Sarah Beeny breaks silence on challenges in 22-year marriage to husband amid devastating cancer battle

Sarah Beeny is a force to be reckoned with – and she makes no apologies for it. The TV presenter became a household name in the heyday of daytime property shows in the early noughties, and has since added master renovator, cancer survivor and podcaster to her list of achievements.

At 52, she’s still making TV, is nearing the end of a mammoth house build and has just spent close to four months on a tour bus with her four sons and husband of 22 years, Graham Swift, as they performed sellout gigs with their family band, The Entitled Sons. Her life, as she tells us during an exclusive photo shoot with OK! at her incredible countryside mansion, is a healthy mix of chaos, love and ever-changing to-do lists.

“I’m a doer – if I have an idea, I need to just do it,” she laughs. “All my kids have dyslexia and one has ADHD, and sometimes I think, ‘Wonder where that came from?!’ My husband says it’s me, but of course I say it’s him!”

Five years ago, Sarah, along with Graham and their children Billy, 20, Charlie, 18, Laurie, 16, and Rafferty, 15, upped sticks and moved from East Yorkshire to 220 acres of beautiful Somerset countryside, and began building their stunning home – involving the odd skirmish with planners along the way. Amid the build, Sarah was dealt a devastating blow when she learnt in August 2022 that she had breast cancer – the disease her mum Ann sadly died from at the age of 39, when Sarah was just 10.

Sarah documented her experience for a moving Channel 4 show, Sarah Beeny vs Cancer, in June 2023. And she was open about her diagnosis from the start because, she tells us, nothing good happens in secret. “It seemed the easiest option. Secrets are complicated to keep. I decided to throw it all out there,” she explains.

Sarah knows how fortunate she was to receive the treatment she did – and later, to reach the end of treatment – and has no regrets about sharing her story. “I was very frightened of the diagnosis, really scared. But I felt that if everyone was up to date, they wouldn’t be as scared. It feels like a lifetime ago now. Maybe that’s something I’m lucky about – I’m a mover-on-er. I had thousands of letters, not to mention Instagram messages, from people saying it helped. If I helped just one person, I’m happy.” It can’t have been easy, navigating such a traumatic time, but Sarah’s husband Graham was by her side through every high and low.

“There are bumps along the way in life and marriage – it’s not all plain sailing,” she reflects. “But during my cancer treatment, Graham was absolutely as I’d expected him to be – great, because he’s a good man. I don’t have a husband who will come in with tea trays, I don’t have a butler! But I don’t want one, I’d find that annoying. Whenever he’s needed to step up, he’s stepped up, and that was one of those times.

“We had a conversation once. I said, ‘I know you might not be OK all the time, but don’t talk to me about that please. Can you talk to my brother or someone else?’ And he said, ‘Yes, I know.’ I think he did talk to my brother and some friends. He knew I didn’t have any space for him not to be OK.”

Sarah describes life as “therapy”, saying she learns more about herself every year. And in her new podcast, Seriously?! With Sarah Beeny, she explores having open and honest conversations with family. In fact, she tells us that recently, she’s been confronting her attachment to objects, and came to a startling realisation about where it stems from.

While viewers of hit Channel 4 show Sarah Beeny’s New Life In The Country, which is returning in January, will be familiar with her eye for interiors, Sarah feels her approach needs a rethink. “Home is really important for me,” she says. “But it’s not about how it looks, it’s about how it makes people feel. My mum died when I was quite young and I’ve been sentimental since then. I’ve released myself from some of it now – and I’ve realised that my kids aren’t sentimental at all.

“We had a long chat around the fire the other day. They said, ‘Mum, we’re not sentimental because you’re here. You’re sentimental because you hung on to all the things that reminded you of your mum, but you’re our mum and you’re sitting right here.’ And I realised it was so true. Maybe I should let some stuff go.”

Viewers of the first two series saw Sarah and Graham build a country mansion, decorated in Sarah’s favourite “classicalist” style, with a heavy dose of “chaos” thrown in. As well as a new film and TV studio in the grounds, there’s a boathouse that Sarah built because she wanted to learn how to craft a thatch roof and it was “the smallest thing we could think of to thatch”.

“I’ve been with my husband since I was 19, and living with someone that long, you end up with an ‘us style’. Our styles are similar and we are classicists, traditionalists. That’s partly because of how we live. I’m a bit chaotic and if you have a traditional interior, it weathers being shambolic. I love minimal interiors, but you’ve got to really keep them tidy.”

Their home is filled with antique chairs, bookcases and desks. Sarah designs for longevity though, she says, so it’s never a case of style over substance. She’d far rather install something – like their stunning parquet flooring – which withstands and is arguably improved by the odd dent or stain, than spend her days mopping a marble floor.

There are also some quirky vinyl floorings in the bathrooms – essential in a house full of boys, she maintains. “Historically, they’ve had bad press but when you find a cool print, it can look fantastic.” And what would Sarah consider her most prized piece of furniture – maybe the antique bookcase lining her office wall, or their bespoke Shaker-style kitchen? “A brass toilet cistern with Swift & Beeny Sanitary Engineers printed on it – it’s lavish and ridiculous,” she laughs. “We brought it from our old house.”

The home is beautiful and busy in equal measures, with all four boys still there – and unlikely to be leaving any time soon, especially with the offer of rent-free living, for now. Their eldest, Billy, began studying music at Goldsmiths, University of London, but realised he was missing lectures to go on tour so he left after the first term. He’s now back with the clan in Somerset.

“He said, ‘Mum, why am I trying to go and learn to do what I’m doing?’ Charlie did his A levels this year and didn’t want to go to university, so he’s doing the band full-time too. It’s full on, they’re all in the studio writing and practising for about two hours every night.

“If they didn’t work really hard I wouldn’t be so supportive, but they’re completely driven. So, as long as they’re working hard, they’ve got as long as someone would spend at university and I’ll support them, then we’ll have a conversation. But at the moment, they’re doing brilliantly.”

While she’s not strictly part of the line-up, Sarah recently joined the band on their second UK tour, which spanned four months. “People ask what I’ve been up to. I’m like, ‘Obviously, I’m on tour with the boys!’ I’m on the band bus and going with them, eating chips along the way. It’s flipping excellent!”