Revealed: All the royals and socialites who have been caught secretly smoking cigarettes – despite Queen Elizabeth’s fierce stance

The late Queen Elizabeth II was fiercely anti-smoking – and she had good reason to be.

Smoking played a large part in the death of her beloved father King George VI who died of lung cancer on February 6, 1952 after 16 years on the throne.

Before him, three other monarchs – George V, Edward VII and Edward VIII – died from smoking-related illness. 

The Queen’s sister Princess Margaret was also a notorious smoker and, in her heyday, was known for smoking ’60 cigarettes a day’.

But it soon caught up with her. After undergoing a lung operation in 1985, Princess Margaret’s final years were dogged by several strokes until her death in 2002.

At the time, her grieving nephew Prince Charles said: ‘My darling aunt had such dreadful times in the past few years with her awful illness and it was hard for let alone her to bear it, but for all of us as well – particularly as she had such a wonderfully free spirit.’

To burnish the royal family’s nicotine-stained image, Charles, 76, is believed to have been responsible for revoking the royal warrant to tobacco firm Gallaher in 1998 and urging close family members – including his wife Camilla – to stop smoking.

Despite his best efforts, many blue-bloods have not been put off an occasional cigarette. Here, MailOnline takes a look at the surprising royals and socialites who are known to smoke, or have done in the past.

Prince Phillip

The loving husband of Queen Elizabeth, Prince Phillip died at the grand old age of 99.

As the longest-serving consort to a British monarch and the oldest-ever male member of the royal family, one would be forgiven for thinking that Prince Phillip had never smoked a cigarette in his life.

However, as a young man attempting to woo Princess Elizabeth, smoking was his vice.

‘Understandably, Elizabeth was adamant that Philip give up the habit that wreaked her father’s health,’ Bryan Kozlowski wrote in his book Long Live the Queen: 23 Rules For Living From Britain’s Longest Reigning Monarch.

Pictures from his bachelor party at the luxurious Dorchester Hotel in November 1947 show Phillip sharing cigars with Lord Mountbatten and his private secretary Michael Parker.

But, knowing how much it meant to his wife-to-be, Phillip quit smoking ‘suddenly and apparently without difficulty’ on the morning of his wedding ceremony, according to his valet.

Kozlowski continued: ‘Previously a heavy smoker himself, Philip obliged with phenomenal efficiency, going from a pack a day to quitting cold turkey on his wedding day.’

The Queen Mother

Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, more commonly known as The Queen Mother, passed away at the age of 101 on March 30, 2002.

She was known to smoke in her younger years – a habit which was not uncommon among members of the British aristocracy.

However, in later life, she significantly reduced her smoking due to the death of her husband King George VI in 1952.

But the Queen Mother’s penchant for alcohol never disappeared.

She kicked off her day with a glass of Dubonnet and gin before lunch, wine with the meal, a martini before dinner and a glass of Veuve Clicquot, according to Adrian Tinniswood’s Behind The Throne: A Domestic History Of The Royal Household.

Major Colin Burgess, who was equerry to the Queen Mother, referred to her as a ‘devoted drinker’, and has recalled ensuring a bottle of Dubonnet was brought along to official engagements, just in case. 

Describing the period in the Nineties during which Major Burgess was on the Queen Mother’s staff, Tinniswood writes: ‘The Clarence House routine was relatively sedate by this time. Contrary to popular myth, her alcohol consumption was steady rather than excessive.’

Prince Harry

In his party prince era, Prince Harry was fond of smoking.

Writing in his memoir Spare, he admitted that the habit started as a schoolboy at Eton where he would smoke underneath Windsor Bridge with his mates.

‘My mates seemed to enjoy the naughtiness of it, whereas I just did it because I was on autopilot,’ he said.

‘Sure, I fancied a cig after a McDonald’s, who didn’t? But if we were going to bunk off, I’d much prefer heading over to Windsor Castle golf course, knocking a ball around, while drinking a wee beer. 

‘Still, like a robot, I took every cig offered me, and in the same automatic, unthinking way, I soon graduated to weed.’

Elsewhere in the book the 40-year-old confesses to taking cocaine, ketamine and magic mushrooms, and described how he hallucinated that a bin was talking to him.

Harry credited the use of psychedelic drugs with helping him deal with the ‘grief’ and ‘trauma’ he felt after the death of his mother, Princess Diana.

When he ‘stopped going out’ in 2015, Harry said he would smoke a joint after dinner while ‘trying to make sure the smoke didn’t waft into the garden of my neighbour, The Duke of Kent’.

Eventually it was Meghan Markle who convinced the prince to stop smoking in December 2017.

‘Harry has promised no smoking at all at home. It’s not nice for Meghan as a non-smoker,’ a friend said at the time.

‘So there’s no more hanging out of the window for a quick puff.’

It is believed she doubled down on her anti-smoking stance at Nottingham Cottage as the pair started to try for a baby in 2018.

‘One of the reasons she got him to quit smoking is because smoking affects sperm production,’ a source told The New York Daily News.

‘It’s no secret among friends that they want to start a family immediately.’

The pair announced they were pregnant with their first child on October 25, 2018, and Prince Archie was born on May 6, 2019.

But in his controversial memoir, Prince Harry revealed he would indulge in a joint while he and his young family were staying at US actor Tyler Perry’s house in Los Angeles in 2020, after he and Meghan stepped down as working royals.

He wrote: ‘Late at night, with everyone asleep, I’d walk the house, checking the doors and windows. Then I’d sit on the balcony or the edge of the garden and roll a joint.

‘The house looked down onto a valley, across a hillside thick with frogs. I’d listen to their late-night song, smell the scented air.’

Sarah Ferguson

Now a doting grandmother, Sarah Ferguson, 65, was once one of the most controversial members of the royal family.

In 2010, she was captured on camera by an undercover News of the World reporter offering to take cash in exchange for access to her ex-husband Prince Andrew.

Some of the shocking footage shows Ferguson sitting by a bottle of wine, smoking and slurring her words as if she was intoxicated.

Later, the Duchess of York told US chat show host Oprah Winfrey that she was ‘in the gutter’ during the newspaper’s discreetly recorded video.

‘I haven’t faced the devil in the face. Because I was in the gutter at that moment,’ she said, adding: ‘I’m aware of the fact that I’ve been drinking, you know – that I was not in my right place.’

Sarah, lovingly known as Fergie, has never spoken publicly about smoking but has been pictured with unlit cigarettes in her mouth and in her handbag.

Princess Eugenie

Eugenie, the second daughter of Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew, was spotted smoking in her younger years.

At the age of 19, she was pictured enjoying a cigarette with her friends and bodyguard while on a gap year in Sydney, Australia.

In a 2009 Daily Mail article, royal correspondent Rebecca English wrote that onlookers had seen Eugenie pull ‘a packet of cigarettes out of her bag’ and light one up.

‘She wasn’t chain smoking but she is clearly more than just a social smoker,’ one said.

But, much like her cousin Prince Harry, Eugenie, now 34, has reportedly since given up the habit.

Queen Camilla

Knowing how much Charles despised smoking, Camilla would enjoy a cigarette by ‘furtively smoking up the chimney’, according to royal expert Tina Brown.

It is reported that royal footmen were instructed to place silver cigarette boxes containing her favourite brand in every room.

They also had to make sure that matchbox holders in solid silver containers were placed upright near at hand with one match half withdrawn so she did not have to scrabble about looking for a light.

Camilla was also a regular at Annabel’s dining club in Mayfair, London – home to ‘the world’s most luxurious cigar room’, according to her biographer Angela Levin.

But from puffing away at 40 a day, Camilla managed to put the cigarettes down in 2001, reported the Daily Mail. 

‘It wasn’t so much me giving up smoking, rather smoking giving up on me,’ she allegedly told one friend.  

Camilla, now 77, has recently spoken about her previous smoking habits in a candid conversation with Paddington actress Emily Mortimer during a reception at Buckingham Palace in November 2024.

Mentioning that her mother Penelope sends her love, the Queen enquired about how her old friend was.

The actress laughed and said: ‘Oh, she’s still smoking as much as ever.’

‘Oh she’s still on the fags?’ Camilla replied.

This led Emily to ask if Camilla had stopped smoking, to which she confirmed: ‘Oh yes, I quit 20 years ago.’

Tom Parker Bowles, 50, recently addressed his mother’s reputation for smoking and drinking, calling it ‘inaccurate’ and insisting that she has ‘never drunk a glass of gin in her life’ and ‘doesn’t smoke’.

Laura Lopes (née Parker Bowles)

Laura Lopes, 47, the daughter of Andrew Parker Bowles and Queen Camilla, took after her mother when it came to smoking.

Royal expert Katie Nicholl wrote in the Mail on Sunday that she used to ‘smoke almost as many cigarettes as her mother’.

But the stepdaughter of King Charles gave up smoking in 2007 as she tried for a baby with Calvin Klein model-turned-chartered accountant Harry Lopes.

Laura and her husband now have three children together: Eliza, who was born in January 2008, and twin boys, Gus and Louis, who were born in December 2009.

Amelia Windsor

While attending a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s to celebrate the Queen’s 90th birthday in 2016, she dazzled in head-to-toe Chanel, looking every inch the chic and refined modern royal.

But away from the spotlight, Lady Amelia Windsor was a cigarette-smoking party girl who could give Prince Harry a run for his money for the title of the wildest member of ‘the Firm’.

As of January 2025, Amelia, who goes by Mel, is 44th in line to the throne. 

The youngest child of George Windsor, Earl of St Andrews is open about her habit as she has shared snaps of herself smoking on social media.

In May 2021, she was then pictured lighting up outside a trendy pub in Notting Hill where she drank cocktails and chatted with her cousin Cassius Taylor – who is also fond of a cigarette.

Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster

A long-time personal friend of the royal family and confidante of Prince Charles, Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor died of a heart attack on August 9, 2016.

After failing to gain a place at Eton, Gerald left Harrow with O-levels in English and History – as well as a ‘lifelong addiction to smoking’, according to the Camden New Journal.

The obituary released by Grosvenor Estate read: ‘Distinctly down-to-earth the Duke of Westminster was rarely seen without a Diet Coke and a cigarette (later electric).’

The Duke admitted to being a heavy smoker, once telling a friend that the only reason he bought a private plane – the £5 million Cessna Citation — was so that he could smoke on board.

The Grosvenor Estate, then worth an estimated £9billion, passed to his only son, Hugh Grosvenor, now 34.

As such, Hugh, the 7th Duke of Westminster, is the UK’s richest man under the age of 40.

He was also made Prince George’s godfather in 2013.

Lady Sarah Spencer

Before marrying Princess Diana, it was Lady Sarah Spencer, now 69, who first caught Prince Charles’s eye at a house party at Windsor Castle for Royal Ascot.

But after a ski trip with the prince in 1978, Sarah squashed romantic rumours by telling reporters it was a ‘marvellous holiday but there’s no question of an engagement’.

Time magazine reported that Sarah said:  ‘I’m not in love with him. And I wouldn’t marry anyone I didn’t love whether he were the dustman or the King of England.’

And perhaps this was for the best as the eldest Spencer sister was a heavy smoker – something that Charles still cannot stand.

In one picture taken in Kensington, London in 1979, Lady Sarah is seen having her cigarette lit by a man in a tuxedo at the opening of a night club.

The feisty red head has continued this habit into her later life and seems to be in no hurry to quit.

Indeed, her friends and family celebrated her 60th birthday with a huge cake in the shape of a packet of Silk Cut in tribute to her love of cigarettes.

Tiggy Legge-Bourke

As the former nanny of Prince William and Prince Harry, Tiggy Legge-Bourke knew all too well how much Charles despised smoking.

It has been reported that he would banish her up on to the roof of St James’s Palace to smoke as Charles hated the smell.

Tiggy, now 59, was once photographed, cigarette in mouth, driving a Land Rover with Prince Harry leaning out of the window shooting rabbits. Charles was not amused.

And while on skiing holidays with the royals, Tiggy would puff on a cigarette as she went down the slopes.

Princess Diana also disliked Tiggy’s habit of smoking around her sons.

In February 1996, Diana wrote to Charles and said Tiggy should ‘not spend unnecessary time in the children’s rooms… read to them at night, nor supervise their bathtime.’

It later emerged that Tiggy allegedly provided Harry with his first crafty drag on a cigarette at the ripe age of 10 — a habit he took years to quit.

Chelsy Davy

Zimbabwean businesswoman Chelsy Davy, 39, is happily married to Oxford graduate Sam Cutmore-Scott with whom she has two children, Leo and Chloe.

But ten years ago, she was capturing the public’s attention as Prince Harry’s on-again off-again girlfriend.

She met the prince in South Africa during his gap year in 2004, after which a tumultuous relationship ensued.

In 2010, Prince Harry was said to have brought in the New Year in Mauritius with Chelsy and her parents Charles and Beverley.

But the loved-up pair could not stop puffing away on cigarettes, much to her father’s annoyance.

‘Chelsy doesn’t smoke in front of her family if she can avoid it, but she really wanted to relax with Harry and they both enjoyed a few packets of cigarettes,’ a friend told the Daily Mail at the time.

‘Chelsy’s father made a comment about ‘cancer sticks’ – but she said she was old enough to do what she wanted.’ 

The pair broke up in 2011 – months before Prince William’s wedding to Kate Middleton.

But Chelsy was still invited to the lavish ceremony, showing just how fond the royal family were of her. 

Cressida Bonas

Cressida is the youngest daughter of socialite Lady Mary Curzon and Old Harrovian businessman Jeffrey Bonas.

While at the private boarding school Stowe in Buckinghamshire, Cressida had a handy bedroom window in Nugent house through which she and her friends would crawl to light up on the roof.

Chain-smoking Cressida first struck up a romance with Prince Harry in 2012 after they were introduced by his cousin Princess Eugenie.

In his memoir Spare, the Duke of Sussex recalled a ‘painfully awkward’ moment from their first date.

‘I leaned in to give her a kiss, but my aim was off,’ he wrote. ‘She turned, I tried again on the return trip and we managed something like a graze.’

When the prince called Eugenie to rant about the failed kiss, he learned that his cousin had already been told the story from Cressida’s point of view.

‘But then came the good news,’ Harry continued. ‘Cressida was game to try again.’ 

The couple called it quits in 2014 as Cressida couldn’t stand the public scrutiny of dating a royal.

But it seemed Cressida found it harder to quit smoking.

Shortly after her relationship with Harry ended, Cressida was pictured leaving the Rosemary Branch Theatre where she starred in a production of There’s A Monster In The Lake with a cigarette in hand.