the life of her great-great-aunt, Lady Margaret Montagu Douglas Scott.
“Her team is already in talks with at least one streaming service and will be approaching others,” a source told Variety.
“These will include Amazon and Netflix. Everyone involved is looking at the success of Bridgerton as a demonstration of the immense appeal of period drama on streaming services.”
Fergie, who is already a published author of several children’s books, has previously produced The Young Victoria, a 2009 film written by Julian Fellowes and starring Emily Blunt.
The book started when Fergie began to investigate her ancestry.
“Digging into the history of the Montagu Douglas Scotts, I first came across Lady Margaret, who intrigued me because she shared one of my given names,” says the mother of princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.
“With real historical events and facts to hand, my imagination took over. I invented a history for her that incorporated real people and events, including some of my other ancestors.
“I created a friendship between my heroine and Princess Louise, Queen Victoria's sixth child, and I drew on many parallels from my life for Lady Margaret’s journey.”
The book has been described as “sweeping the reader from the drawing rooms of Victoria's court and the grand country houses of Scotland and Ireland, to the slums of London and the mercantile bustle of 1870s New York”.
The duchess had help in the form of her “collaborator and mentor”, Marguerite Kaye, who has written more than 50 books for Mills & Boon and which have sold more than 1,5 million copies in over 20 countries.
Meanwhile, Prince William is also turning pen to paper for the first time and will write the intro of a new book about his Earthshot Prize.
Entitled Earthshot: How to Save Our Planet, it’s said to be the first book in his decade-long global environmental competition, which aims to find the best solutions to help the planet over the next decade.
It’s set to be published before the Earthshot Prize awards ceremony, which takes place in October.
Colin Butfield, an advisor for the prince’s environmental campaign and executive producer of the WWF’s Our Planet project, worked alongside William on the book, as did award-winning producer Jonnie Hughes.
SOURCES: DAILYMAIL.CO.UK, AOL.COM, EXPRESS.CO.UK
