Sarah, Duchess of York has revealed she cried when daughter Princess Eugenie told her that her newborn baby son would be named after the duchess’s late father.
Eugenie, 33, and husband Jack Brooksbank, 37, welcomed their second child on 30 May and announced his name on Tuesday (6 June).
The baby is named Ernest George Ronnie Brooksbank and is named after his great-great-great-grandfather King George V, whose second middle name is Ernest.
Sarah, speaking publicly about her new grandchild for the first time, described Ernest on the second episode of her Tea Talks podcast on Thursday (7 June) as a “seriously beautiful little boy” and said the gesture moved her to tears.
Ernest’s middle name Ronnie pays tribute to the duchess’s father Major Ronald Ferguson, the former royal polo manager, who died in 2003.
The duchess, who is known to her now-three grandchildren as GG, said: “He’s a very, very seriously beautiful little boy.
“He’s done very, very well.”
She added of hearing of his name: “When Jack and Eugenie told me, it was so moving that they had put my dad in there. It was so kind, I thought. It made me cry.”
The duchess added of Eugenie: “She said that I was allowed to say. Well I have to be very careful. I get so proud.”
The duchess launched her podcast, Tea Talks alongside Sarah Thomson, the founder of children’s newspaper First News, last week.
She also spoke about her wedding-day tiara which her other daughter, Princess Beatrice, wore to the evening reception of the Jordanian royal wedding last week.
The duchess described the piece as a “beautiful gift” from the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh for her own nuptials in 1986, adding: “It’s really precious to me. A lot of newspaper reports said ‘Oh I’m surprised she hasn’t pulled it apart and flogged it’.”
She joked how a hairdresser in Jordan fixing Beatrice’s tiara had initially mistakenly placed it right at the front of her head before Beatrice corrected it, with the duchess adding: “I think (the hairdresser) had been studying Disney princesses.”
Sarah has two other grandchildren – Eugenie’s eldest son August and Beatrice’s daughter Sienna – as well as a step-grandson, Wolfie – Beatrice’s stepson.
She told how she enjoyed spending time with one-year-old Sienna, who came over to stay while Beatrice was in Jordan.
“I’ve managed to really have a bond and guess what my bond is? I give her a little sup of my tea out my tea cup …. I put some cold water with it,” she added.
With additional reporting from PA.
