Entitled: A Conversation With Author Andrew Lownie

0:01Andrew Lownie discusses his Prince Andrew biography, Megan drops a trailer for her cooking show, and Kate releases a summer video message. I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent, and this is Newsweek's Royal Report. Hello listeners, and welcome to the show, Andrew Lownie. Now, Andrew's new royal book, called Entitled, charts the rise and fall of Prince Andrew, but interestingly not only in the context of Jeffrey Epstein, but also in relation to Sarah Ferguson, his ex-wife. Many may know her as Fergie, entitled Made a Splash this month with stories of Andrew being sex-obsessed, bullying palace staff, generally being a boorish buffoon, and, of course, new details about the Epstein scandal.

0:46It was all over the British press in particular. Andrew, thank you so much for joining me. Right, well, thank you. Yes, it was a four-year sort of research project. I started off by actually getting six crates of news cuttings going back to the 1980s. Wow. And that gave me a sort of chronology and 12 lever arch files. Took me several years just to get that set up. And that gave me people I could contact. And then I worked on getting people through electoral roll, who's who, social media, LinkedIn, you name it, school lists, and began to approach people. I approached about 3 ,000 people, 300 responded, but I was amazed.

1:26Some of them were prepared to go on the record. Some of them were actually very closely involved with both Andrew and Sarah. For example, Andrew's commander in the Falklands, his naval mentor, very senior diplomats. So that helped give me the structure for the book. And the book, as you say, is a study of the happiest divorced couple ever. It also looks at the whole Epstein story and Andrew's relationship with him and indeed Sarah's relationship, which is often ignored. And so tell me about that from a legal point of view. So did you have to go, you know, there's so many different points in there and covering lots of different people beyond just Andrew and Sarah.

2:09So did you get a lot of involvement from, you know, the publisher, from the legal team going through line by line, checking facts and all of that kind of thing? Yeah, absolutely. So I think there were 18 proofs and only about three of those were actually what I would say editorial comments. The rest were legal comments going to and fro. I had to clearly show the legal team the evidence for everything I'd written, people signing off on interviews, etc. And I had to give them my sources, even the unnamed ones. I had to provide, when possible, more than one source. and as you know, it's not easy to do that writing in this area.

2:51So there was pushback. I mean, Sarah Ferguson's lawyer, Paul Tweed, was writing letters as soon as the book was announced and they knew about it. Well, they knew about it before, but they didn't know it was coming out. I mean, the irony is that I'd actually talked to Sarah Ferguson on the day that Andrew settled with Virginia Giffrey to see if she and her ex-husband would collaborate with me or cooperate, shall we say. And tell me how that conversation went, including, you know, what was the mood in the room? Well, she was, I mean, she came late. She was very charming. We swapped books. I gave her my Traitor King, which I thought would at least she'd know where I was coming from.

3:31And she brought some, I think, a present of one of the things, one of the products she produces. She had one of her secretaries there. And it was because my wife had known her in their childhood. It was actually a very friendly meeting. And I'm sure there's some selfies somewhere. And I hoped when she left the meeting that she would collaborate, because it seemed to me that that was the best way to get the most accurate, balanced, fair, complete book. book. I mean, though she's done authorised books before with Ingrid Seawood, I felt this was quite a good hybrid. And I stress the fact that if I found stuff that was critical, then I would put it in.

4:16But if I found good stuff, I would put that in too. And I hope you feel that I have said that, I praised her role as humanitarian. I mean, she comes across as a very effective operator, particularly when she was first working in London. So anyway, she decided after some reflection not to cooperate. In fact, told people not to talk to me. And I mean, the claim is that now that I was always going to be negative and there was no point. But that's certainly not the case. And anyone who's read any of my previous books will see that I try as far as possible to present a balanced view of you. but not a sanitised one.

5:01Absolutely. And there are huge, really bombshell details in this book, which I want to get onto in due course, but obviously it is called, entitled, The Rise and Fall of the House of York. So let's talk a little bit about the rise, because that's the bit that everybody has forgotten largely now, because we spend all this time talking about Epstein. Obviously, once upon a time, Andrew was viewed very differently by the British public. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, both of them. I mean, the wedding was one of the great sort of events of 1986. He came back from the Falklands as a hero. He was the poster boy of the royal family.

5:33I mean, they were pushing him forward as the sort of future, particularly the time when Charles had his marital problems. I mean, Andrew, I think even at one point, thought that he might become regent until William succeeded. So they were seen as a breath of fresh air. They're very natural. Diana was, there were already problems with Diana. Sarah got on very well with the rest of the family. So it's a very positive picture, but it does begin to go wrong reasonably quickly after the wedding. It's a knockout television show, which is, I mean, they equip themselves very well in some ways, but they're just a little too familiar.

6:14People felt that it was a bit vulgar. It had taken away the mystique of royalty. This was this sort of game show that was on television. It raised a lot of money for charity. Princess Anne also, Prince Edward took part. He had actually set it up. But then after that, the press kind of turned on her. And there were stories that she was taking too many holidays, freebie Fergie. They criticised her weight, the Duchess of Pork. That's particularly cruel, that one, isn't it? I think the Duchess of Pork. Sorry. Yeah. No, I mean, and I think it must have been incredibly upsetting to feel that you were her husband, who often was away at sea.

6:50She was sort of thrown into dealing with the palace. And, you know, she had all these very negative headlines. And, you know, I think the great thing about her is she is a great survivor. She bounces back from the most extraordinary depths, really. I mean, the famous episode in May 2010 when she was caught by the news of the world on camera selling access to Andrew for£500 ,000. But, you know, people forgot about that. And I think people have admired, particularly in the States, her ability to make money. I mean, it's extraordinary the sums of money she was making. The problem was she was spending more than she was making.

7:29And you have some really, really great detail in the book on that exact subject. For example, her walking into restaurants and not expecting to have to pay, you know, these huge shopping sprees. It feels like for Sarah, her massive weakness was money. Yes, I think that's right. I think that in some ways created problems for Andrew because he was helping her pay off her debts. And that was one of the reasons he got tied up with Epstein because of the need to borrow money or actually take money from Epstein. um but yeah yeah i mean she's a sort of people pleaser she says she wants to be generous um uh she has no concept of money i think that's the problem it's you know she just spends it without any sort of budgeting uh and it a lot of it was wasted um but you know if she wanted a jersey and you couldn't decide on the color she'd buy all eight um she would waste money by sending people on Concorde just to pick up a bit of paper.

8:34She would miss flights without refunds. She would have huge baggage payments on the flights with suitcases filled with coat hangers. It's almost as if she hadn't really had any sort of training about how to manage her money. And because it came quite easily, I mean, she was paid huge sums of money for speaking engagements, for endorsing products, for appearances. I think she just kind of thought it would go on forever. And clearly Weight Watchers, in which she made a great success, people at Weight Watchers felt that, you know, she'd got lots of people joined Weight Watchers as a result of it.

9:12Same with Wedgwood China. She increased the number of people who bought Wedgwood China, which was seen as rather old-fashioned before she became involved. So I think she kind of just assumed that she could spend, spend, spend. And it kind of caught up with her a couple of times. And this is how she got into messes like the news the world sting. And let's talk about Andrew. So obviously we're going to talk a lot about Epstein. Before we do, I mean, that wasn't his first scandal. And you have some really interesting stuff in the book about his mistreatment, for example, of his staff, including a man who Andrew took against because he had a mole on his face, for example?

9:55Yeah, Andrew, I mean, has a very bad reputation for the way he treats staff. I mean, the other members of the royal family treat them as companions and friends. And often they stay, particularly for example, with Prince Philip, they stayed for years. Andrew seems to sort of treat them a bit like, well, like their subordinates. And it doesn't even as human beings. So the stories of summoning maids up from four floors below to just open a curtain. There are stories of him getting his police protection officers to go and pick up his golf balls when he's driven them down the fairway. He takes advantage of his position.

10:31And sometimes it's to humiliate people. He thinks it's very funny to sort of play japes on people, but knowing that they can't really respond. And there's this very cruel element to him, a sort of bully, which goes right back to school. One sees it. I talked to his dance teacher. She had stories about how he behaved because he didn't really like dancing to the other children. There's a friend of mine I've known for 40 years who was at school with him who has a story of her tent at Balmoral having the fly sheet taken off by Andrew and thrown in the river so that if it rained, she would be drenched.

11:08Do you know whether it did rain? I didn't. I should go and ask her. I'm actually seeing her tomorrow at the launch. So I will ask her. Fantastic. Yeah, I mean, there's a very odd thing there. There's a retired general who was taking too long to take off his gloves, and Andrew kind of lost patience with him and sort of snatched them from him and threw them into a crowd. And then one story that's often been quoted about David Anderson, who was a very senior courtier at Hillsborough, who made the mistake in a very casual conversation of just saying, you know, I think the Queen Mother feels this. And Andrew went apoplectic, said that, you know, she is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

11:53And this standing on ceremony, this pomposity, this reliance on status seems to be a very strong theme with him. And it was to a certain extent with Sarah Ferguson as well. People talk of her when she first joined the royal family, being very relaxed, just one of them coming down and chatting in the way that Diana used to. And then increasingly becoming imperious, getting them to do her laundry, even when she came to stay, bringing her laundry with her. There were stories of coming back from clubbing when the staff wants to go to bed and wanting them to rustle up a meal of people in the ski chalet, being told to prepare a meal.

12:34And then the last minute she decided to go out and go to a restaurant. So, I mean, quite inconsiderate. And I think this is why I chose the title Entitled, because it seemed to sum up the behavior of both of them. Now, Andrew, you, of course, say in the book that Andrew may, in fact, have met Jeffrey Epstein far earlier than we all thought. that Andrew had said in his interview that he did with Emmeline Maitlis that he didn't meet Jeffrey Epstein until 1999. But you, of course, point to this letter that Andrew's former private secretary sent into the Times in March 2011, in which he suggested that Andrew might have actually met Epstein many, many years earlier, as early as the early 1990s.

13:23A business associate of Epstein says it's 1991. we have Sarah on the Lolita flight in 1998. I think what surprised me too was it's not only that they met much earlier, they actually continued to see Epstein much later than they claimed in public. So for example, I have witnesses seeing Sarah Ferguson staying at one of Epstein's flats in New York up to 2015, backed up by the doorman there. The doorman used to, whenever she stayed, and she stayed a lot, they would actually get into their full dress uniform in her honour. Wow. It's a sort of perplexing why they tell these, give their versions of the truth when they can easily be sort of verified.

14:12But they also saw Epstein much more. Andrew pretended this was a very casual relationship, but it's clear that from talking, for example, to the personal protection officer that they often stayed in New York so often that actually he had a suite set aside for him called the Britannia suite. Deborah Gale, who was the housekeeper at Palm Beach, is on the record, I think, in legal depositions, talking about how often Andrew came to stay. I mean, she liked him and he was polite to her. I think he even tipped her. There are plenty of accounts of Andrew on the island from Cathy and Miles Alexander, who were the sort of managers there, to Steve Scully, who did the IT on the island.

14:57So, I mean, it's ridiculous that they should claim, or Andrew should claim, that he hardly had in contact. And we're increasingly seeing material in a case with Barclays, with a man called Jess Slaley, showing that there was a great deal of contact after 2010, that there were meetings, they were still basically operating in business together. there, Barclays, Andrew and Epstein. So yeah, there were a lot of things he said in that Newsnight interview, of which of course the most famous is that he couldn't sweat, which have clearly been demolished. Yes, exactly. So on the sweating, obviously the tabloids immediately after the interview went back through the archives and pulled out all these photos where you could kind of see his face glistening with sweat.

15:41We had possibly one of the most ridiculed aspects of the interview was him saying that he couldn't have been at Tramp nightclub with Virginia Geoffrey, who accused him because he said he was at a pizza express in Woking hours earlier in the afternoon. Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, I think the family did provide to the male his diary to back up the fact he'd gone to Woking. I mean, no one could remember, including his own daughter, him going to Woking. But actually, the diary revealed he was having a manicure. Maybe he was more embarrassed about that than being seen in the Pizza Express. And, of course, he talks about his medical inability to sweat, which we've covered.

16:26But I was absolutely gobsmacked that he didn't take the opportunity to express any sympathy for the victims. Yeah, it is a strange thing. I mean, I think he is pretty self-centered and narcissistic. I mean, people say, you know, he talks at you. In fact, he invades your space. You know, he can only talk about the things that interest him, which is not really a very useful attribute for a member of the royal family. And you'll often patronise people, people who know far more about the subject, for example, a diplomat, and try and pretend that he knows more about that subject than they do. but yeah I mean it's he is a very very strange person and I think that was one of the things I came away from that you know he's just I would say he's autistic but but very strange behavior and and and very as you as I was saying no empathy at all he wouldn't think of the victims it's all about how things affect him and what's odd is he was not coached to at least go through the motions of saying something about the victims.

17:33I think eventually when he stands down in this statement, which presumably was prepared for him by someone else, he does make some reference to the victims. But by then it was too little and too late. So Virginia said, and I suppose the purest form of her allegations, perhaps some might say, is the lawsuit that she filed, the civil lawsuit that she filed in New York against Andrew, in which she said that as a 17-year-old she was trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell and Ghislaine Maxwell to London, New York and the US Virgin Islands, that she was required by them, forced by them to have sex with Andrew and that she feared for her life.

18:09If she didn't, he of course denies those allegations. So what do you think of the evidence in that case and is there anything to corroborate Virginia's side of things? Oh, plenty of stuff to corroborate Virginia. There are emails, for example, from Andrew and Ghislaine saying, what are we going to do about Virginia? How do we deal with this? They actually brought in a PR company to try and denigrate her. There are plenty of witnesses who saw, for example, Andrew and Virginia in Trump, a man called Andrew Wall, Alicia Stone, Shukri Walker. there's someone who claims to have seen them on the island so together so i don't think there's any doubt about that panorama who did a big investigation uh and is actually then that was subsumed into the news night program i mean they found that um the all sorts of things uh including a book that used to be passed around of photographs of of girls so in effect the men just ordered the girls like a takeaway.

19:13And that, I think, is what happened here. It's not chance that it was Virginia Giffrey who came across. And there are other people, obviously, one of the major pieces of evidence is this photo that Virginia had of her with Andrew. Andrew has his arm around her waist. Gillian Maxwell is visible in the background. She says that it was taken by Epstein on a disposable camera that she had in Gillian Maxwell's house in London. and you know there are other people who say that they too have seen that photograph yeah absolutely it's a good point Tony Figueroa who was her boyfriend I talked to has confirmed it Sky Roberts her father has said the same a woman called Caroline Andriamo who's no longer alive but she said the same she'd seen it Sandra White who I interviewed who was the minder from the men on Sunday when Sharon Churcher and Michael Thomas went down to do the interview she saw the the picture being taken out literally of a shoebox.

20:09And there's been examination of the picture. Michael Thomas, who's a well-known photographer, stood by the fact that the technology wasn't there to doctor it in any way. But it's a genuine photo that has the date stamp from Walmart three days later. So, you know, I think it's ridiculous to suggest this is a fake photo. No one has ever seen the photo from which it was spliced. And everyone says, looking at it, that it shows no signs of having any sort of being fiddled with, even if it could have been at that time. Because we've got to remember, we're talking about the year 2000, 2001. Yeah, it's a long time ago, and it's easy to forget how much less developed our technology was, especially, I think, for younger people.

20:53But it really was a very long time ago. Now, it's not just Andrew and Epstein who you write about. I mean, you write, for example, about Donald Trump. I do. I do. And I had this fascinating lunch with a diplomat at the New York consulate who had stories of Trump and Andrew swapping tales about women, swapping notes about masseurs, talking about golf. You know, you can imagine. I mean, they have all these interests, golf, sex and money. so I mean it was amazing that Trump subsequently denied having any not knowing Andrew having any contact with him when of course there are plenty of pictures of them together in London in Mar-a-Lago and elsewhere and they were all fishing in some ways the same waters and but I can understand why they may want to distance themselves now well let's talk about that distancing because obviously this the Epstein saga has massively blown up again in recent months because Trump came into power.

21:55His administration said they were going to release the Epstein files. They didn't just say it in a meek and quiet voice, but they said some quite big and dramatic things about how they were effectively going to blow the case wide open. People were led to believe there might be new charges even. And then in July, they set the cat among the pigeons by releasing this DOJ and FBI memo saying that not only was there no Epstein client list, as had been said previously. But there was also no evidence Epstein was blackmailing co-conspirators. And they indicated there would be no new investigations of uncharged third parties.

22:34Yeah, it's extraordinary. I mean, you would have thought they'd got their ducks in a row initially. They flip-flop from one thing to the other. You know, clearly Trump knew he was in the files, and you would have thought he might have backtracked on that, you know, not made this a real campaign issue. But we've had Pam Bondi say that he was in the files. And then we've had stories of FBI people going through and actually taking him out of the files. So I think what's going to happen is clearly Trump won't be found in the files. Ghislaine will say Trump wasn't involved with Epstein, except socially, in a limited way.

23:13A few low-hanging fruit will be thrown to the press, which may lead to charges, who knows? I would imagine both Democrat and Republican. And I think Ghislaine will be quietly moved to another prison on the grounds of security, and I suspect then given a one-way ticket somewhere. Wow, so she'll disappear into the night. Sorry? So you think she'll disappear into the night? I think she'll disappear. I mean, we may assume that she's in the American prison service, but I think she'll be sunning herself on a beach somewhere. How concerned are you about the fact that she's just been transferred into a minimum security prison?

23:52Well, I think it's, you know, the victims must feel very strongly about this, that, you know, here is someone who had a very serious sentence, was charged and written on several accounts of, and it was clear from the trial, I mean, had been deeply involved in what Epstein was doing. And yet, you know, here she is with a 20-year sentence being basically given a get-out-of-jail-free card. Yes, indeed. And not only will the conditions be more accommodating for her, but also, you know, there is potential sometimes in these less secure establishments to do, for example, work placements outside of the prison.

24:30Yes, I mean, you know, I think, you know, she's been softened up, she's been rewarded, and, you know, it's clear a deal was done. And it's such an obvious deal. So in some ways, I'm not sure it's going to satisfy Trump supporters. They're going to have to talk about a stitch up, all the things that Trump said that he was going to change and clear the swamp, and he's behaving exactly the same way. But as a great freedom of information campaigner, I see this the whole time. People in opposition are very keen on freedom of information. As soon as they get into government, they're less keen. Now, I want to ask you one more question about the Epstein bit of this before we go back to the book briefly.

25:14But obviously, one major question hanging over this whole saga is this business about whether there is any kind of intelligence community link to Epstein. There is the suggestion that Alex Costa, the former Florida US attorney who brokered Epstein's original plea deal, the one that was hugely criticised for being way too lenient, had at one point said, you know, intelligence owns Epstein. What do you think about that whole debate? Do you think there's an intelligence dynamic to Epstein? Well, I mean, I think it's very revealing that Costa said that, that the thing was shut down on those grounds.

25:49I mean, certainly Epstein had very close links to lots of members of the intelligence service. He seems to be very close to Robert Maxwell, who certainly had good connections with Mossad. And Ghislaine Maxwell's father, for those who don't know the name. Sorry. Yeah. So I don't dispute that he certainly had contact with intelligence agencies. I mean, of various countries, whether he was run by them or an asset of some sort of an informant is difficult to say. I think various people from Israeli intelligence have said that he was. But I think he was someone who played off everyone, and he wouldn't have tied himself to one particular organization or indeed one country.

26:38We know that there was a lot of compromise on Andrew, collected partly by Epstein, but also by leaders in Kazakhstan, in Russia, in Libya, China, in the Atlantic and elsewhere. What kind of compromise? Well, I think the compromise was mainly sexual. I mean, basically honey traps. And I suppose if he doesn't care, then it doesn't put him under any sort of pressure. But who knows? There may have been things that he said that he now regrets. Besides, he may have been forced to do things that perhaps wouldn't look very good. I just don't know. But several people have said that. I had a Kazakh businessman who knows how the Kazakhs work, who talks about that on the record.

27:22A man called Tim Riley, who's a former, I think, managing director of Kroll and Cambridge academic, talks about the Russian compromise on him. So I don't think there's any doubt that if people wanted to put pressure on Andrew, they could do so. One other quick thing here. I have to ask you, Epstein's death in jail, and also separately, Virginia very tragically passed away this year. Both have been described as suicides, and both some people are sceptical. What's your position? Well, I mean, there are a lot of suicides. I mean, a lot of the victims committed suicide, which perhaps one could understand.

28:01And then a lot of people like Epstein, Jean-Luc Brunel, who was a model firm owner in Paris, died mysteriously in his when he was in prison. But he knew where all the bodies were buried. Certainly, there are all sorts of anomalies about Epstein's death, which I go through in the book. I mean, the fact that he was moved out of his cell the day before, even though he was on suicide watch, the cameras weren't working. The two guards seemed to fall asleep at exactly the same time. We have the fact that the so-called film of monitoring, which they seem to have found, has a minute taken out of it. There are rumours, pictures of a man in an orange jumpsuit the night before appearing.

28:49I think, which is for me quite convincing, Spencer Coven, who was one of the attorneys for one of the victims, said that Epstein thought he would get out. He'd always managed to get himself out of these problems. He certainly wasn't when he saw him suicidal. There is the coroner's report, not the official one, which no one has seen, but one that was done by Mark Epstein, Epstein's brother, by Michael Baden, who's a very respected New York coroner, suggesting it was homicide rather than strangulation. I noticed there was an article the other day from a prisoner who'd been in that correctional facility saying it was impossible to commit suicide just with the heights and the cheats and all sorts of things.