Queen Elizabeth II: New Book Details Monarch’s ‘Healthy Sexual Appetite,’ Sparking Outrage In British Press

A new book by a controversial author of unauthorized royal biographies — who is also a former reality TV star — purports to tell all about what Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, get up to behind their closed bedroom doors, including what happened on their wedding night when Philip “introduced her to the pleasure of the flesh,” according to an account in The Sun.

But even The Sun, one of Britain’s most notorious tabloid scandal-sheets, said that it would not repeat other “sensational tales” contained in the new book, The Queen’s Marriage, “for fear of upsetting our royal-loving readers.”

The author of the book, Lady Colin Campbell, is not a member or even relative of the Royal Family, despite her title. Born in Jamaica as Georgia Arianna Ziadie, she married a distant cousin of the Queen, Lord Colin Ivar Campbell, about 40 years ago after the couple had known each other for only five days, according to an account The Telegraph. They predictably divorced 14 months later, but Ziadie has retained her title ever since, carving out a career as a socialite, author and contestant on the U.K. reality show, I’m a Celebrity… Get me Out Of Here!

Royal watchers quickly questioned how Campbell, 68, could had possibly learned intimate details of the Queen’s sex life. But the author has written earlier royal biographies with revelations that were dismissed at the time, but soon turned out to be true, as Ireland’s Independent newspaper pointed out.

Campbell told The Mirror newspaper that the inside details included in The Queen’s Marriage came from servants who worked for Queen Elizabeth — known by her closest friends and family members by the affectionate nickname “Lilibet” — and Prince Philip at one of their royal holiday retreats.

“The servants were full of talk about how patently Lilibet enjoyed her introduction to the pleasures of the flesh [on their 1947 wedding night],” according to The Sun account. “Philip confided in his brother-who-never-was, David Milford Haven, that Lilibet had a very healthy appetite sexually. He also let slip to his other Mountbatten cousin, Patricia, that Lilibet had the most beautiful skin all over.”

The revelations were slammed as “tawdry” in the press, and by the Queen’s former longtime butler, Paul Burrell.

“Anyone can make up these claims. You can only be a true, ­reliable witness to history if you are there. Lady Colin Campbell was none of those things,” Burrell said, according to the news site Nine.com.au. “She is writing about our Head of State, our Head of Church and someone who she does not know. She is writing about someone who she is not familiar with. (The Queen) is a good, kind Christian lady and she should not be defiled in this way because she is above that.”

Another longtime royal staff member, former press secretary Dickie Arbiter, sniffed at the book’s claims, saying, “I will not dignify anything Lady Colin Campbell writes or says with a comment,” according to The Sun.

Campbell’s book also accuses Prince Philip of being “a flirt,” and claims that the Queen’s now-deceased younger sister Princess Margaret spitefully fabricated stories of Philip’s alleged adultery simply to upset her sister — which succeeded, sending the Queen into a period of depression, according to a Metro newspaper account.

But “Lady C,” as Campbell is known in Britain, has defended her book, saying that it contains nothing “disrespectful” and simply portrays the Queen as “a normal, healthy woman,” she told The Mirror.

Campbell’s 1992 biography, Diana in Private: The Princess Nobody Knows portrayed Princess Diana — who died in 1997 — as a bulimic who carried on a five-year affair with former British Army officer James Hewitt, allegations which caused an uproar at the time. Campbell was accused of fabricating the claims when the book was published, but they were later confirmed to be true By Diana herself, The Telegraph reported.