She also described the friendship as one that had always endured ups and downs, but remained strong overall.
“In any sibling relationship, there are ups and downs and peaks and troughs, but we were always steadfast in our friendship. We never let the sun go down on too many heated discussions. Our bond was never broken.”
The comment that reportedly caused the rift
Although Ferguson said she never knew exactly why Diana stopped speaking to her, journalist and royal commentator Tina Brown later suggested the disagreement stemmed from a remark Ferguson made about Diana’s shoes.
The comment appeared in Ferguson’s earlier biography My Story: Sarah, the Duchess of York, published in 1996. In the book, she mentioned borrowing shoes from the Princess of Wales while they were younger.
The line read: “When I lived in Clapham, Diana helped me by giving me all her shoes (and, less happily, her plantar warts) – we wore the same size.”
According to Brown, Diana did not react well to the remark. In her book The Diana Chronicles, Brown described the sentence as particularly damaging.