“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,” she recalled.
Behind palace doors
In the beginning, their romance was largely private. Henshall has said Edward would call her during rehearsals and invite her to Buckingham Palace for dinner or to see musicals together.
When the relationship became public, the Evening Standard famously summed it up with the headline, “Prince and the Showgirl.”
Despite tabloid portrayals, Henshall has insisted the romance was meaningful. “I genuinely fell in love with him,” she has said, rejecting suggestions it was simply a brief youthful affair.