The Duchess of York when she was in the fold of the royal family.

The duchess makes the comments about her life with the royal family during the late 80s in a "therapy" interview with Dr Pamela Connolly, wife of the comedian Billy Connolly.

She tells of her great love for her ex-husband and her conviction that he was "the best of the lot".

The marriage to Prince Andrew stood no chance, she feels, because she saw so little of him.

She had planned to "live at port with him in a cottage"' so they could be together when his naval career permitted. Instead, she was banished to a lonely life on the second floor of the palace and became a public servant.

The Yorks spent only 40 days a year together during the first five years of their marriage.

"They told me what to do," the duchess says, referring to the royal family and their guardians of protocol, the "men in grey"'.

Edinburgh-born and the son of a printer, William Thomson was employed as an accountant in Glasgow. He emigrated with his family, arrived in Canterbury in 1853 on the Hampshire, a vessel of about 600 tons. Theirs had been ‘a protracted voyage of five months’.

Thomson attended the ball on Queen Victoria’s birthday – on 24 May – in Highland costume. The Lyttelton Maori ‘hearing of his costume, gathered along Norwich Quay to see the Taipo coming – rather peculiar considering their style of dress’.

Thomson bought a property at Governors Bay which he called ‘Hemingford’. It became the famous and beautiful property of sheepfarmer, scientist and conservationist T. H. Potts and was and is known as ‘Ohinetahi’. To get home the family had to travel by boat or walk along a very narrow track and pass through the big and little Rapaki Maori pas. William’s son, J. J. Thompson, was to recall that :

in one ... the natives stuck up my father for the purpose of levying blackmail. However, an old woman being seized with the colic, he was allowed to go on after prescribing for her.