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May 24, 2026 — 5:00am
Last year the English historian Andrew Lownie, released the best-selling Entitled: the Rise and Fall of the House of York documenting the fall of the man once known as Prince Andrew. This week, as the King’s brother faces new police scrutiny, Lownie releases the updated paperback version with an additional 10,000 words of revelations.
Fitz: Andrew, thank you for your time again. As one author to another, let me say I get it. You’ve had a very successful hardback version of your book and for the paperback you need some fresh stuff to get the headlines again and sell even more. So, what have you got? What’s your fresh stuff, and why couldn’t you put it in the original hardback?
AL: I’ve got so much more information now because more people have been emboldened to come forward and tell their stories, and more people are prepared to go on the record.
Fitz: And the new stuff?
AL: Everything from Andrew’s alleged links with Russian organised crime and hate for brother Charles, to how one person was employed just to organise the tablets that Sarah Ferguson took; from Ferguson’s abuse of her charity “Sarah’s Trust” to make money for herself, to how the 30-something Andrew was once allowed alone into the dormitories of 13-year-old girls. The last part fits with his extraordinarily predatory behaviour over decades, including his alleged chat-up line, “What’s it like to have a royal cock rub up against your leg?” There’s also his alleged interest in Japanese rope bondage and how a valet was once ordered to fly to Asia to recover a teddy bear which Andrew had left behind.
Fitz: And yet, you were telling me these are not the things the British press has gone hardest after.
AL: No, there are two stories that the press have really picked up on: the first is the story of him kicking a dog at a Sandringham shooting weekend, right? The press interest on that has been extraordinary. When it comes to young girls allegedly being abused, no one gets too upset, but as soon as you kick a dog in Britain, everyone thinks that’s terrible.
Fitz: And the second thing?
AL: The second is Sarah Ferguson’s claimed “friends with benefits” relationship with P. Diddy Combs, the rapper. It has generated a great deal of interest, and I think that’s important because here is this woman presenting herself as a great mother and a champion of trafficked women, who is still bringing her 16-year-old daughters to yacht parties of a convicted sex offender.
Fitz: I read about the P. Diddy Combs thing with interest, and I was appropriately gobsmacked on a couple of levels, starting with what on earth they saw in each other? I get my rappers mixed up, but is he not notorious for pursuing rather younger women than Ferguson, who is now in her mid-60s?
AL: Yes, he had his eyes on the daughters, but he’s obsessed with the British royal family, and this was a sort of notch on the bedpost. And for Fergie, she likes black men ...
Fitz: Alrighty then ... I don’t expect you to reveal your source, and I accept that you’re not a tabloid trash writer, that you’re a genuine historian and serious about it, but how good were your sources on this?
AL: I talked to members of her staff and members of his staff.
Fitz: Alright, I totally accept – and I’ve written it – that you are a serious historian. You are not a purveyor of tittle-tattle trash, but were you never uncomfortable talking about Fergie and P. Diddy, and what happened between them, between the sheets? I am no better than you, as I am raising it, and am suitably appalled at my own interest, but did you never think, “This is not for me”?
AL: [Long pause.] Yes ... yes, I mean, you know it was ... it’s a paragraph in 10,000 words. It’s a paragraph that’s been picked up, and I keep being asked about, but I would much prefer to have conversations about some of the other stuff about his abuse of his time as a trade envoy and her profiteering from her charity, but I absolutely have to follow what people want to talk about.
Fitz: It’s funny you should say that. Let’s talk about his time as the trade envoy. And her issues with her charity. What, what have you got?
AL: For him, basically, allegations of insider trading: revealing sensitive commercial information to two business competitors trying to pursue development opportunities in Helmand Province in Afghanistan, off the back of British troops dying there, giving insider information about the Royal Bank of Scotland banking crisis in 2008 to people who were lobbying to buy bits of it ...
Fitz: And Sarah Ferguson?
AL: There’s new stuff on how Fergie continued her association with Epstein long after she’d publicly broken with him, and was abusing her position in charities.
Fitz: Are these just horrible, horrible people?
AL: Yeah, I’ve struggled really to try and say nice things. Generally, they’re people who exploited their royal position to make money, while he allegedly engaged in sexually predatory behaviour.
Fitz: When you and I talked last year, you raised the possibility of him going to prison. So, I ask you again. You’ve been proven right that his fall was coming, and we all know he’s been charged with many offences. If those allegations are proven, will he end up getting a zebra suntan?
AL: No. I think he should go to prison but I think he’s got clever lawyers who will argue that he was not paid for this role as trade envoy, and therefore there’s no malfeasance in public office. I think he should be charged under Official Secrets Act for treason and fraud, but knowing the way that the British system and establishment works, they’ll protect him. The royal family will not want him in the dock, giving away embarrassing royal secrets, so they will do everything possible to avoid him appearing in court.
Fitz: You think he’ll go possibly live in exile in Dubai?
AL: Yeah, well, it’s better than living in Sandringham, right? It’s a pretty wet place, cold, and in Dubai he’d be away from his press scrutiny. He’ll be able to go and play golf, have lovely concubines brought to him, and he’s got a lot of friends out there, really, so I think that’s where he’ll end up, and he may well find that Fergie will end up there with him.
Fitz: What do you think his relationship with Charles is like? I am in contact with my brothers dozens of times a week on various things, as well as my sisters. How often do you think Andrew and Charles are on the phone? “How they hangin’?” “Did you see that match last night?”
AL: It’s never been that kind of relationship. I mean, just to see each other, they have to book in through secretaries. They’re 12 years apart in age. They’re very different characters, you know. One is cultured and intelligent, the other’s idea of a date is to take a girl to a Rambo film. They are very, very different characters, and there’s a great deal of jealousy between them.
Fitz: The other thing you were proven right on was that Charles would have to move, to cut Andrew adrift. Do you admire, for want of a better word, the clinical brutality of the way that he did it?
AL: No, I still think he should have done it sooner. Charles is popular when he’s ruthless, but Andrew should never have been allowed to get away with that statement at the beginning of October, saying he was standing down voluntarily and not making any admission of guilt or remorse. And it was only when Charles was being heckled that he stepped in and dealt with him. There’s a strong sense that he only operates when he has to, and is dragged kicking and screaming to do something instead of getting ahead of the story. So I do think that people feel that Charles hasn’t been tough enough, and I think there’s a real worry that there’s a cover-up going on – that Andrew was protected by the palace, that Charles is saying one thing in public, but behind the scenes there isn’t co-operation being offered to the police … there’s just a classic establishment cover-up.
Fitz: I don’t know you at all, but I dare say, if we looked into your life and we knew everything you’d ever done, we could generate two or three days of headlines. In my case, you could generate maybe four or five days. I am stunned that with Andrew, it’s like there’s fifteen of him out there. Every time I look up, every week, there are more ugly headlines of appalling allegations. Are you astonished by how busy he has been for these decades?
AL: I think I’ve still only got the tip of the iceberg. You know, people are suddenly coming out of the woodwork – and every diplomat has a story about his awful behaviour and that’s what surprises me, just how discreet everyone has been about him until now.
Fitz: Is it correct that Prince Charles helped pay off Virginia Giuffre in order to make the court case she brought against Andrew to go away?
AL: Yes, of the £12 million (about $18 million then) that was paid, Charles allegedly put in about £1.3 million. Prince Philip put in some money, and the Queen paid most of it.
Fitz: So here’s my question. Given you claim Charles paid money to silence an alleged victim of sexual abuse, how the hell can he and Camilla profess, as they have in their various official statements about Andrew, that their thoughts are always with the victims of sexual abuse?
AL: Well, that’s that fair dilemma, and that’s the question that people keep asking, you know, when they’re heckling. “What did you know and when?” And that’s the question they’re not answering in the hope that people will stop asking it. But you’re absolutely right, and people are saying he has protected Andrew. We all feel then that puts him in a difficult position and he needs to fall on his sword. He needs to be the fall guy for this because what the Queen did was she kind of passed the problem on to him, and now he’s trying to pass the buck on to William, who is refusing to have anything to do with it and that’s part of the tension.
Fitz: I say this as a devout republican, but what chance the British people will look at this whole shemozzle of a family and just say this is ridiculous, their blood is not blue, they are not better people than us, they’re worse people than us, we don’t need this nonsense any more, and the exemplar of the fact that the royals are not inherently better than the rest of us is Andrew.
AL: Some chance. There are polls showing that the young are increasingly uninterested in the monarchy. But I mean, what I’m finding going around is that middle England – the retired colonels and so forth – are appalled by the royals’ behaviour and want to clean out.
Fitz: So, everything you said to me last time has come true. My question to you now is, a year from now, if you get up the stories you want to get up, that you’re now following up on, in what realm will that story be? And I accept whatever you say will be allegations only, not proven facts.
AL: I think it will be about how the story has moved from one about sex and money to one about national security and I think there will be even more damaging allegations about what Andrew has been up to, and I think we will see probably the same about Sarah Ferguson and their daughters. I think we will finally see that whole family’s links with the overall royal family broken. I think there’ll be more allegations that Andrew knowingly was involved with foreign powers and gave away top secret information.
Fitz: And now we must interrupt our normal programming to wire in a question on a late-breaking story. What do you make of the news that the investigation into Andrew Windsor is going to be far more wide-ranging than previously thought, to allow the police to consider possible alleged offences including corruption and sexual offences? “The investigation is by necessity hugely thorough and will take time,” the police spokesperson said. “It’s not going to be a quick investigation by any means.” Thoughts?
AL: I welcome the broadening of the police investigation by Thames Valley Police. There has always been a strong case for Andrew’s sexual and financial misdemeanours and I hope, as a result of this publicity, that some of the victims will come forward. Apart from “misconduct in public office”, I believe there is strong evidence that Andrew broke the Official Secrets Act. Let us hope the law is allowed to take its course because I think there is a strong case for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and indeed his ex-wife, to face a battery of charges.
Fitz: It feels like “the end of days”. Thank you for your time.
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