New controversial book on Prince Andrew, Fergie raises more questions about the Royal Family
A controversial new book explores the downfall of Prince Andrew and Fergie’s marriage – including an incident in Australia – and raises questions about the British Royal Family.
An explosive new book about Prince Andrew and Fergie raises larger questions about the Royal Family.
Renowned author Andrew Lownie says he is still struck by the tolerance for Prince Andrew’s and Sarah Ferguson’s escapades, and the extent to which the Palace put up with it.
“It is a sad decline and fall, really, of two people,” Lownie told this masthead.
He wanted to find out why Andrew and Fergie were “the happiest divorced couple ever. Or are they?”
Lownie says his “instinct” was that Andrew had leveraged his royal position for personal financial gain.
“I was interested in the relationship between the media and the Royal Family, and how they try to shape the narrative, the sort of deals that are done.”
Lownie approached 3000 sources and spoke to 300 who offered their recollections of dealings with the former couple, Jeffrey Epstein, and Buckingham Palace.
While his book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York paints a portrait of a marriage in trouble almost as soon as it began with Prince Andrew’s naval career which reduced Fergie to a “shore wife,” the downfall of the Yorks was produced by their financial and sexual entanglements.
He said a lot of sources wanted to speak out about things such as “Andrew was protected by the Queen, complaints that were made to Number 10 or to Buckingham Palace were ignored”.
Andrew’s income was a “mystery”, writes Lownie, as his lavish lifestyle far outspent his naval income and annual stipend from the Queen.
Prince Andrew was the UK’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment from 2001 until 2011. His role, unpaid, was to promote British business interests abroad, and foster relationships to support UK businesses.
The book reveals that Prince Charles, at the time, was concerned about Andrew’s “playboy image”. “He thinks he won’t be able to resist the temptation of mixing business with pleasure”, according to a Palace source.
Andrew allegedly ignored his official briefs and earned the nickname in the Gulf states “HBH: His Buffoon Highness”. He also attempted to sell his house, Sunninghill, during his visit with wealthy Gulf Arabs.
“The fact that the Queen was not just supportive of [Andrew] but actually colluded with him,” Lownie said. “She must’ve known what he was up to in places like Azerbaijan through her own sources, and yet didn’t shut him down, in fact, encouraged him.”
“The fact that everyone knew he was a disaster waiting to happen as special trade envoy and nothing was done, he was allowed to go on for ten years,” Lownie said.
“They then allowed him to do Pitch@ThePalace and cream off a cut of the action.”
The book reveals that the fine print of Pitch@Palace required two per cent commission from anyone who raised investment for up to three years after an event.
“You’ve got to wonder, given that he is such a liability, why there wasn’t more scrutiny of him because of the reputational damage he threatened to inflict,” Lownie said.
Prince Andrew alienated people around him. The book recounts an incident in 2005 where he was called a “pompous prick” while going through security at Melbourne airport. However, Fergie was popular with the common folk and floated numerous ideas for TV shows and churned out around 100 books including romance novels.
Fergie was entangled with Jeffrey Epstein financially. The book suggests the disgraced financier took care of Fergie’s debts. The book quotes a mutual friend of Andrew and Epstein’s who said: “I think that Sarah has actually received hundreds of thousands of dollars” from Epstein. Ferguson denies this. But her first visit to Epstein is known to be in 1998, and the duchess has called accepting money from Epstein “a gigantic error of judgement”.
But there is also what Lownie calls the “connivance of the institution itself”, where the Palace did allegedly seek to influence the outcome of things.
Entitled suggests that the incident where Ferguson is photographed by paparazzi having her toes sucked by businessman John Bryant in the South of France was set up.
“Both Fergie and her mother said that it was the Palace that tipped [media] off. There’s an argument that the paparazzi knew who was coming in and there was a degree of preparation” by photographers who built a trench on the property to hide in. Lownie spoke to village locals who said “the guests had been told about the paparazzi and didn’t seem perturbed”.
One of the people Lownie did not speak to was Virginia Roberts Giuffre. But he had many contacts who did, such as investigative journalist Sharon Churcher who went to Australia to interview her.
The book describes how Churcher saw Virginia take the now infamous photograph of her and Prince Andrew from where she had hidden it in an envelope in a bookshelf. Churcher saw the photo was genuine, and took a photo of it for her own records.
This account would counter Prince Andrew’s claim that the photo was probably a forgery.
Lownie also claims that Prince Andrew chose Giuffre from pictures that Ghislaine Maxwell had emailed him, as if “ordering from a catalogue.”
When it comes to Palace denials, Lownie said only one royal has so far rebuffed his claims, and that is Prince Harry, who denied he got into a fist fight with Prince Andrew.
“My source is impeccable. The detail they’ve given me makes me think it’s absolutely true,” Lownie said. But henceforth, future runs of the book will add the disclaimer “Prince Harry denies this”.
Lownie said the younger royals seem to be avoiding many of Prince Andrew’s mistakes.
“There’s all that potential and the fact that he was the blue-eyed boy, and then through character, wrong decisions, bad influence of his wife, as well as anyone else—here he is, this lonely old man, watching the planes land, his reputation completely destroyed, not really able to understand it.
“Very little self-awareness, clutching onto the status of living in Royal Lodge.”
The book is available from HarperCollins.
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Originally published as New controversial book on Prince Andrew, Fergie raises more questions about the Royal Family
