Nicola Sturgeon's autobiography will be released soon (Image: Getty)
Nicola Sturgeon's new memoir reveals several massive bombshells about her time in frontline politics. The SNP heavyweight occupied Scotland's highest office from 2014 to 2023, becoming the first woman to lead the party and the first to front the nation's devolved government.
But in exerpts from the former Scottish First Minister's upcoming book, Frankly, Ms Sturgeon opened up about darker chapters in her story. These include the fallout from her arrest in June 2023, the heartbreak of a miscarriage in 2010, and hurtful speculation about her sexuality.
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Passages from the eagerly anticipated tell-all, published in The Times, offer a strikingly candid insight into her time at the top, and the struggles hidden behind her steely and authoritative public image.
Here are five of the biggest moments from the book we know of so far.
1. 'Mental torture'
Ms Sturgeon revealed that being arrested and questioned by the police following the arrest of her ex-husband and the Scottish National Party (SNP) treasurer was the “worst day of my life”.
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Her husband, Peter Murrell, the former chief executive officer of the SNP, was arrested in 2023 and later charged with embezzlement, after his and Ms Sturgeon’s home was searched by police looking into what happened to ￡660,000 of donations to the party.
Police also investigated Colin Beattie and Ms Sturgeon but they were later exonerated. The arrests, Ms Sturgeon said, made her feel like she “had fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel”.
She said she barely slept during the period leading up to her arrest and would wake with her stomach in knots.
Ms Sturgeon described June 11, the date she was arrested and questioned, as the “worst day of my life” but added she was partly relieved that her wait was over.
She also said: “I retain both faith in and respect for our country’s criminal justice system. However, none of that changes this fact: being the subject of a high-profile criminal investigation for almost two years, especially having committed no crime, was like a form of mental torture.”
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Nicola Sturgeon was the first FM in Scottish history (Image: Getty)
2. Wanting to disappear into the North Sea
Following her questioning, she went to visit a friend in the north east of Scotland for a week to escape the media glare.
She wrote: “I spent hours, looking out across the North Sea. At first, I wanted to somehow disappear into its vastness. Slowly but surely, though, the sea calmed me.”
Ms Sturgeon told how she carried a sense of “dread and anxiety” for a year, during which nothing happened, until April 2024, when Mr Murrell was re-arrested and charged.
But the probe into Ms Sturgeon continued and she admitted she was frightened about the investigation even though she knew she had “done nothing wrong”.
She wrote of an “overwhelming” sense of relief and release upon being told she would face no further action on March 20, 2025.
3. Considering quitting after first term
Ms Sturgeon also recently revealed she had considered leaving politics after just one term at Holyrood, she has said.
The former FM was first elected as a regional MSP for Glasgow in the first term of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.
But speaking at an event in her Glasgow Southside constituency as she launched her memoir, Frankly, Ms Sturgeon said she felt she had “failed” because she was unable to win her constituency.
By that point, she said, the future first minister had lost three constituency races – in 1992 and 1997 for Westminster and the Holyrood seat she contested in 1999.
“I wasn’t particularly happy in myself in the first term of Parliament,” she said at the event as part of the Govanhill Book Festival.
“This dream I’d had about being a politician was going to be realised and yet I felt I’d failed because I hadn’t won the constituency.”
She added: “I was really conflicted for the first few years and, of course, there was lots of teething problems with the Parliament as a whole, so it wasn’t the happiest time in my political career.
“I guess I got to the end of that first session of the Scottish Parliament, not really sure whether I wanted to spend that much more time in politics.
“That obviously changed and the rest is history, but that was a moment where I could easily, I think, have taken a step out and done something different.”
Ms Sturgeon would go on to win the seat, which was originally named Glasgow Govan, in 2007 before announcing her plans to step down as an MSP at next year’s election.
GB News: Nicola Sturgeon to step down as MSP
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4. Heartbreak over miscarriage
In her book, Ms Sturgeon also opens up about her miscarriage in 2010, saying she went to work in January while she was in “constant agony”, including a memorial event for the 40th anniversary of the Ibrox disaster.
It was a chance appointment with her doctor where she mentioned some “spots of blood” while receiving a flu jab on December 30 of that year which led to an urgent appointment at Glasgow Royal Infirmary the following day.
“I think I’d known in my heart what the outcome would be, but I was still hoping for the best,” she wrote.
“It seemed that suddenly, belatedly, I wanted to be pregnant after all. The nurse who did the scan was lovely. I didn’t really know what I was looking for on the screen, but her face told me what I needed to know. The baby was gone.”
“Eventually, four days later, during the evening of January 4, 2011, the pregnancy ‘passed’,” she said.
“I had the presence of mind to call Peter into the bathroom and, together, we flushed our ‘baby’ down the toilet. We later resolved to try again, but I knew then that we had lost our one chance.”
She was “desolate and heartbroken” for herself, but more so for her husband and became “consumed by guilt” that she had done something to cause the loss of the baby, feelings, she wrote, which have “never quite left me”.
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5. Sexuality rumours
Elsewhere, Ms Sturgeon also addresses rumours of her “torrid lesbian affair” around 2020 with Catherine Colonna, who was French ambassador to the UK at the time, and false rumours about her issuing a super-injunction to silence the press.
She concludes: “However, while the fact I was being lied about got under my skin, the nature of the insult itself was water off a duck’s back.
“Long-term relationships with men have accounted for more than 30 years of my life, but I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary. Moreover, sexual relationships should be private matters.”
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