Former Prince Andrew’s biographer predicts ‘lots more to come’, after years charting his vices
- Written by Dennis Altman, Vice Chancellor's Fellow and Professorial Fellow, Institute for Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University
Andrew Lownie is a lucky author. He spent many years researching the story of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, speaking to 300 people with intimate knowledge of the couple – far more refused – and accessing files from the National Archives for which he needed a court order. Last week, King Charles announced his brother would be stripped of his royal titles, including prince, and will move out of his home, Royal Lodge.
Entitled, his unauthorised biography of Andrew and Sarah, appeared shortly before Andrew’s precipitous fall from grace and will undoubtedly be a bestseller. (There is more up-to-date information, and perhaps less speculation, than in Nigel Cawthorne’s 2020 book Prince Andrew: Epstein, Maxwell and the Palace.)
“I think there’s lots more still to come, lots more, and it will be even more damaging material,” Lownie said last week of the ongoing revelations about the former prince, now Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.
Review: Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York – Andrew Lownie (William Collins)
A historian, journalist and literary agent, Lownie has specialised in writing about royal scandals. Entitled seems an obvious next step for an author whose last book was about the Duke of Windsor, whose 1936 abdication to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson was the biggest crisis for the monarchy in the past century.
Even for those not interested in royal gossip, Entitled is a fascinating read. As Lownie writes, “It is a tale of childhood trauma, infidelity, lust, betrayal, corruption, greed, extravagance, arrogance, entitlement, Establishment cover-up and hubris.”
Reckless and corrupt
We have known for most of the past 20 years that ex-Prince Andrew was both reckless and corrupt. We have also known Sarah Ferguson (Fergie), his former wife and apparently continuing housemate, at least until now (she has announced she will be moving into her own separate home), was equally so. There is no suggestion, however, that her contact with Jeffrey Epstein involved seeking sexual favours.
It was the couple’s closeness to convicted sex offender Epstein that brought them down. Lownie writes that “Randy Andy” was not only close to Epstein, but apparently shared young women with him. Epstein claimed “he likes to engage in stuff that’s even kinky to me — and I’m the king of kink”.
In 2019, Andrew famously resigned from royal duties (at his then 98-year-old father’s instigation, writes Lownie) after his disastrous hour-long interview with BBC Newsnight. In it, among other things, Andrew denied meeting Virginia Giuffre Roberts, the self-described Epstein “sex slave” who said she had sex with Andrew three times and was photographed with him and Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
The infamous BBC Newsnight interview that had Andrew removed from royal duties in 2019.The tragic April suicide of Giuffre, and the publication last week of her memoir Nobody’s Girl, finally forced the palace to take significant action.
Though Andrew had denied Giuffre’s accounts of having sex with him, he paid her out a large sum, then lied about his continuing association with Epstein. Court documents released in January reveal a “member of the British royal family”, believed to be Andrew, emailed Epstein saying: “Keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!”
A BBC producer told Lownes the team “found personal email discussions between Ghislaine and Andrew discussing Virginia” and “they worked together to build a dossier about Virginia to leak to the media”.
Dubious deals
Andrew equally deserved to lose his position because of years of dubious deal-making with an extraordinary series of crooks and tyrants.
After a long career in the British Navy, including time as a helicopter pilot in the 1982 Falklands War, he was found a position supporting British trade and investment abroad. At this point, any sense he might have had of the distinction between royal duty and personal advancement vanished.
The amount of money Sarah Ferguson has earned and spent is literally staggering.
George Burns/AAP
Comparisons to Trump
Reading about the Mountbatten Windsor family, as they will now be known, I was struck by the comparison with the Trump family. (Trump himself has just commented on King Charles’ decision to strip Andrew of his titles: “I feel very badly,” Trump said. “It’s a terrible thing that’s happened to the family.”)
When they built and furnished their first home, Sunninghill, it sounded remarkably like something Trump might construct: “One entered by the thirty-five-foot high stone floor hall, which rose to a glass dome and minstrels gallery through a lobby adorned with a medieval soldier’s helmet from Windsor Castle and the head of a North American buffalo — a gift from a royal tour.”
Trumplike, too, is the way their children, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, have been gifted profitable access to some of the Middle East potentates who befriended Andrew, though Lownie tells us remarkably little about the princesses. (He does not even comment on the fact their royal titles are not shared by their cousins, the children of Princess Anne and Prince Edward.)
It is ‘Trumplike’ the way Beatrice and Eugenie were gifted ‘profitable access’ to some Middle East potentates who befriended Andrew.
Gero Breloer/AAP
Lownie is an engaging author, and his book is a compulsive read. He is skilful in dropping in a casual comment that becomes relevant later. The best example is several accounts of Andrew seen dancing at nightclubs and sweating profusely; those of us who watched his fateful television interview will recall his protestation that the stress of his service in the Falklands War cost him the ability to sweat.
Among the many people whose reputations are soiled in this sorry tale, that of the late Queen Elizabeth is most striking. While others in the family – Prince Phillip, Prince William, even Princess Margaret – were appalled by the couple, the queen remained blind to Andrew’s dealings and consistently bailed him out. After the BBC interview, she was deliberately photographed riding with Andrew in the grounds of Windsor Castle, Lownie writes.
Lownie remains discreet in his discussion of the queen and is on record as a supporter of the monarchy. (Though he told an interviewer last week: “I think the queen has to take some responsibility for the monster she created.”)
If there is a gap in this book, it is his reluctance to question how far the sense of entitlement, carried to the extreme by Andrew and Sarah, is common to others in the family.
Can the monarchy survive?
Lownie ends his book warning of the harm this story has done to the British monarchy. He finished it before King Charles acted to decisively exorcise Andrew from “the firm” and banished him to what the royals call “a cottage” on Charles’ private Sandringham estate.
I suspect this has saved the monarchy in Britain, at least for now. Charles has proved to be a far more effective constitutional monarch than most expected, as he demonstrated when he very carefully hosted Trump’s state visit. That the Canadian prime minister invited Charles to open the nation’s parliament earlier this year suggests he is seen as a valuable political asset.
Charles proved himself an effective constitutional monarch when he very carefully hosted Donald Trump.
Doug Mills/AAP
Whether exile to Sandringham will prevent further moves against Andrew is unclear. With royal status removed, he is vulnerable to other possible accusations emerging. I would not be surprised were he to end up in Dubai, where he could share reminiscences of royal splendour with the disgraced Spanish king, Juan Carlos. Or in Abu Dhabi, where he has reportedly been offered the use of a lavish royal palace by the country’s ruler.
Reading Entitled, it is hard to feel monarchy is justified. But I return to the dilemma that led me to write my book God Save the Queen: many of the countries we regard as most democratic – Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands – are constitutional monarchies.
In the end, Britain’s monarchy will survive because its political leaders are trusted even less than its hapless royals.
Authors: Dennis Altman, Vice Chancellor's Fellow and Professorial Fellow, Institute for Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University
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