Julian Dorey Podcast - SILENCED Royals Expert on Princess Diana COVERUP, Supra Elites & Evil Encounter | Andrew Lownie

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

SPONSORS: 1) MARS MEN: For a limited time, our listeners get 50% off for life plus Free Shipping AND 3 Free Gifts at MenGoToMars.com for 50% Off AND 3 Free Gifts when you checkout. 2) HEXCLAD: For a limited time only, our listeners get 10% off your order with our exclusive link hexclad.com/JULIAN. JOIN PATREON FOR EARLY UNCENSORED EPISODE RELEASES: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey CLIPPERS DISCORD: https://discord.gg/8QmWEKJ3BT NEWSLETTER: https://juliandoreypodcast.beehiiv.com/get-julians-top-10-books (***TIMESTAMPS in Description Below) ~ Andrew Lownie is a British historian and author. He has written books about the royal family. ANDREW'S LINKS: - YT: https://www.youtube.com/@UC2KJT8XOmZu2yNTTeeT8ROQ - SUBSTACK: https://andrewlownie.substack.com/ - X: https://x.com/andrewlownie?lang=en - PRINCE ANDREW BOOK: https://a.co/d/02NOdKAq FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY IG: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://x.com/juliandorey JULIAN YT CHANNELS - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP ****TIMESTAMPS**** 0:00 - Andrew Lownie, the Book Prince Andrew KILLED 12:02 - The Sovereign Grant TRIPLED, Nobody Discussed It 25:28 - Bonfires of Records, Wood Farm Secrets 39:05 - The Duke of Windsor's Nazi Ties 49:56 - What Harper Collins Made Him CUT 1:01:00 - Melania: "The Vulnerability for Trump" 1:14:56 - Churchill, Queen Victoria & John Brown 1:28:28 - The Dieppe Raid Bombshell 1:46:42 - Royal Mistresses & Succession's Blurry Line 2:00:03 - The Royal Family Wasn't Always British 2:07:50 - Did Diana Love Charles, or the Idea? 2:21:39 - Prince Edward Was Talking to Epstein in '96 2:32:10 - Diana's Rushed Embalming & the Ritz Paris 2:42:12 - The Al Yamama Arms Deal 2:51:00 - Sex Was the Compromat, Not the Point 3:01:29 - Why Lownie STILL Supports the Monarchy 3:11:00 - How Accurate Was "The Crown"? 3:13:03 - Andrew's Work CREDITS: - Host, Editor & Producer: Julian Dorey - COO, Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@UCyLKzv5fKxGmVQg3cMJJzyQ - In-Studio Producer: Joey Deef Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 480 - Andrew Lownie Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19-speaker AKG surround audio system. This city demands agility, and Optic delivers with precision to make every drive extraordinary. Let's take the Cadillac. Find out more at Cadillac canada.ca. Luxury sales claim based on S&P Global Mobility Canadian New Vehicle Total Registrations for calendar year 2025 for the Cadillac definition of luxury. Andrew, we got a big royalist in the studio with us. Joey Deef actually wishes we did not win the

revolution. He's that loyal to the royal family. So you're in good company. Well, compared to Andrew, George III was a saint. You know what? I think I agree with you on that. We got to talk about that today for sure. This is, we're just talking off camera. Prince Andrews is one of the stories related to Epstein as well that we haven't covered as much in here. And it's a big one. You know, obviously a lot was going on there. But, But can you explain to me what happened with your book about him? Because you're like a long time noted, heralded, extremely respected author. And something happened with your book deal where they pulled it at the last minute because you wrote about him? Yes. I mean, interesting experience, which I've never had before in 40 years of writing books. So the book was sold to Harper Collins in the UK, and that went through very smoothly. They were doing all the editing. And gallery books of S&S bought the book in the States. and they were meant to basically offset from the Collins edition. The agreement we sold, the book was sold on a finished manuscript.

There was a little bit of editing to be done back in February. And then suddenly in May I was actually on holiday in Berlin, S&S cancelled the contract without even going through the termination clause. And they said the book was unpublishable. And since I've won prizes for my books, they've been to, last two have been top ten bestsellers, Collins were very happy with it. This was a little bit of a surprise. And I don't know what the background is, but suddenly, weeks before the book was due to come out, I had no American publisher

and I was forced to self-publish. And of course, if you do that, you're not going to get any support from any of the media in the States. I mean, this was my big breakout book for America after 40 years of writing. And it came as a bit of a shock. And so I've worked as an agent since 1985, I've been representing the interests of authors. I thought I hadn't needed to take a stand because I felt this was cavalier and casual. They, as I said, hadn't gone even through their termination clause. They thought I'm just a small guy. They can do what they want. And so I pushed back and I took on lawyers and we are going to court in the autumn. Good for you. And we'll see what happens. And it's very interesting, you know, the stuff of the depositions

that they put forward this. They claim that I was uncooperative when in fact I was prepared to pay for another writer to come in and change the book if they wanted. Change the book that you had written, the whole thing on. You were going to give up that kind of creative license to make it happen. To make it happen. And, you know, I was desperate to really, I mean, I've been published in the States by St. Martens and others, but the books hadn't really had the coverage, I hoped. And, yeah, fascinating.

The head of S&S got in touch with the editor, and he said, didn't we buy this book? It's number one in Britain. And it's making waves. Prince Andrews had to basically being chucked out of the royal family because of this book. And we had it. What happened? Oh, Andralone wouldn't cooperate. But don't worry.

He's agreed to do the book with us, which I hadn't agreed to do. So a lot of lies from Simon & Schuster, which I think need to be exposed. Hey, guys. If you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge huge help. Thank you. Absolutely. And when we can help do stuff like that here, where people have been wrong, we love to do that.

Thank you. You were saying, obviously, this is one that could really break through in America as well because people over here are at least very aware of, you know, some of our troublesome leadership as it relates to certain Epstein files and things like that. And obviously, Prince Andrew from over there is someone at the middle of all of it. But, you know, by the way, we'll put the link to the book down below so you guys can all go check that out. But it's also got to be a fascinating experience to write about, I don't know if the proper word is like tragic character while he's still alive, like as a biographer. What's that like?

Well, it was the first time. My books have always been written based on documents. I've never done a living person. I mean, I've done some people where there were people alive that I could talk to you who knew them. But, you know, this is particularly, it's always difficult about the royals. There's a sort of murder around them, and particularly around someone like Prince Andrew. No one wants to talk. No one wants to be associated with him. There's a huge deference towards the royal family. People feel they serve the crown, whether they're diplomats or in the services.

So it was. I had 3,000 people I approached and 2,700 didn't talk. But it is an interesting story because in some ways, you know, this was a man who was so proud and arrogant that he kind of brought a lot of the problems on himself. There were so many ways that he could have saved himself. And again, giving that interview to News Night in November 2019 only encouraged Virginia Geoffrey to bring her case. It was kind of forgotten about until then. So he's kind of brought it on himself.

He's brought it on other members of the royal family. You know, why do questions now have been asked about royal accountability and privilege? And so they must be cursing him because, you know, so far they've got away with very little transparency, particularly on their finances. And he's opened up the whole can of worms here because of his behavior. And there's something kind of admirable almost about a guy who's just going to go down with the ship without doing anything. But it's part of his arrogance that somehow he feels he's entitled and these are just little people he can do what he wants. And we've only really had one moment where I felt I saw fear in his face and that was that famous photograph taken on the night he came back from the police station in February 26.

Can we pull that up, Dave? That's a great shot. But otherwise, I mean, even now, he's he's, he's ranting at people, he's blaming everyone else, he's fussing about whether he can go out riding or playing golf or where he's going to park his cars. There's no sense of any sort of remorse for the way he's behaved. And I talked to actually, funn enough, one of the people who was a commanding officer in the armed forces and dealt with him, who's now, when he was in the Navy. when he's training in the Navy he's a guy and took him through the he did a kind of green beret course in fact he was kind of pushed through it by this guy and didn't really do it but he

then became a kind of psychiatrist and he said he ticks all the boxes for a sociopath and I think that was a problem he's a complete narcissist he can only see things in terms of his own interests and that's why there's no empathy for anyone else yeah I you know we kind of fought a war over the whole like king and queen thing over here so it's not like in america we're naturally fans of that that said i've always wondered how you could possibly turn out even remotely normal whether that be like not a sociopath or not someone who is completely divorced from reality when you were born into what is a very archaic system where you live in opulence everything's taking care of for you but you're also you have all this duty and you have to go around and do all these things and you have to go around and do all

these things because that's what we've always done. Do you think that people born in the modern royal family can possibly live any kind of semblance of like a normal lived human experience? Well, I think, you know, Prince William and Catherine, I mean, clearly those who marry into our family have had a life before they do that. I mean, I think William, particularly, he's brought his children up to try and have a normal upbringing. And in some ways, Andrew did have, he went off to boarding school. I mean, he wasn't at least educated at home like a lot of them. He went into the Ruffland Tumblr of the Navy. So there were opportunities, but you're absolutely right.

They're brought up in this echo chamber. The only people who kind of surround them are sycophants, who tell them what they want to hear. They tell them how wonderful they are. As you say, they're used to people bowing and scraping and providing everything they want. And I think there's a further complication with people like Andrew and Harry who are second in effect, second in line.

They're kind of the reserve. If anything had happened, for example, to Charles. Andrew would have been before 1982 and then after William was born he would have been regent until Andrew William was 18 and then of course they moved steadily down the pecking order

and that's quite difficult to accept but other members of the royal family I mean Princess Anne and Edward were born into the same background but they do have a strong sense of duty so I think it's personality rather than actually positioning but there is always

trope when we've seen it in the crown between public duty and private pleasure and the the rogue royals the duke of windsor the harries the andrews who kind of pushed that princess margaret who kind of feel that the position is basically to have a good time and then there are others and prince philip is a good example the queen georgia sixth who felt that the only way for the royal family to operate is because it's through a strong sense of public service and that's what the public want that's why they are prepared a turn a blind eye sometimes to some of the royal behavior and the privileges. And the deal is we'll pay huge sums for your security,

will allow you to live in palaces and to have a pretty good lifestyle. But in return, we want you to serve us. And when that contract breaks down, which it's broken down with, certainly with Harry, but also with Andrew and Fergie, then people begin to wonder, you know, what are we paying for? Why are we doing this?

And that's when the trust and respects is broken. And one of the arguments that I and others who are supporters of the monarchy but want it to survive, make is the need for it to reform, modernize, make itself fit for purpose in 21st century, and regain the trust and respect that it's lost through the activities of people like Andrew. What is the purpose of the monarchy to you? Well, I think it's done right. If it's done right, I think it has a terrific unifying power to bring people together,

particularly in times of during the war, for example, national crisis, when, um, They are, should be, you know, they are apolitical. They are people that can, in some ways, serves an example to the rest of the country. And Georgia 5th and 6th recognises, they're the sort of family of the nation. They set the example. They, you know, shouldn't be going off and having affairs and stuff. I mean, they do. But, and of course, a lot of that was protected because we just never heard about it.

But they're meant to set an example to make us feel, to show us how to behave. It's almost like a religion. And then, of course, there's a soft power, which we saw with Charles and his talk to Congress. You know, a lot of the royal family have deployed, and the way that Andrew was later deployed, to do, for example, arm sales, to reach bits of other countries which politicians can't reach because there is a respect for members of the royal family. So they do serve a purpose. And people love the pomp and the ceremony, and, you know, it is more than just a soap opera. But at the base of it, there has to be, they have to behave well and have this tradition of public service. And in the end, it's meant to try and make us all think we can behave well, too, to set an example and encourage us to behave the same way.

For people out there who don't really know the balance of powers, it pertains to the British government and where the royal family does play a role. As you did lay out there, they're supposed to be apolitical. It's not like they're on one of the parties or something like that. But it's been a while, I want to say there was something like, maybe like 1761 or something like that to where it got divorced from them running parliament. Maybe I said that wrong. And they became more of a figurehead symbolic leader at that point. Is that fair to say? And is that what exists today?

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Yes, it goes back to the Civil War, and we had this moment in Teregneum, where Cromwell basically took over and the king went. And then it was kind of restored later on. And it's kind of evolved the whole time. So particularly, I think, after the First World War, I mean, clearly they were seen as a kind of German family, and they made it very clear that they were a British family. they took on the name of Windsor and dropped the Saxicoburg, Gotha.

And increasingly, they've just been seen to be there to, there was a famous kind of political scientist called Badgett in the 19th century who said they're there to kind of inform, to listen, to give wise advice like an elder statesman, but they shouldn't really have any power. But the fact is they do have residual powers. There's something called kings and princes consent, where they can actually shape legislation before,

It reaches the statute book that a lot of people don't know about. They do lobby, as we found with Charles and what we're called the spydry letters, where he does lobby or did as Prince of Wales government departments to push through things that he felt were important, particularly issues on things like architecture. And that's kind of verboten. They're meant to be above politics. But, you know, there are ways that they steer things. You know, we know that they believe in keeping the four parts of the nations,

England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland together. they don't want that to break up. There was a moment with Scottish devolution and a referendum that America, but Scotland might break off and indeed Ireland might eventually. And the Queen kind of nudged a few people and put the word out that actually she was not in favour of this. And people kind of listened to that.

And then of course with Brexit, there's a big debate whether the Queen was actually a Brexiteer and wanted to see us break off links with Europe or actually wanted us to remain part of the European Union. and that the jury's out on that. My own feeling is that she was in favor of, she's in favor of supernational organizations. I mean, she's a great supporter of the Commonwealth,

and I think she would have been a supporter of the European Union. Well, unless David Ike is to believe, these are people still, right? They have, they have flaws. That's the other reference in there. They have flaws, and they still have feelings and emotions. I know, like, one example that's always brought up is like the, back and forth between Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth when they were Prime Minister and Queen respectively and like there are political disagreements that still occur behind the scenes under the

tension of apoliticality if you will. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the Queen was very, very support of the Commonwealth. That's kind of how she was defining her legacy. And there were some problems there with Thatcher, particularly about apartheid in South Africa. And then of course we had the Reagan's invasion of, gosh, what's Caribbean island? Beginning with Grenada? Grenada. And clearly that was a part of the Commonwealth and there was a bit of tension there between America and the Queen. So, you know, she did get involved. But the problems we just don't know when she's got involved because all the papers have been closed since she came

to the throne in 1952. So we just don't know what goes on behind the scenes. All the papers relating to Andrews Times of the Trade Envoy remain closed when we have what's a public records act which says that all papers should be released after 20 years. So a lot of this stuff, when I talk to what's called the sensitivity of reviewers, the people who basically decide where papers go in the archives. So everything basically on the Royals gets sent to Buckingham Palace and gets locked in a room never to be seen again. Is there anyone in the British government who can mandate things being seen if they're supposed to be seen after, I think you said, 20 years? Absolutely.

I mean, it's part of the law. So, I mean, the prime minister or one of the government ministers could easily say, and this was a campaign that I've been pushing, all the papers related to Andrew as a trade envoy should be released under the 20-year rule. So he became a trade envoy in 2001. And so the files up to 2006 should be released. and that would be a very easy thing to do just to tell the head of the foreign office the minister there and the minister in charge of business and trade could just say to records management

this stuff should be in the public domain but they don't do so and there's still a deference from civil servants and politicians so for example the money that we pay the royal family for what they do the sovereign grant has tripled in the last few years even though they're fewer members of the royal family

and they actually do less work. How'd they do that? Well, by being very, very persuasive and it's pushed through by three people. The keeper of the privy purse who works for the royal family, the prime minister and the Chancellor of Exchequer. And this should have gone to Parliament.

It should have been debated and it was slipped through one afternoon with no one knowing about it. Which prime minister? You guys have had a lot of those. Well, it was the few days when we had Keostama. And what happens, of course, is these people then get rewarded.

George Osborne, who's the previous chancellor, did it. He was then made order of merit. And I'm sure Keir Stama will get some nice bobble as a result of doing their bidding. Yeah, that triple is a big number. It's not like, you know. It's a big number. And it's never discussed. I mean, one of the things, again, that people like me want

is that the crown, the royals should be accountable to parliament. I mean, everyone else is. It's the last protected institution where they basically can do what they want. And it's not just this money, which is now, I think, about $76 million a year. This doesn't include security, which goes through the police, doesn't include some of the military staff, like the flights and the equerries,

who work for the royal family, which goes to the Ministry of Defense. And none of these questions will be answered if you ask these departments. And then, of course, we had Andrew and his massages, and this stuff wasn't put in a special little file saying massages for Andrew. It was lost in general accounting.

So they know they're going to get a way. accounting. Yep, yep. They know they're going to get away with anything they want. And so, of course, that makes them feel invincible. And that's why they feel they can do what they want. That's very New York Italian, lost in general accounting. It's always a good place to put massages, I find. Yeah, what? So the massages you're referring to, I mean, we've got to be careful with that in here, because that can mean a few different things based on his relationships. Are you talking about stuff that's related to Epstein, or is this entirely separate? No, these are sort of a massages Epstein gave, happy-ending ones.

These are ones with escorts. Oh. And the taxpayer was paying, British taxpayer was paying for it. And given the number of massages, that was quite a big bill. I'll say. Yeah. Now, Queen Elizabeth obviously lived until, I think, 2022, September, something like that. She was on the throne for effectively 70 years at that point.

and that was like the longest reign since Victoria, right? Longer than Victoria. Longer than Victoria. I mean, no one is, I think, ever going to beat that because, I mean, she came to the throne as a very young woman. Right. And she lived, you know, she could have gone to over 100, like her mother. So, but she didn't do badly. I think, I think, 96.

No matter what you think of her, woman lived a very full life. I mean, she saw a lot of things in her years for sure. Like you said, she had to take over young when her father died. But, you know, it's got to be a very kind of unprecedented psychological dynamic to have the children. She had four of them to where the weight for power is that long. And that is supposed to, for someone like now King Charles, that's supposed to be his entire life's purpose that he's taught from a young age. And then as you alluded to earlier, someone like Andrew, who already spends so much time as technically like the second in line, the more and more years to go by. while his mom's on the throne he's fallen to fifth six seventh eighth and again i got to imagine that has a

especially for someone who's predisposed to be an associate path that has quite a psychological effect on his purpose over the years and maybe makes him feel even more invincible and for lack of a better way of putting it like fuck it i'll do what i want yes i think there was an element of that i mean i think he was always very jealous of charles he didn't think charles he felt charles was weak and that he could do a a better job. And Fergie was getting psychics telling her that Charles would die in a skiing accident, which in fact, he almost did. Almost dead, yeah. And if that had happened, then Andrew would have come in as regent. And I mean, we've got to remember that if Williams family are all killed in an air crash together, we're going to get King Harry. So, I mean, there's a big debate in Britain the moment

about the line of succession, whether Harry and his family should be removed and Andrew and his family should be removed because we have this extraordinary situation. Eugenie, the daughter of Andrew, has just had a third child, and that's bumped to Prince Edward, who's a working royal, further down the line of succession. But I think you're absolutely right that no one knows who, you know, Ernest Brooks Bank is or Athena, Mophele, but they're actually higher up in terms of the order of succession than people like Princess Anne and Prince Edward. Who are they? They're the grandchildren of Prince Andrew.

But I think there is a strong sense of actually why should I care? Because, you know, I'm not going to get it now. I can do what I want. And actually what Andrew was doing was he was, basically, his ambitions were now invested in his children. So both Beatrice's elder daughter and Eugenie were given police protection at huge public costs long after there was any risk to them. I mean, they were basically on their year off from school.

were just going in and out nightclubs. So policemen, dozens of policemen guarding them, having to accompany them around the world and just basically drive them home from the nightclub. And Andrew was keen that they should inherit a title, which of course you can only inherit titles through the mail. So he was really keen. I'm sorry, you can only inherit titles through the mail? Through the mail side. So we have mail.

That has changed recently. But even in the aristocracy, all the titles go through the mail. So you can have five daughters and none of them are going to inherit is going to be a distant cousin who's a male. And he tried to change those rules. So his daughter could inherit. He was very keen to use this time as a trade envoy to build contacts for them, business contacts, particularly in the Middle East. So he took them on these taxpayer-funded trips secretly to get stuff. They're not working royals.

They have free accommodation in royal palaces. So basically the deal he did, I think, with Charles, and certainly when his mother was alive with his mother, was basically, okay, I'll accept that my days are over in terms of what I can do. But I want my daughters to get all the benefits of being royals without any of the responsibilities. Why was Andrew his mom's favorite? Did we ever figure that out? Well, it's a really good question. I think he was very good. He was very attentive to her.

I mean, the others had families. He was a divorced man on his own. He used to go and see her a lot. He lived quite close by. Royal Lodge is literally only a few miles from Windsor. Royal Lodge. Royal Lodge was the home that he had, he inherited an effect from the Queen Mother

after she died 25 years ago. So that would be Elizabeth's mom. So Elizabeth's mother, yes, went to live in Royal Lodge. But Royal Lodge had very strong Royal Associations. It's where the Queen grew up. before she narrated the throne as a child. So, and it's where her father, the previous Duke of York had lived. Traditionally, the second child of the monarch is called the Duke of York.

And so it had a particular sort of poignancy for the queen. But it's a good question. I think, you know, Andrew was boisterous. He was part of the second family, which she had more time for. He's 10 years younger than Anne. and you know in all families is often a favorite and he was the favorite when I talked to some people their their argument was he was the most vulnerable and therefore she was very protective of him most vulnerable most vulnerable because he was we think that he had mental health problem has mental

health problems there's something he's somewhere on the the spectrum yeah for sure and and and therefore she she felt that you know the others could take care of of themselves. So who knows? She never talked about it. But I mean, each time there was some new scandal with Andrew, particularly with Epstein, instead of kind of distancing herself, she kind of threw a protective arm around him, sat up beside her as they drove to church, gave him some new honour, sending out the signal that she basically had complete faith in him. I haven't began to think, well, maybe she knows something we don't know. Maybe he's innocent. Maybe this is all being cooked up and so he was protected and he was protected by her he's protected by his brother the king now

they've known about Andrew for 25 years they were fed information about Epstein and his activities years ago and instead of basically taking I mean forcing him out of his job as a trade envoy disciplining him doing internal reports they did absolutely nothing Peter Express took more trouble over the stuff that Andrew was doing than the royal family. Who did? Well, Pizza Express, you may remember, was when Andrew did his interview with news night in November 2019. I let the side down one. He's the one. Yeah, exactly. Well, he's the one who had a litany of lies. And one of the lies was I couldn't possibly be in a nightclub late one night because I was at a party in 30 miles outside London at this Pizza Express and

Woking, which is a town to say just outside London. Now, it's very easy to get up from working to London in a matter of an hour, particularly if you're a police escort and you're just zooming through the traffic. But of course, no one could remember anyone who worked, I mean, this is what Peter Express were investigating. They talked to members of staff. Was he here? Is this something we've missed?

And no one could remember him being at being a birthday party there. The children at the birthday party couldn't remember. The staff at his home in Windsor couldn't remember him coming home, whether he's, whether he came home that night or not. And the police protection officer who knew that night, he'd gone back to Buckingham Palace. This night was course when he slept with Virginia Jifrey. And all the evidence appointed to him going back to Buckingham Palace that night. Buckingham Palace said that this material is closed.

The logs of him going into the palace are part of national security. And then when the police protection officer persisted saying this is something that needs to be released under my data, protection they say well actually these these rogues are being destroyed and of course very easy a lot of the stuff's been destroyed just getting rid of the records so no one will ever know exactly and that's what they've done for a long time so i mean prince philip who i'm doing a book on at the moment he so-called arranged his papers for the last few years of his life huge bonfires went on the princess victoria's daughter huge bonfires went on um the queen's papers were sorted out not by his historians, but by her valet.

Princess Margaret's papers were, sorry, Queen Mother's papers were destroyed by Princess Margaret. Again, big bonfires. And that's the way we deal with it in Britain. In Ireland, they throw it into the harbor and often it bobs up against. But in Britain, we put them into incinerators. Listen up, fellas. Fall is here.

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and make sure you let them know that we sent you. These files that are being created, I, you know, I'm trying to picture in my head all of what this could be. Obviously, if they're at an official government meeting where minutes are taken, as it normally would be even for regular government, that makes sense to me. But, you know, you talk about like the Queen Mother's files being deleted. I know we later found out that she had a couple siblings, I think it was, that were very mentally challenged. cousins. Right, cousins that were hidden. Nises, actually, sorry, nieces.

That's right. So they were hidden because they were afraid that that was going to be a bloodline problem if they were shown out. So did someone like write that down at some point? She has a niece, whatever. And that's the kind of thing they burned? Absolutely. And also with the nieces, they told all the reference books that they died in 1941 when actually they lived on until the 1980s. So not only did they put them into mental homes.

the same with um uh george the fifth's um son prince prince john um george the fifth was in power during like world war one yes so he was he was 1910 to 1935 and and his uh eldest son had epilepsy and basically and died at age of 13 in fact he was put in the house where prince uh andrew is now living in marsh farm yeah we have that up wood farm and wood farm and well this was the first one I'm sorry. Yes, he was put into Wood Farm where he was first of the sent. So this is, this was Royal Lodge right here. This is the one on the right, which you can see is a pretty big house for one man

in his own. And then his wife had a little wing in the corner. Oh, she had her own little wing. Yeah, she loved it because of course she could, she had the, all the royal chefs were producing food for her, she had a laundry done for her. And people still thought she was part of the royal family, even though they'd been divorced for about 40 years. Oh, they were living in there together.

when they were divorced. Yeah, yeah. And of course, and she kept her title. In fact, she was meant to have lost her title, but she kept using a title. So everyone in America

thought she was part of the royal family. And she kind of yo-yoed. So they'd invited to Christmas at Sandringham. She sat in the royal box. She was invited to ask her. So one moment, she was kind of cast adrift. And then as soon as Prince Philip,

who got the measure of her, died, Charles kind of brought her back within the fold. Prince Philip couldn't stand her. And, I mean, he would literally. You're talking about Fergie, obviously. Fergie. And literally in his 80s, he would kind of vault over sofas in order to get out of a room before she appeared.

In his 80s, he was jumping over. He was like that, huh? He was a fit old man. Good for him. I bet you there's something there with his unseen backstory as well. There are a lot of mistresses. Yeah. There are a lot of women.

There's all burnt papers. That's what I'm going to start using. We burnt the papers. That's good. But you were talking about, you mentioned something like 10 minutes ago about how, in your estimation, King Charles is even protecting Andrew. And some of that, I could imagine some of it is for familial, you know, I guess reputation. But some of that is surprising to me because what a lot of reports have been is that he can't stand Andrew

and he can't stand the embarrassment he's brought on the family. So at this point, even after all we now know that's been exposed, you still say he is taking active measures to protect him. Absolutely. And I mean, you would think that, I think this is Williams' argument, you know, clean out the stables, we want a clean slate. And in fact, you know, there will be more embarrassing revelations. I mean, there's still three million pages of Epstein stuff that could be released, apart from depositions from victims. But, you know, basically own up to the fact that you guys. that we turned a blind eye to and we paid off Virginia Giffray, etc.

But, you know, we're now really are helping the police for their inquiries. But, you know, I talk to police protection officers and they've been reminded of their obligations of confidentiality. Civil servants have been reminded about their pensions. So on one hand, the king is saying, yeah, the law must take its course and we'll do everything possible to help them. And on the other, I'm hearing that people, they're saying, look, don't talk to anyone, you know, we can keep the lid on this.

and you know they should have been dealing with this years ago I mean stories about Andrew's bad behavior have been in the press for 40 years when Fergie was caught on film selling access to Andrew in 2010 as time as a trade envoy he should have been sacked he continued to be a trade envoy for another year and actually to do trips on behalf of the government for years afterwards

there was a famous case in the high court in 2002 where Andrew the York family were, it was revealed had been paid 1.3 million pounds by basically an embezzler. By an embezzler? Yeah, there was a separate court with a guy had embezzled money from a Turkish millionaires. But in the course of this case, it was revealed that he had paid the York's 1.3 million pounds, 750 to Andrew, 250 to Sarah, and the rest to one of the daughters, which they couldn't explain. And again, that would have been a red flag, you know, something should have been done.

We know that 33,000 emails were sent to Charles six years ago detailing some of Andrews criminal activity as a trade. 33,000? Yeah. And that material is still not being passed. They sat in them, did nothing about them, and that material is not being passed to law enforcement. So, yeah. And I mean, we know that, for example, with ABC, they went to the royal family. They said we want to do a program on Andrew and Virginia Jifrey.

We found out all sorts of things about him. The Royal Family said, if you run this program, you'll never again get access to the Royal Family. ABC bowed out. I know from my research that the Royal Family would deny stories that were true. They would threaten legal action with stories that were true. They would use a mixture of patronage and pressure to stop people reporting on stories. They brief against people. they would reward people for supporting them.

So I talk in the book about how a lot of journalists basically shied away from writing about Andrew and Jeffrey because they realized they would be penalized if they did so. And they basically did their bidding and that's how the system works. No one wants to be outside the magic circle. And so when people like me come along and say, hey, this is actually what's really happened. they do everything to, I mean, whether it's using bots on Twitter, briefing against you. Wait, the royal family's using bots on Twitter? Yeah. I was told that a Saudi billionaire had given Fergie and Andrew money to try and discredit me.

That's who does it. The Saudis got a hell of a bot farm over there. So there's, you know, there are ways it doing it. But you asked your question, why does Charles stand by him when he doesn't like him? but it's exactly why the Duke of Windsor. So this was Edward VIII. You know, one of my previous books, I showed that he was a Nazi supporter. And Churchill and the British establishment prevented the release of German documents,

which revealed this after the war, not because they didn't think he was of Adam, but because this would be too embarrassing of this stuff came out. And that's the problem with Andrew. Instead of accepting that, look, we need to distance ourselves. It's, you know, we don't want to, if we cover for him, it's going to look worse for us. They just do the cover up. And all my books, in effect, are about cover-ups. And the one with Andrew is they thought they'd get away with it.

Even when my book came out last August, and there was plenty of material there, you know, to bring charges against him for leaking confidential information, for fraud, for breaking the official secrets at. Nothing happened. But where they got caught out was the Transparency Act. And when Epstein Revelations began to be released last December, the game was up for them. They suddenly realized that here it was, and black and white. They could no longer say, well, Andrew Loney makes this stuff up. His sources are unverified.

He's a closet Marxist, Republican. You're a closet Marxist? Well, actually, no. I mean, they claim. He struck me as a real Stalin. Yeah, well, you should see that, you know, I'm out there on the barricades. Saturday afternoon. That's right.

He had a hammer and sickle. You just put it away. So, and that's what they don't, of course, that's what they don't like about me because, you know, I'm not a Marxist. I'm a former Conservative Party candidate. I got a doctorate. You know, I was an academic. You know, they can dismiss the tabloid journalists.

It's much more difficult to dismiss someone who footnotes everything. Everything's verified, double sourcing. I only use 10% of my material. I have 9 times, 10 times as much material I could use, which just couldn't be stood up. So for example... For Andrew or just in general? Just in general.

Just in general. So, and one of the great things when the Epstein files came out, everyone was saying, you know, how can we trust this guy, you know? And then the Epstein stuff came out, and it just backed up everything I said. So that was really gratifying. And that kind of led to the snowballing. It led to the fact that the royal family had to distance. themselves led to the heckling of Charles. Now when he goes out, everyone's saying, what did you know,

when did you know it, what did you do about it? And those are questions he's not answering, and people are saying, why aren't you answering them? Doesn't he still have cancer too? Is that? Yes. I mean, you know, I mean, it is a tragedy. You're absolutely right. You know, he's, he's basically being Prince of Wales since, since 952, 70 years. So he's never, there's never going to be Prince of Wales who's had such a long apprenticeship. And at just a time when most people retiring, he's suddenly having to take on the job. He takes on the job at a time when his mum's died. He never quite knows when it's going to happen.

It was quite sudden. And... You didn't put the pillow over? Well, they did kill George V. They hastened his death so that he made the headlines one morning. Oh, they did? Yeah. Can you enlighten me on that?

So, yeah. Well, I mean, the Queen. the royal doctor, a man called Dawson, went to the royal family and said he's basically he's going to die and he can die a bit later on and he's going to make the afternoon papers. But we think it'll look better if he's in the morning papers. So they gave him a little lethal con. So we had a sister dying in Britain long before we were debated it. That's great.

So they're not beyond knocking off their relations. And maybe that's what they should have done with Andrew. That would have solved a few problems. Well, that is not to stick our tinful of hat on too much here, but that is the thing I keep thinking about because ever since he did the aforementioned interview in 2019 where he said, I put the side down, I also don't sweat, and it was just a disaster class for however long that was.

I kept watching this and I'm like, you know, how does this guy not dying his sleep? You know what I mean? And I don't think that should happen, obviously. Like, I'd rather see him brought to justice and everything. But he's such a PR liability that he threatens such a large historical establishment that you would just think they'd be like, all right, Jim, you know. Put him out of his misery. Get Dawson.

So, yeah, well, with Edward VIII, they did want to get rid of him. So they encouraged him to take up any dangerous sport he wanted. He was very keen on steeple chasing. They thought that was a great idea. But they did. When the book came out, they were putting out the line that Andrew was suicidal. When your book came out. Yeah.

And that was quite clever because the publisher said, look, if we have blood in our hands, we've got to be careful. We've got to rein back the publicity. Actually, they didn't say he was suicidal. They said he was on suicide watch. Now, you can be on suicide watch without being suicidal. Now, I then talked to my source and he said, look, the guy is as, as, as, um, arrogant and unrepentant as ever. This guy's not on suicide. That's right. But that would be a very convenient way of him, you know, sorting him out.

And I think, you know, that he must be worried. I mean, in the way that Galane is worried, a lot of people involved in this story have died in mysterious circumstances. I mean, it's a big debate about Epstein's death, Daniel Sead, who was one of the people who was involved in this case. Gainers died in slightly mysterious circumstances. Jean Brunel, who was the supplying a lot of the girls, the French model owner, died in prison on suicide, just like Epstein, no evidence of any suicidal tendencies before. Virginia Giffrey died of suicide.

Again, we have no coroner's report. We don't even know how she died. They're conflicting reports whether she shot herself or hung herself. And I think there's a list of about 20 people whose deaths are slightly unexplained, who are involved in this case. And Andrew must worry that it's not the royal family who are going to knock him off. It's someone connected with the Epstein story because he knows where all the bodies are buried. You think so?

Absolutely. As does Fergie. I mean, you know, Fergie was the more numbers for Fergie in the Epstein Little Black Book than for Andrew. I think that in fact it was Fergie who introduced Epstein to Andrew. that relationship with Epstein goes back much earlier than people realized. I mean, one of the lies in the Newsnight interview was that they only met the late 90s. Alistair Watson and Andrews private secretary wrote to the Times and said it was the early 1990s. And I've got evidence that takes them back to the 1980s.

But Fergie must be worried. I mean, there she is. She's refusing to give evidence to the Senate. She's worried about coming back to Britain in case she's arrested as a person of material interest. and yet there she is trying to do a deal with Netflix. But yeah, I mean, there must be a worry that, you know, it would be very convenient of a lot of these people. I mean, she saw all those pictures of the naked teenagers. You know, everything was around.

I'm sorry, what pictures? Epstein's houses were filled with big pictures of some of the girls who were abused. There's no way you could go to this house and not see the very sexualized nature of these houses. That's right. that's that's the thing that really strikes me i i had a guy sitting in that seat three years ago who i knew he i i got connected to him and i knew he had known epstein and i did ask him about it too in that episode but we later found out that when the files were released he was on like 7500 emails with him and in a court of all just saying you're

on 7500 emails with someone is not enough to convict you of something if you know what i mean. However, when you're on that many emails with someone over that many years and you're around them that much and visiting with them that much and going to places as you just laid out that much and Prince Andrew is obviously no different when it comes to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Fergie as well. There's no way you don't know. There's no way you didn't see something and go, you know. Also, when you're lying about it and then you've shown to have lying about it. So in that news night interview, he said he and he met Epstein a few times and they cut off contact in December 2010.

And yet, I mean, when you interview the butler in Palm Beach at the Epstein home, he says that Andrew would come stay for weeks. I talked to someone who said that Andrew and Fergie stayed so often at the house in 71st Street that they had their own suite of rooms called the Britannia Suite. We know now from the email correspondence that Andrew was in touch with him, I think almost to the death. in August to 19

Fergie claimed that she cut off links in the spring of 2011 and yet I have a woman

I quote in the book called Claudine Praps who lived by the East 66th block of flats

owned by Mark Epstein but which Jeffrey used to house some of the girls

and the pilots and stuff and Fergie used to stay there on a regular basis

way after this 2014 Claudine perhaps says that she would see Fergie coming out of the building. She knew Fergie was there because the Dorman was in their full regalia. She'd go and chat to the dormant and they'd say, Fergie's Duchess of York is staying here. So really obvious lies. And when you're telling lies like that, what are you covering up?

But yeah, I mean, I think and but the problem is so much of the stuff has been destroyed. You know, there were deals done with some of the co-conspirators for, material not to be released. A lot of the stuff is just not appeared. I mean, I mentioned the fact that we've got millions of pages that have been released. Six million pages we know could have been released and they kind of hide behind it and say, well, protecting victims. But actually, they released the names of the victims and they blotted out the names of some of the people involved. That's right. It's disgusting. And, you know, there's very obviously been a cover up here. And I think the really worrying thing is if this material has been destroyed. We've got people like Pam Bondi

talking about what was there. We just need to wait for some whistleblower FBI agents because these people are on overtime, hundreds of them taking stuff out. Yeah, the FBI, unfortunately, you know, in recent American history and talking to guys I know who have left the FBI over the past decade, there's just elements of it where there's some real rot. Yeah. And so not to be cynical, but I really wonder if you're ever going to get any sort of real whistle blowing out of there from the people that would have handled that stuff. Well, I mean, I was involved with John Boomer, who was an FBI agent. What a name. Great name. Well, I recommend a substack. And he's now, he was trying to get a book out. But he had all sorts of stuff, for example, about Rudy Giuliano and what he was up to, links with the Russians, the corruption that was going on in New York City.

Trump, of course, and they really came after him and made life very difficult. But he is now, I mean, the great thing with things like Substack is it's, you know, much, much harder to come after people. And clearly, Trump has tried to do that with Michael Wolfe and others. But I noticed that there's been an FBI agent who was a whistleblower or intelligence writer who has a substack called SpyTalk. And Substack actually have a fund. and they have lawyers who work pro bono to reject what we call these slats. Oh, that's cool. Substack's doing that.

Subsac is doing that. And we certainly have in Britain, I'm a trustee of a charity, and we give money to an organization which works with lawyers to work pro bono to support writers who basically have this what we call lawfare. So these are strategic lawsuits. for what do they call it so anyway it's a way that basically very powerful people and a lot of russian oligarchs have used them to try and suppress free speech and particularly from journalists and them reporting on things by tying them up in in expensive litigation and the only way sometimes to deal with this is is by having good pro bono lawyers to respond yeah and shout out to those

people who do that too because you're absolutely right that is you know i'll speak from america's perspective here i know more about the the system here like i think we have a lot of great things in our system but it's not without its flaws for sure and one glaring flaw that has existed forever is the ability of being able to buy people silence through as you said lawfare where you just put them into hearing after hearing i've had to happen to friends over like bullshit stuff that's not public you know a public interest as a story where they just get in some sort of disagreement with someone and the other person has a lot more mullah and then they just keep keep pushing it to where they got to say all right i have to settle this i can't afford it anymore well that's exactly what hopper collins my publishers

did when uh that i'd take out two two one lines from from the book what were those uh one line was about milanio being introduced to trump through epstein and i said it was a claim that epstein had made, didn't say it was true, but they just turned over immediately and said, you know, we just need to just take this line out. And funnily enough, I mean, that's clearly, I wasn't the only person who said that. Michael Wolfe has said it, Hunter Biden has said it, appears in the Epstein revelations. But funny enough, I was in the Hamptons literally a few days ago and sat beside a diplomat, And I mentioned this, and the diplomat said, well, when I was in Milan, it's very well known that Melania was a high-class hooker. So, you know, that's trying to shut the thing down.

When was that? When was she in Milan? Uh-huh. I don't know. I mean, whenever the sky was there, I mean, but clearly before she, when she came to out of Slovenia, I think. Yeah, we like to say Lady of the Night here in America. Right, Lady of the Night. We're more respectful in America.

Right, okay. Said nobody ever. So, I mean, it was very well known. I mean, and, you know, lots and lots of those stories were there. I can't wait until we get a cease and desist on this one. Well, the other one, the other one, they just took out voluntarily. And this came from a diplomat in the consulate in New York, and he said he went to a meeting between Trump and Andrew.

And all they were talking about was the Turnberry and the golf course. because of course up in Scotland. But the other thing he said was they were swapping lists of massars, which were the best lists of massars. And talking, I mean, with my language about pussy. And of course, this is exactly the sort of language that Trump uses. And for good measure, they took that out. But interestingly enough, that diplomat said that for the payback,

he would go on the record. But by that stage, the line had been taken out by Harper Collins. And no one had complained about that line, but they just took it out for good measure. Took it out for good measure. But, you know, we've seen this, you know, with Trump, with so many people. I mean, they've tried, one of the things I found when I was trying to find a publicist for my book in America, they said, well, all the big morning shows are not going to report in your book because you've been critical of Trump. So forget about it.

And that may be another reason why. Well, he's been suing him. Exactly. And so, you know, he has, you know, we've seen this with the judiciary who've been cowed, with the law firms. We've seen it with the media, intelligence services, civil service and state department. Everyone has kind of fallen into line because they're scared. My whole thing is, you know, this is like one of those catch-22 problems.

I've talked about it before, but you would want, part of the reason people lost all trust in the mainstream media in America, it was a litany of things. But when Trump came up, it's like what I could never understand is there's already a lot of good material there. If you want to attack them, if you're in the media and you want to find weaknesses. And we can't say this on air because they read it as a racial slur, but certain things in the armor, if you will. that said you know they would go far beyond that and they would make things up about him to the point that it actually developed a semblance of a lot of people feeling empathy for him going oh my god those make up anything about this guy and his response now especially by his second term has been well i'm just going to sue all the press and i hear you it's not great to be lied about for sure

And I think like sometimes there should be consequences, of course, if even people in the press lie about you. But the optics and the symbolism of the sitting president of the United States, who's, you know, at least supposed to be, the highest man in power suing the fourth estate, really bad look. I've said this before. I don't care how people take that. It's a really bad look. You have to fight it out verbally publicly. And, you know, in that case, he's won those things before. Or just be above it. And I mean, the raw family don't tend to. I mean, they do sometimes. you know, they have NDAs with staff and they do issue writs against them and if they prevent a publication of books and they've prevented people selling stories to the papers. But generally speaking, they kind of ignore the press

and now the confirm ones and die but they then work quietly behind the scenes to kind of undermine the credibility of those people. But I mean, of course, you know, Trump is Teflon and people don't seem to care about things. I mean, people of course tried, you know, brought up cases, Katie Johnson, all these things.

I mean, and his supporters don't seem to care about it. But you're absolutely right. He should be set an example. But, you know, attack has always been his form of defence. But you're absolutely right. You've got to be careful that people, you know, he presents himself as a victim. You've got to be careful that, you know, everyone comes after him. And we've seen it, and I'm always careful about it, that people feed you false information

in order to undermine your argument saying, can we believe this? because actually this has been proved not to be true. That's right. Or this guy has an agenda. But it doesn't mean that, you know, this is the role of the press. It's the role of writers, you know, to hold people in power to account and to tell the truth. I mean, I'm a historian. Our job is to tell the truth about the past.

And we shouldn't be cowed by bullies. Whatever happens. And I think the more people who do it and, you know, the power of social media, the power now of substack and podcasts, it's very difficult now for them to take action. I mean, this is something the royal family have had to respond to. I mean, they controlled the mainstream media through what we call the Royal Rota. So you were in the tent, they gave you access,

they gave you briefings. But now there's so many people commentating outside that. It's much more difficult from control. And so what they're trying to do is to use the internet and to just have their own channels to present stuff. And that's clearly what Trump does. I mean, with, you know, with Twitter. I mean, he puts out his own version of events.

But we are in this extraordinary position where, you know, if you talk about fake news enough, people think all news is fake, don't know who to trust. I mean, even the responsible media. I think it's a boy who cried wolf scenario, unfortunately, for if the media reports things now that could be true because they lost the trust in the 2010s, I'd say, more than anything. And then you kind of saw it culminate with COVID to where, people are like they don't want to hear it now and I understand that but I try to I do my best

to look at things on a case by case basis well that's what the evidence is that's why your podcast is so important I think it's why so so popular too I hope so I mean people want that you know want to hear the truth and they want to hear people kind of being grilled I think it's also a matter of like you got to always remind yourself and also remind everyone out there listening that like I'm sitting in this chair just like anyone else would be and I'm just doing my best with the information I have and that doesn't mean you're always going to get it right. And when you get it wrong, like at least in my experience, like I try to be very honest about that with people and be like, you know, I used to think this. This was the pieces of evidence why. Here's why I think that's not the case anymore. And then people will do with that what they will. The most important thing to me is like I don't think anyone. I think it's human nature. People don't want to be told what to think. I want to decide for themselves. And I really, that's what I value. Don't listen to me. Don't listen to the people I talk to.

Listen to what we say and then make your own call based on what people say. Well, certainly what I try and do in the books. I mean, I try and present the evidence. And clearly, you collect the evidence to present your case. But I always try and be as balanced as I can to put another point of view. And I leave the reader to draw their conclusions from the material. And, you know, some of the books, when I wrote about a spy called Guy Burgess, who was involved in the Cambridge, Spiring.

Cambridge, yeah, yeah. People, you know, some people said, like Kim Filby and all that. Exactly. Some people said, actually, you know, I can understand why he did it. I think he came across the very sympathetic character. I feel very sorry for him. Others, perhaps because of their own, I would say, prejudices felt, you know, he was a traitor and stuff. But you try and understand why people behave in certain ways.

But one of the challenges with Andrews is to find anything positive to say about him. I mean, there were some positive things to say about Sarah Ferguson because she'd done some good work for charity. she again presented herself as a victim and she's always been popular in the States because people could identify with and since her struggles she was very open about her problems with her weight and very low sense of self-esteem and that was I mean I think it was very

manipulative but I mean people kind of warm to her but Andrew fun enough doesn't kind of play that game he just he he's so so arrogant and unable to to present to see anyone else's point of view he just kind of just does what he wants to do yeah but yeah i think it's really important that that the evidence is presented and then people control their own conclusions yeah there's some things i'm putting a pin in by the way in my head i would definitely if we can get to it today like to talk about the cambridge five and and the work you did on that's a really wild spy story from the cold war and then you keep mentioning

the ducal windsor i think whenever i bring that up to people a lot of people don't know that story and I think that's that's really fascinating but one quick thing on what we were talking about a few minutes ago you mentioned the the part that was removed about Melania Trump reportedly allegedly Pierce Beck being a lady of the night in in Milan and so that was taken out of your book and maybe this will we'll get a cease and desist and this won't be in the podcast anymore at some point but for now while we can put it up I did speak with Amanda Ungaro on the phone a few days ago. And she is, of course, the ex of Palo Zampoli, who was an Epstein friend and modeling executive and all that. And then the whole thing, like, he got her arrested by ICE using his

connections. And she has now been deported to Brazil. And she was very, I was telling you off camera, but she was very, like, honest about some things that she would have been incentivized to lie about. as an example, she would be incentivized to tell me that Palo talked about Epstein all the time, and they knew about him for years. Instead, she said he never once discussed Epstein with me over 25 years. And she talked about how she first flew to the United States on Epstein's jet with 30 other models, big air quotes there. She was 17 at the time. But, you know, one of the things she did say that's fascinating is she said when Melania came to the United States, she was very put together.

I'm like, what do you mean? And she goes, you know, it's not like when models or aspiring models come to the U.S., they're, you know, destitute. But they're not wealthy, you know, they're trying to make it and everything. When Melania came, she went like this. And she's like, I don't know where that came from. I don't know. But that was always interesting to her. And I think maybe that's an explanation what you found.

And you said you were talking to a diplomat. who mentioned that? Yeah, senior diplomat. I mean, he just took it, he just said it was, it was well known in Milan. I keep looking at this case and I've looked at this for years. And with Donald Trump, he knew Epstein for many years. There were some things that were ignored. Prime example being Maria Farmer would often talk about how he would visit Epstein's office, not his house, but when she worked the front desk at Epstein's office, Donald Trump would come in there. and a lot of people were kind of in one ear out the other with that one but it was also fascinating that the media of all things that they wouldn't attack him on they would never attack him on the upstein thing because there were a few things going for him on the record number one he did have a falling out with epstein it was disputed as to why some people said it's because epstein

came onto a towel hand at 15 year old girl at mara lago in 2004 other people like i believe Brad Edwards, the attorney for the victims, have said it was actually over a real estate deal they were fighting over and they're both narcissists, he and Epstein, so they had a falling out. But Donald Trump was also the only guy that when Brad Edwards was working the case for the victims in 0607-08, he was the only powerful figure that he reached out to who said, hell yes, I'll meet with you and told him everything he knows about Epstein. He was also the guy who when he was on the campaign trail in 2015 was going out of his way. to talk about Epstein and say, you need to look into that guy on the island. So you would see all these things and you're like, okay, we always knew Donald Trump was a player. He's not exactly a saint with women by any stretch. But like, you know, maybe he's actually one of the ones who's not like a petto here of all these people we're looking at.

And then it gets to his second term. He makes a campaign promise that he's going to release the files. He only ends up releasing as you've laid out half of what we know about and redacts a lot of stuff as well. goes out of his way to deflect and protect people and say it's a hoax and like basically do the opposite of what everyone wanted and take the opposite type of tone as to what he previously had been saying for years. And Defe and I have looked at this so much and we're like, you know, we haven't seen a smoking gun or anything that he was like one of the pettos. But there has to be a reason he's doing that. something that is so scandalous that like this can't see this delighted day.

Because the whole argument that like Marjorie Taylor Greens talked about him saying like a lot of my friends are going to get hurt, respectfully, when is Donald Trump ever cared about a friend when, you know, they were on the Titanic together? It's all about self-interest. Absolutely. You know what I mean? Like he's not, he's Billy Zane and the Titanic. He's not Jack. He's getting off that boat. You know what I mean?

But also, I mean, he's shameless. So, I mean, any of the stuff shouldn't put him off. Again, one of the interesting things about the different matter is he said he saw he saw, he saw cables and stuff showing relationship between Epstein and Trump long after 2004. Oh, that's interesting. So this same. So it didn't stop in 2004. Are you allowed to say what country this diplomat was from?

American diplomat. American diplomat. State Department. Very fascinating. Okay. So let's add that to the list. But what we have speculated here, emphasis on speculated. I have no proof for this.

I'm just saying to the future judge watching this. How you doing? Anyway. Allegedly. Allegedly. What we have speculated is that perhaps it has something to do with how he met Melania and what the context was there. We weren't even going to the Milan thing you just told me about. But let's say there was an innocent introduction, meaning like Melania was not traffic tears.

She was not a part of anything. And she just happened to know Epstein. And he happened to introduce Donald Trump to her one night and then the rest is history. even if that were the case it wouldn't matter it'd be the biggest scandal of all time the biggest sex trafficker in modern history introduced the president to the future first lady like you're done and i kind of wonder if it is milania that is like the in all the wrong ways like the ace in the hole here that is the reason that donald trump is so averse to whatever's in there coming out yeah what it means it's very interesting i mean i think she is she is the vulnerability for

Trump and I mean she's a loose canon in some ways I mean she you know it's the one era where you know she she could go off and sell the story who knows I mean she's kind of semi-detached from him and he thinks he can control things but the one person can't control is milania so but you know you could argue this is him just being very protective and a gentleman about his wife's honor but I don't think he's worried about anyone except himself and maybe possibly baron his son I mean, that may be the factor. He's not worried about Melania. He's worried about what happens to his son.

And that was always one of the arguments, you know, about the royal family and the way they protect Fergie is not because they care about Fergie, but they don't really want to upset the children. That's right. Can we take a little tangent real quick on your background, if you don't mind? Yes. Well, I mean, my background is born in Africa, brought up in Bermuda. You were brought up in Bermuda? Yeah. What's that like?

You had the wrong skin tint for that. Well, I know. So I don't really like going into the sun too much. One of the people who hates going down, but the beach has very unhappy memories for me. So, and then I actually was at school briefly in Asheville, North Carolina. And I went to Cambridge. I did a PhD afterwards. We worked in publishing, but I always had this kind of second.

career as a writer and academic, and began to write books. I originally started writing literary biography. I wrote a book about the man who wrote the 39 steps, John Buckin. Who did what? He wrote a book called The 39 Steps, a famous film by Alfred Hitchcock. And that actually was a present the royal family gave to people. They liked it so much because there were connections between Buckin and the royal family. Not they burn it probably. Well, I think, yes. We used to give you clout. Look what you did. This is the way you treat us now. And then my background was writing about spies. I helped set up the Spy Museum in Washington, for example.

I was part of the eight-man team who did that. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I used to write a lot about spies, and that's how I did the book on Guy Burgess. And then I kind of gravitated into royal books from that. I thought, is there anything that is less secretive than, or more secretive than writing about spies, and that was the Royals. And again, I became much more interested about the curation of historical records, the way that we don't always get the full story about the past, the destruction of records, and the royals are a classic example of how the story is sanitized.

And very few people, serious people were writing about the royals. Lots of tabloid journalists did it based on basically handouts from the royals. But no one actually did the digging, looked at the files. went and interview people on the periphery. And so this book entitled is part of a trilogy of books, which are kind of doing several things. One of them is ostensibly just looking at royal marriages. And that allows you, of course, to look at the private life as well as the public life,

which I think is a perfectly legitimate thing for a biographer to do. I'm often criticized. This is all salacious gossip. But it's all part of telling the story about a human life. And so the first book was about Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was the last voice. story of India, Prince Philip's uncle, but who had this dark secret at the center of his life that he was a paedophile. Right. Well, he's the one the IRA blew up. He's the one of the IRA blew up in 1979. So again, a very rich life, had this open marriage, a very, very happy marriage. So that, I think,

intrigued me. Then with the Duke of Windsor, the private side was, you know, was this the great love story of the 300th century was, you know, did he give up the crown for the love of Wallace Simpson? Or was he maneuvered off the throne because he was totally unsuitable as a king? And that was that because of his personality and his sympathies for the Nazis. And by looking at documents, the books called Traitor King, I came to pretty strong conclusion that he colluded with the Nazis, not just before the war, but during the war, certainly up to 1941 and the Americans coming into the war, and even after the war, and this was covered up. And then clearly Andrew, the story was about the happiest divorced couple, but of course,

it was about this endemic corruption with the royal family. And in all these stories, there's a cover-up. There's a cover-up about Guy Burgess, the spy, the attempt to kind of keep the story away from the Americans, to keep it away from the British public with Mountbatten. The fact is all the files of Mountbatten and his activities, is a... pedophile are destroyed, closed. Again, with the Duke of Windsor, all the documents, they found documents that during the war were showing the contact he had with the Germans during the war, and those documents they try to destroy or prevent from being released. And the heroes of the

story are American historians who said, look, we've got this material. This is part of telling the story about the Second World War and refused, even though there was pressure from Eisenhower and from Churchill and others to suppress this material. Some of it was destroyed. Some of it was delayed for publication until the 50s, but it did come out. And then, of course, with Andrew, the story, the cover-up is his monetarization of the Times of the Trade Envoy,

but also they cover-up by the royal family of the corruption within it, the fact that both the Queen and now the King knew about this, paid off Virginia Giff, and have covered up criminal behavior to protect the institution. And you've got to wonder how many times that's happened before? Exactly, all the way back. I mean, we don't know what we don't know. And absolutely, I think that's a really interesting thing.

New stuff comes up the whole time. You know, I read a book the other day. I mean, there's always been this great debate. Did Queen Victoria have an affair with her servant, John Brown? Did she marry him? Did she have a child with him? Fern Riddle, who's acquired a respected historian, got material from the Brown family, from stuff in the States,

from the public library in Aberdeen, which is close to Balmoral, showing that there was certainly some relationship there, probably a sexual one. And so that's history suddenly being rewritten and revisionist. Now, I'm a great believer. Historians are not there to repeat what happened. It's to find out to shift the dial,

not to make stuff up, but to take the story forward and to correct it. Correct it. If there's been a cover-up, if there's been things that have been hidden, our job is to show that where things weren't right, to be revisionist. I mean, no one wants to buy a book that says the same thing. A lot of people do continue to want to believe what they want to believe.

People still believe Churchill was a great leader. And in many respects, of course he was, but he had a lot of flaws. He was a new guy. You can't say a lot of these things. I mean, I've been reading a book recently about how the campaign for unconditional surrender at the end of the war prevented us doing a deal with the Germans, which would allow us to turn on the Russians to stop the subjugation of Central Europe and to basically have saved the British Empire. But because Roosevelt and Churchill were determined to remain loyal to the Russian,

because they were doing the fighting in the East and to really push for unconditional surrender and not to do a deal with Germans, which is what the Russians are always worried about. They didn't want to have us ganging up against them. So, yeah, I mean, you know, there are so many great stories in history, but you're absolutely right.

So many stories about the Royals as we look at them again, and we're picking up stories even going back to the 17th, 18th century, where we're discovering new documents. And I think that's what the exciting thing is. Nothing is written in stone about the past. There are always new things for us to discover and to reassess in the light of new documentation and interpretation. It's a big responsibility, too, because you want to discover new things. You want to understand where the truth was written, truth, in air quotes, written by the victors

and where maybe some of that needs to be reconsidered. but like as a historian and particularly like as a biographer when you're looking at people you just said it perfectly you're like everyone's flawed you know there's no one that's perfect and we like to lionize all these figures and pretend that some people were gods and they were just mere mortals and i think it's important to get that full picture i think a great example of this is what walter isaac sin did with steve jobs you know this is a brilliant man had so many great things did so many amazing things while he was here, but also had some horrible drawbacks as well. And I think it's I think it actually makes him more human to see what that was, right? Absolutely. I mean, the whole

tradition in the 19th century was basically to write hagiographies of people. Hagliography. Haggiographies basically were they stuck them on a pedestal and they could do no wrong. And we wouldn't go into the sexuality and all these things. But as you say, it represents a more rounded sympathetic picture in some ways. it shows, it humanizes them. And that's, you know, certainly the role of the biographer. That's why I'm interested in biography rather than righteous history, because it's about people. And I'm a great believer that people shape events that, you know,

chance things can change the course of history. Nothing is determinist and Marxist. It's not about grave movements. It's about individuals having the influence to change history. But, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, my book on Mountbatten, even though I exposed the pedophilia, and they didn't like that, actually was very, I think, sympathetic of him,

sympathetic to the way he was treated by his wife and his marriage. And I think also what you have to do in a book is you have to slightly play with the reader's sympathies. You kind of give them the story and you kind of bring them along. And you want to keep changing their view of that person so that they're constantly surprised and the way that we're constantly surprised by people who are friends, people we know, because people are unpredictable and they're complex. and I always equate writing a biography to almost like a surah painting, a pointillism, where you're kind of putting in the dots or you're doing the jigsaw puzzle and adding bits.

But the pointillism, the picture begins to emerge, but often it's often contradictory information. And people are contradictory. They will behave one way to someone and another way to someone else. You know, it's not black and white. And I think unless you understand it, that everything is nuanced, then you don't really get the complete picture of someone. How difficult is that, though, like you mentioned the Mountbatten example. Because by the way, you're full like run through your life there. I got a lot of questions on the steps here.

There's a lot of interesting things you've gotten to do. But, you know, you've very bravely also been someone who exposes a lot of people who are in power, who maybe did something as horrible. as pedophilia, but you mentioned with Mountbatten in doing that exposing job to where you realize what a monster this guy was, and you got a report on this and everything, how do you still find it in you to have a level of human empathy for a person like that who would use their position to do those types of things and prey upon young people? Well, I think the thing that kind of influenced me with Mountbatten was to discover that he himself was abused as a teenager by a...

a teacher he had who then later married him, was the ministry who married him. And I think once you kind of see it in that sort of perspective, that, I mean, he himself was a victim, and I don't understand enough about paedophilia, but they tend to be the pattern of behavior. And the same with Andrew. I mean, there is some suggestion that he may well have been, should we say, sexualized very early on, taken off to a brothel when he was like eight or ten. And if that story is true, and there's no reason for the person who told it to me to have made it up,

then that kind of explains the transactional nature of a lot of his relationships, the inability to sustain relationships, the interests and sex workers. And there are moments in the book where I talk about his loneliness, I talk about his inability to read the room. But yeah, loneliness is a really interesting thing. And I think, you know, there was a moment where he is betrayed as a young boy at school. People sell stories about him. He learns that maybe he needs to keep his distance, not become friends with them, not to trust people.

And I think that's one of the problems of the royal family, who do you trust? And then, of course, he's kept separate when he goes to school. He's not mixing with other children. He has his dorm, his room where he sleeps is in a different building. He's in the Navy. he doesn't share rooms with the others. He has his own separate accommodation. And so the sense of separateness, I think, becomes, you know,

does make him a more sympathetic character. He becomes a photographer, the things that interest him are bleak landscapes, sort of desolation. And he says, this is kind of a reflection of my state of mind. And then, you know, your heart does go out to him. So there's always some redeeming feature. And same with Sarah Ferguson. I mean, I think she rather cynically plays the victim.

and and and she makes up well the emphasizes the fact she was abandoned as a child by her mother who went off with with another man brought up by her father the fact that she always was teased about her weight etc she was always getting involved with men who basically took advantage of her abused her I mean she took advantage of them they're always rather rich but they kind of teased her about her weight they humiliated her publicly by taking on other lovers And so you do, and in some ways, you're absolutely right. The biographer of the writer has to kind of engender sympathy for the person, for the reader, because otherwise they're not going to continue reading.

And they have to kind of wonder what's coming next, how are they going to behave, what are they going to do in this situation? Will they do as we expect? Will they do something actually pretty extraordinary and different? And so there has to be that narrative tension all the way through. It shouldn't always be predictable. And so again, with the biographer, you're always choosing. using your information. I mean, you can direct it any way you want, depending on information

you collect. And so behind it, of course, you have a under running sort of theme. But you're constantly looking for that little salient detail that kind of is revealing of the person and their state of mind. So if I'm understanding you correctly, it's the idea that you're not empathetic with what they become. You're empathetic with how they got there. So that we can teach people about that and hopefully set an example to be like, hey, maybe let's not do this in the future. Yes, I think people read these books. I mean, certainly one of the reasons I write to read biography is to get an insight into

how people behave. I mean, it's one of the reasons we read fiction, too, to understand, you know, to get to, we often identify with things or get an insight into a world we don't know. But always when you're reading a book, and that's true, a writing book, you're looking for moments where you can self-identify with the situation. You know, so for example, a lot of the people I write about I reflect are could be perceived to be insiders part of an establishment, but who actually see themselves as outsiders. And that's something that I'm increasingly aware of, you know, the fact that I am not English, I'm Scottish and French. I have never really sort of wanted to join the gang.

I've always kind of done my own thing. I've never had mentors. You never had mentors. No, I've always, I've worked, for example, on my own. I work, I think the only time I ever worked for anyone else for about a year. So I've always kind of done my own thing. And I identify with those people like that.

And I identify with people. So Guy Burgess, though he was an old Atonian, he'd been to Cambridge. So a bit like me. You know, you would say, well, very privileged background. but actually didn't always identify with the kind of people he had grown up with. And that was one of the reasons he had this loyalty to what it was about a petit le bourgeoisie. It was about getting back at the establishment. He felt a resentment against them.

And I'm aware that there is an element of resentment against people behaving badly, I suppose. Nothing wrong with that, for sure. But also, you know, when you talk about how there was a theme in your books of like some sort of cover up and it's obviously a cover up at a level of high power. You know, you also mentioned, though, it's your job to go look at all the evidence and then tell the story based on what it was and also based on the things that we weren't told that is in there on the record that you can find and prove. When you set out to write something, though, you obviously discover what the story is or what the crux of it is and you're like, ooh, you know, maybe for example, example with Mountbat and you're like there was a cover-up as to who he was here. How hard is it to, how hard is it to then go through that full process of however long it is to sit there and research everything and write the book and not come to a predetermined conclusion that you had

at the beginning if your evidence leads you on a different trail of what you thought? Well, there's never an agenda in my book, but I mean I do start with suspicions. So I started off with entitled suspicions at Andrew Abuse's position. I hadn't realized how badly. But it was a thesis that I wanted to explore. Same with traitor King. I started off on the assumption that he had been a traitor or that I wanted to make that argument.

But clearly, you're constantly adjusting what you say in the light of the evidence you find. And, you know, there were moments where, you know, I questioned Virginia Jiffrey's testimony, for example, People were, of course, feeding me stuff, and they would say, look, the photograph is fate, and here's the evidence, and she's been inconsistent. And so I would take that on board, and I adjust what I was saying or thinking. I mean, I always write the books right at the end. I don't write as I research.

But, so, I mean, it's not as if, so constantly you're kind of adjusting everything and refocusing the camera in the light of what's happening. But generally, yes, you have to have some idea of where you're going. That was less true of Mountbatten. I mean, Mountbatten, again, there were issues I felt I needed to look at. So there was a big debate about whether he had speeded it up into independence. And the result, he caused a lot of bloodshed, unnecessary bloodshed. Whether he had at the Dieppe raid in 1942 where a lot of Canadian troops died, had he done this because he was... The Deup raid?

Deerade was basically a test run for D-Day, and it was an attempt to land troops on the coast of France just to test, for example, landing techniques, etc. In April 42. And it was a disaster. So the tanks landed and they were on a shingle and they couldn't move. The bombing had meant that the tanks couldn't get through to the tank. and there's always been a big, there were inexperienced troops because for political reasons Canadian troops rather than experienced Marines were used. And there's always been a big debate. Was this about Mountbatten's ego

that he just kind of pushed through this thing without properly planning it? Or were there benefits to this? I mean, did we learn lessons for D-D-Saved lives? And so there were issue, there were controversial moments in Matt Batton's life I wanted to look at. But, you know, the paedophilia was never part of the story.

And again, the question there was, was as I when I discovered some of the stuff. Oh, you discovered that along the way? People, the, people hinted at it, but it was only when I got, for example, an FBI file that talked about it. And then, of course, I wrote to the FBI and said, I can have more of these files. And they said, well, actually, they've been destroyed. And I said, when were they destroyed?

They said, actually after you asked for them. But there was other stuff. I interviewed a driver from the 1940s who talked about being told to find the hell brothel or Malta. I interviewed his military secretary who began to tell me about the, certainly about the bisexuality. So the story kind of emerged. And then the question was, do I drop it in all the way through so that we kind of understand his behavior and the problems in his marriage? Or do I drop it as a bombshell at the end, kind of putting the whole thing together? And I took the decision to have a final chapter, which I call rumours. So I didn't say this is entirely true, but this is why

people are saying this is what I've discovered and then people had to kind of rethink the book because they'd read the book thinking why did this marriage why was this marriage so why did the woman his wife kind of run off why did they have this open marriage what was the problem and then of course suddenly you have this eureka moment when you think actually the guy was chasing young boys and other men then there's maybe there was a reason why it wasn't successful well what it wasn't conventional and I think that you know sometimes you are looking as a biographer to to create a a shock moment in the book. And, you know, people said, well, why don't you tell us earlier? But in some ways, that's what you're doing. You can play around with the reader. You're in charge.

You're like the theater director who can kind of stage it in the way you want. That's a hell of a way to do that one. Oh, by the way. Last 600 pages. You thought all of this, yeah. Well, I wouldn't do 600 pages. It's like the end of usual suspects. He's like, oh, there's guys or soze. Yeah, well, I mean, flashbacks, I think, are really good. And you create a sense of irony and all sorts of things, but you can't do too many flashbacks. You can't play around your narrative too much. Right.

Now, you said you started off as a publisher. Is that called? Yes. I mean, I've had a dual career. I've worked as a literary agent since 1985. Wow. So I've represented other people's works. And that's been a really good training.

So I've probably sold about 2,000 books in 40 years. Wow. And probably read a lot more than that. And so you read a lot of stuff. And yet there's a sort of osmosis that you pick up. You learn from the bad writers as well as the good writers. And so, you know, tricks that you learned, short sentences, short chapters, varying the cadence of a sentence, the importance of narrative, the importance of sticking to a story, not going off in too many red herrings, shaping the story, not in the light of the material you've collected, but in the story you want to tell. All those things have come kind of from reading other people's work.

Oh, that's so cool. So you, like as a kid, though, did you write it all yourself? Was that something you were always into? Or did that develop later through the job? No, I think I wanted to write as a child. I always read a lot as a child. But I never thought that I could make a living as a writer. So, yeah, one of the nice things is to have this Indian summer in my 60s to kind of do the books that I wish I'd done sooner.

Oh, that's so cool. Yeah, because, like, that, you know, you hear a little. lot of the stories where guys have to write four or five books that no one reads and then, you know, the six is when it takes off and then they get to do it. It's a long journey sometimes, but you also had, you had your own long journey. You just kind of got in through the back door there. Oh, I did do a lot. I mean, I have done a lot of books. My first book came out in 1992. What was that? So that was a literary guy to Edinburgh. So very different from all this. He was in Edinburgh for 30 days to putting on a play out there. Oh, right. I'm just about to go

to the festival. So I grew up in Edinburgh and I went to University in Edinburgh and so I really, it's one of my favorite cities. It's from literary associations. Wait, when were you in Edinburgh? You were born in Bermuda, spent some time there. Born in Africa, lived in Bermuda till 72 and then I lived in, it was at the school in Edinburgh from 72 to 79. Got it, okay. But so I kind of meandered around. So, you know, people say this guy has an obsession about the royal family, he's had it in for Andrew. But actually, I kind of fell into this. I wasn't interested in the royals until a few years ago.

But, yeah, so, I mean, I've done, this is my fifth biography. And, you know, the books have done well. They've won prizes. They've been, you know, they've sold well. But this was the breakout book, which is why it was so disappointing not to get the breakout in America. Because, you know, this was a, you know, this was a, a. good American subject. People were interested in Epstein. And, you know, it's a book also that I think

has, has, without being immodest, kind of changed history. It did lead to his, I mean, people have said, you know, to the end of his titles, you know, it has people to force people to look at the monarchy in a new light. You know, and that is a great, you know, that is kind of what we do books for. I mean, and the other books never clearly had that impact. So let's hope, I mean, I'm aware that I could recede. I've got my Andy Warhol, 10 minutes of fame, and that may be it. But, you know, I'm now encouraged to do bigger subjects and to be braver, shall we say, about the book site to go out more on the limb. Yeah, I think you've had more than 10 minutes of fame. I mean, I've known your name for a long time. You've been out there writing books. But either way, you know, when you went to write the Andrew one, especially as it was coming together, like we said earlier, this is someone that's living.

that is different than things you had written in the past. Did you have any fear that you were knocking on some serious doors that people aren't supposed to knock on? Well, I got a pretty early indication. I mean, even before the book was published, I mean, while I was getting legal letters from Sarah Ferguson, and they was warning me about that they were watching me, they were monitoring my social media.

So there were attempts to intimidate me from a pretty early stage. But anyone who knows me knows that I encouragees me more. that's well good for you that's i mean it's it's you know again not to be conspiratorial about it but you wonder with with some of these really powerful people if you go a little too far well i mean you know i you know you have to be responsible and you know clearly you know you put your reputation on the line with these books and you've got to be very careful you're walking a tight rope and it's very easy to fall off the tight rope by getting too confident about what you're doing uh or to get too full of yourself that you know more than you really know.

Someone described it like riding a tiger, and it is a bit like that. You kind of never know what's going to come from left field or right field. You're responding to a lot of people. You know, I'm not being trained to be in the public eye. So, you know, on the day, for example, that Andrew was arrested,

I think I had 1,500 emails. I mean, my phone never stopped ringing. I have several phones, actually. And I was literally giving five minutes here, five minutes there to try and, you know, help people, talk to people as much as, possible. But, you know, you are suddenly thrown into the eye of the storm. And you can understand how that happens, you know, to people who suddenly get caught in events. That's right. What's your,

what's your writing process like for a book like that? How do you do it? How long did it take to write the Andrew book, for example, and what did you do along the way? Did you do all the research before writing? Are you writing while you're researching? How does it work? Yeah, all the books I basically create a chronoic. So I like biography. You have a strong structure to start with. So I create a chronology, literally day by day, and I collect that from secondary material, cuts, whatever it is. Cuts? Newspaper cuttings.

And of course, that gives you the broad outlines. It may not be true, but it gives you people that you can contact. It gives you errors to explore, subjects to explore. And then I create a list of people to contact, names that have come up. I then trace them through social media, through reference books, through a reference books, through electoral rolls, whatever it is. You had 3,000 for Andrew, you said? 3,000 people I have a list of, and I contacted.

And then you, what you do, yeah, you just collect your material and you begin to get a picture. Some of it will be thematics, so you have little thematic sections. You know, it might be on the bisexual, stories you picked up on bisexuality. I picked up a lot of those on Andrew, but couldn't stand them up because a lot of it was just secondhand evidence. drug use by members of the royal family again couldn't find people to go on the record on that i had activities from senior british politicians peter mandelson tony blair again we couldn't prove it legally so a lot of that stuff couldn't go in um is that because just as a question for semantics for me to understand were you saying for those types of stories you mentioned a lot of it was

secondhand but was it because people would only agree to be an anonymous source for versus put their actual name behind it? There were two problems. Sometimes it was secondhand. You know, my girlfriend treated Andrew for HIV. Can I talk to your girlfriend? Oh, I've lost touch. So that's no good.

But a lot of it was people who, you know, for example, like the diplomat I saw the other day, I haven't named him, but clearly I had a good first source on something, that backed up something else I had. Again, fun enough, last night, at Arthur's Night in the Hamptons, a woman came up to me.

uh peggy segal who's quite a well-known publicist peggy segal came up to you in the hampsons the other night yeah last night okay yeah please do tell me more and and said i you know i've got some stuff i can tell you about um um so um she's took peggy segal told you she's got some stuff she can tell you about yeah so that would be that would be a first-hand source um yeah and i think she seems to have to go on the record she's come forward and volunteered herself so why do you think she did that. Peggy Siegel for people out there, she's the famous New York PR lady who was helping Jeffrey Epstein recraft all his PR has a lot of cringy emails in the Epstein files represented fucking everybody in New York. Why is she talking to you on this? Good question. Good question. I mean,

you know, people come out of the woodwork. I had someone a few days ago, I work at Buckingham Palace. I want, can I talk to you? I get, I think I had about 60 people who came to me after the book got published and whether, you know, they are on fishing expeditions out to give me false information, people who just have a reciprocal for a vehicle for getting a story out that they wanted to get out. Revenge, want to be on the right side of history, people have a whole series of motivations. But of course you listen to them and it all adds to the picture. But funny enough, what Peggy Siegel did tell me last night was about a relationship that Andrew had, with a well-known American news personality,

which I knew about, but I only had it from one source. And now she's given me the second source, a woman called Felicia Taylor, who's now dead. So that was... I'm sorry, is that the woman he had the affair with? The long fare with. Felicia Taylor? Yeah, who worked for CNN.

Felicia Taylor. I'm not familiar with her. So this is one you had heard before, but now Peggy Siegel who knew Brentane quite well. And knew her. It's telling you straight up that he had an affair with her. I guess while he was married to Fergie, is that the implication? Yeah.

Well, he divorced Fergie in 1992. So perfectly available. But there were a lot of famous women he had affairs with that I just couldn't write about because I only had it from one source. And also, you know, Fergie denied a lot of her affairs. She denied an affair, for example, with an Austrian tennis player called Thomas Mustard. She'd crossed, she'd flown to Australia to see him, having seen him perform, I think, in Miami. And she denied it.

And then I actually talked to someone. This hasn't gone into the book. So you're hearing for this first time. Here we go. Look at this. But I talked to a journalist who was there, a dentist correspondent, who said, actually, I saw a disappear into the room with Thomas Muster into the suites. I mean, it's not just that. And she gave me a dozen pictures of the two of them kind of canoodling.

And we had the same thing with Fergie's relationship with P. Diddy, which, you know, she came out and P. Diddy came out and denied the relationship and said, this is just a false allegation. Can't believe it. And then 60 Minutes in Australia came out with an interview with Roger Bones, P. Diddy's head of security, saying, yeah, it's true. So time and time again, all these people. Pity was slamming, Slamming Verge. said that. I'm the house. I'm trying to look out for the wife over here. P. Diddy and Fergie were... She loves black men, bad boys, rappers. God damn. He fucked everything that moved.

Yeah, well, yeah, he did. He did. I'm from Jersey for you, me. Wow. So, that's nuts. Yeah, yeah. He loved, he sucked up to the Royal Family. He loved it. And she loves black, she loves rappers. She had a rapper performer at her daughter's 13th birthday party.

And she would take 16-year-old Eugenie to the sex party. that P. Diddy had. You have that on record that she did that? That's on record. Eugenia was going to Diddy parties. Yacht parties. I mean, and where things began to happen. And I traced a relationship back to 2002,

and then the papers subsequently had pictures of him, the two of them, at his 1998 birthday parties. So they were Méti... Oh, they were early, early. Much earlier than I even said. So constantly you have stories, and then actually you get more information once the story comes up, other people come forward.

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that Peggy Siegel, A, is showing her face in the Hamptons, but B is walking right up to you and giving you some of me. We've covered some of the emails that even popped up in the files with her, which are just like, you want to talk about a PR disaster. She's talking about, like, what was it, Dief? Can we pull it up on J-mail.world, where she and Epstein are talking about getting him,

finding him a woman to have a child with? you remember what I'm talking about we covered that in an episode it's like you know and she was and and she knew damn well everything was accused of she was helping him uh oh that's her number you can't take it though I'm getting so sued in this episode god damn but like in for a penny you know she's the one who's trying to resurrect his image who has to know all the details of what he did and she's so flippant in talking it and like joking with him in my opinion the way they're talking about it is like for lack of a better way of putting it finding him a piece of meat that he can inseminate in effect you know and if you are going to talk with her selfishly

here i'd love to hear her make any attempt to defy yeah deep has it right here so peggy seagall this is from what date is that thief up there? the top. These are from 2011. 2011. So August, almost 15 years of the day. To J.E. vacation, Peggy Siegel says, a baby mama. If I wasn't 102, I would take that job in a nanose. Sorry, I forgot about that one. In a nanosecond. Can I be anti-mem redacted? I would be excellent at that job. Here is the problem. You have to find someone who will take it as a business deal and not get crazy emotional. girl will want a real relationship with the father, a girl who wants a certain life that still

can't get it any other way as a candidate, but must be stable like a rock looking. Well, I'd like to say it's my charm that's persuaded her, but she just turned up, but it could be the accent. That was, that may go a long way. It's a very disarming thing that British accent makes people very comfortable. So that maybe helps. It doesn't always help in Britain, but, but again, you know, because I, I, I, I, uh, have written books based on, you know, very clear sources. I think a lot of people perhaps trusted me. And, I mean, there's a lot of people to talk to me,

and I haven't said the stuff that's in the, you know, they told me about, in the way that you've preserved your sources. But I think one of the really interesting things is, you know, I had, for example, Andrews, commander in the Falklands, his naval mentor. They went on the record for the book. And I think when other people see that and other people have kind of raised their heads, it encourages other people to come forward.

And I hope I haven't betrayed any of the confidences of what people say. I always clear everything I've written with people. And I mean, I have had moments where people then actually decide that they don't want to appear or they want to be disguised. Having said, they'll talk on the record. And I always say, you know, this is all off the record. And then I'll think say, is there some stuff? Well, a bit like you. Is there some stuff that we can put on the record?

And sometimes they'll say no. sometimes they'll it's about it's it's a seduction process and as people begin to trust you and and feel more comfortable they are more prepared to to talk yeah I find in those conversations I've had I really treat that with kid gloves in the sense that I'm going to always err on the safe side with things like when I was recounting that conversation the other day when we went on and did our episode there were a few things that I was about to say that I now know would have been fine to say on there, but I was like, you know what? Well, it's a long, it's always about long-term relationships. And I mean, when I did the Matt Batten book, I talked to one of the mistresses of Mountbatten. Now, one of the things Royal Family do is

they pass mistresses on. So they, they kind of pass the mistresses on to another member of the royal family. It's like a sort of game of past the parcel. Yeah, past the parcel. And And so one of these women also became Phillips' mistress. And... Wait, the father? So she was a lot younger. Actually, this happened with two different women. And...

But I never thought I would be moving on to doing, for example, a book on Phillips. So now I can begin to talk to some of these people again because I kind of didn't blow it with them. I didn't say everything I could have said. But yeah, they were odd. I mean, there's one woman. I mean, this is now very much in the public domain, but Matt Batten had an affair with a woman who was 40 years younger than him, who was his goddaughter. And then she was then passed on to Philip, who was only 20 years older than her.

Is that the one whose child died? No, that's not Penny Macbatton. No, it's a one called Sasha Abercorn. But another of those aristocrats. Yeah. So they kind of keep it very much within a very tight little group. Yeah, tight little family. I was thinking this earlier, too, is a good time to ask you because I just thought of it again.

But, like, where does the royal family stop? Right? So eventually the kids of the kids of the kids of the kids of the kids are born that are not in the direct line of secession. And they become 35th, 65th, 150th. Well, it's a good question. And it's actually, it's been an issue in the newspapers today because, I mean, we're all related to the royals eventually. It's some remove. and I think the birth of Eugenie's third child

which has pushed I think Princess Anne to 19th in the line of succession and Edward to the 17th makes the whole thing ridiculous so people are now calling for them basically only the first five to be in the line of succession to get rid of Andrew and his family out and Harry's and his family out and that kind of would bump up Anne and Edward who are working roles that needs to be the distinction Those who are working roles doing public duties, I think should be in the line of succession. They should get all the perks.

But if you're not doing anything, then you shouldn't, like the York daughters, have basically royal accommodation, which is paid for by the taxpayer when you're not doing anything. But it's a really interesting question. Where did you draw the line? And again, with titles, you know, traditionally the child of the second son would be the Duke of York. So, I mean, I don't think there'll ever be another Duke of York because it's now been tainted. There'll never be another Duke of Windsor. But we saw with the Duke of Edinburgh, for example, that that title was passed on to Edward. So Prince Edward.

The fourth son. So Andrew was made Duke of York on his wedding day. Charles was, I think, already a Duke of Cornwall or something. but Edward was only the Earl of Wessex so he was kind of lower down the pecking order but he was kind of waiting and Charles made him wait a little time after his father, their father died before he made him

Duke of Edinburgh but Edward's son who is now the Earl of Wessex James will not be Duke of Edinburgh I'm told so these kind of titles get kind of shifted around a bit what does that even mean to be the Duke of Edinburgh like when they show up or they like the king or like of that place

Well, I think it's just, you know, you're a royal duke. It's, it gives you a certain status, and it is all about status. That's why Andrew was so, you know, he signed himself Duke of York and Knight of the Garter. I mean, these symbols mattered a lot to them. For most of us, it doesn't matter at all. But, yeah, it gives you a certain position in the pecking order. And I think it is all about the hierarchy and the status. And that's why I think your point about, you know,

basically being pushed down from number two to, I think, an eight or nine now, it does kind of affect you. You become less and less relevant. But, you know, that's true of anything. I mean, if you're in the family business or lots of jobs, you become less and less important and move out. You know, we're seeing increasingly in professional life. You know, people rise to top of their careers, not the age of 65, but probably at age of 35.

And then people become freelance, they become consultants. So the whole pattern of our life is different. And it's about adjusting. And Anne and Edward have done that. Andrew couldn't do that. He's kind of hidebound with tradition because he doesn't have the imagination to see that there are other options.

And there are many ways that you can create a life yourself. Philip did that really successfully. Prince Philip married the queen. Probably would have risen to the top of the Navy if the queen hadn't inherited in 1952. And if the Duke of Windsor, even if he hadn't had children, had actually come to the throne, the queen wouldn't have become queen until 1972. Philip would have been 50 then. And he probably would have been an admiral.

And it would be a very, very different story. But he had to give up this career. He had to kind of create a role for himself. He was always walking as this alpha male, three steps behind the queen. The courtiers weren't giving him in any obvious role. He wasn't actually made consort. I mean, normally when you're a king, your wife is a queen, I mean, like Camilla or queen mother. But he was just a prince of the realm.

And he created a job for himself. You know, he championed technology and the environment, created outward bound and the Duke of Edinburgh scheme. So he found a role for himself quite separately and made the most of the job. And that's clearly what Andrew could have done with a bit of direction and with a bit of self-discipline. I mean, there was always this jealousy from Charles because Charles felt that Andrew had never had the pressure on him that Charles had the pressure to get married, for example. He was able to have a career in the Navy. People were actually less critical of him about, you know, girls and stuff. You know, he had a pretty good life.

And if he had played it right, he could have, he was very popular. He was seen as the poster boy of the royal family. And so now he's this pariah, but we forget that at one point they were presenting him as the future of our family. Fergie, Charles would say to Diana, why can't you be more like Fergie? You know, she's natural, you know, she's lived life, she's had up a career. People like, she's, you know, down to earth. And she was popular. And then, you know, I suppose character comes out.

People realize that, you know, it was all about freebies. It was all about using the system. it was not about public service. It was about private pleasure. Yeah, I think that's a pattern we've seen a bunch. They also have, though, like, you know, you've been mentioning some real estate they have in different houses, obviously, that different royals will live at. But they got, as far as palaces go, they got Buckingham, they got Sandringham, they have Balmoral. There's another one down outside.

Well, you've got to make a distinction. So there are palaces like Buckingham Palace, which are basically not theirs. it's for their use. And again, one of the criticisms is the British public have just paid millions of pounds to refurbish Buckingham Palace on the basis that he was going to live there, Charles and Camilla.

Did they have a say in that? The British public? No, they had no say in it. We're very little. They very rarely have a say when it comes to the royal family and their money being spent. That's part of the problem.

I don't know why you defend this, Steve. Maybe I persuaded you to be a reluctant royal It's, I'm joking. He's a Scottish independent guy. So, but then, but he wants to live in Clarence House, which is also in effect owned by the public. So the royal family do own, under their own, in their own right, a number of palaces. So they own Balmoral in Scotland. They own Burke Hall, which is another place nearby in Kragohan Lodge.

The Queen Mother bought a place called the Castle of May right at the top of Scotland. Yeah. Charles has a house in Transylvania. He's bought another house in Wales. He's owned Highgrove. In fact, Highgrove is now owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. So he actually pays rent to William on that. So they have... Who's the Duchy of Cornwall is basically a slush fund for the king. Sorry, for the Prince of Wales. And that goes back to the 13th century. They own a ton of real estate in that. And they own a lot of estate either in London or Cornwall. And they own the sea bed around British. Do we even know how much that's worth? Billions. I think it's 32 billion or something. A lot of money. Do you think there's things in there we don't know about it?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, we have no idea of the proper valuation. I mean, they say they pay tax, but we don't know and how much they pay, but we don't know what they're paying tax on and what they're setting off against tax. Like, didn't they rent out, oh, I forget the name of it now, it's so bad. But like when Muhammad Elfayad owned those stores, what's that called? that historic center in Herod's, Knightsbridge. Herds, yeah, don't they

like own that and they rented that out to them? Or am I misremembering? I don't know about Harrods, but they certainly own large parts of central London and I mean, certainly bits of Cornwall, they're not always the best landlords. They own the seabed, and of course they've made a lot of money from wind farms on the seabed.

But they charge lifeboat stations, they charge the prison service because they're for prisons that they own, they charge hospitals. prisons or they own the land that prisons are on and they have to pay rent for that and they take commercial rent they run it as a commercial enterprise they charge people for hospital parking for example the royal families charging people they own the parking in hospitals they own uh warehouses where ambulances are stored overnight so that's one of the criticisms that they're making money

of in effect you know public things when they they should be kind of on one hand hand, they're saying, we're all in favor of, you know, dealing with homelessness. And yet they have all these palaces, most of which are empty. So they're going to have to rethink how these palaces are re-reused. And one of the arguments that myself and others have said is Bucking Palace should be open to the public. People should be charged to go around it. You can only go around a part of it at the moment. Bucking Palace Gardens should be open. There's no security risk there. So there are lots of things they could do to, in a sense, just win the public relations battle. I mean, the poor old taxpayer is not going to pay a huge sum for a memorial to the Queen Elizabeth II.

Now, why can't they, if they want to have a big memorial to their mother, why can't they pay for it? You know, at a time where there's an economic crisis in Britain, people are suffering. There are big debates about whether we can afford defense, for example, a time when there's a huge threat. We have huge problems with social care. We have a huge welfare bill. Taxes are being forced to be pushed up in order to pay for all the demands. And yet were the taxpayers paying large sums of money for a memorial for the Queen,

which they haven't really had any say on when the royal family could put up a memorial themselves. Hmm. What do you, you had mentioned earlier as well that this particular line that's in charge of the royal family now, like the actual royal family now, and we've talked about this before, but like they have direct ties to actually being German by blood and they changed their name to Windsor from, what was the name again? Well, Saxo-Goburgotha. So what is, what is the history there and? Well, the royal family is not really British. It's a mixture of, I mean, Prince Philip was, everyone thought he was Greek. I mean, his father was Prince Andrew Greece. But actually, he came originally from Denmark and a lot of his relations came from Germany. So really until the queen mother married George's, the future George of 6th in I think 90s, 23, they were all basically foreign princesses.

They came from Denmark or Germany or Greece, and that, of course, created this huge network, for example, Victoria's children all kind of intermarried. But the British royal family was actually Saxe-Koburg. And then there was a very strong anti-German feeling during the First World War. Mountbatten's father, in fact, was the first sea lord. He, like, around the Navy, but he was German. He was forced to step down. and henceforth they took on basically invented this name of Windsor from Windsor Castle

and then there was later a big debate about when Mountbatten married into the family Mountbatten again was an invented name they were actually Princess of Hess from the Germans and so Mountbatten elder brother became the Earl of Medina and he became Lord Louis Mountbatten And so they all took on British titles And He took on a new name Mountbatten just from Battenberg

It's kind of a hard name It's a nice name It's nice name yeah well and but then When the Prince Charles was born Philip said well this is my child I'm called Mountbatten I've taken on this name So he shouldn't be christened Windsor

He should be christened Mountbatten And Mountbatten Lord Mountbatten was thrilled and said, okay, the house of Mountbatten now reigns. And Churchill and others said, look, you know, you've just taken on this new surname Windsor. You can't kind of now call yourself Mountbatten. And so they came up again with a compromise. When Andrew was born in 1960, they said henceforth they'll be known as Mountbatten, Windsor, which is why he's now known as Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor.

And if you look at other members of the royal family, when they sign the register when they get married or the back, baptisms. The surname is Matt Baton, Windsor. Now, you've been mentioning today your next project you're working on is Prince Philip and writing about his life. It was quite unique. And you just laid out some of the familial history there with Greece via Denmark and all that. But, you know, you also were talking about what an alpha male this guy was. And yet he did in marrying the queen young, basically have to stop his rise in the military and come in and be the guy that I think you said, walked three paces behind the queen was that something that he ever got used to or was that a

lifelong struggle of like him being like why as the guy why am i the second fiddle here no i think he he can he understood it i mean he was a highly intelligent man i think he accepted that was the role here to play and i think one of the his great strengths was this strong sense of public service and duty and the people have terrific respect for that i mean he was working doing a pretty heavy schedule of events i mean into his 90s. But I do think there was a point where, you know, he got slightly bored with the whole thing and kind of went through the motions. So certainly I'm picking up stories that he would appear.

He would do the public events, but he would kind of disappear up the back door. Things he didn't like doing it. For example, the Queen was very interested in horse racing. She used to better the horses. She was a trainer. So ask it for her each year was very important, whereas he wasn't interested. He was interested in polo. but not in racing.

So he would kind of accompanying her, but he would kind of disappear at the back door once he'd kind of done his public duties there. So I think they came to an accommodation and he clearly had, he developed his own interests in championing science and technology and in the environment. He was very interested in alternative religions,

particularly things like Greek Orthodoxy, which was the church he had originally been brought up into. His mother was like a mother. was like a nun, right? His mother, in fact, was a nun, exactly. So he, and he was a wide intellectual curiosity. And he was interested, for example, in UFOs and very interesting in television. He was based on UFOs.

He liked that. He believed in UFOs. I mean, he kind of went out on a limb. I see the thumbnail. But, you know, and he was a very brave man in some respects. You know, he didn't care what people thought. And he was very much a man of the people. He mixed very easily with people from all sorts of.

backgrounds. So he Currish... Hold on one second. I gotta go back to that. So he was like a big aliens guy. This is breaking news. Yes.

And I think he claimed to, but like Mountbatten to have seen UFOs. No kidding. And he was very open about it. You know, people would, you know, smile and laugh. But he didn't care. I mean, he was, that was a good example. He was his own man. So he thought he had seen UFOs and aliens.

And he never looked in his own household to see if maybe they were the aliens. I got a laugh over there. Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, he didn't care what people thought. He just, he was his own man. And I think that's one of the things I really like about him. But he, he was, you know, he could be very brusque and temperamental and arrogant. But, and rude and racist and all sorts of things.

I mean, a complex man, emotionally, completely retarded. I mean, his mom was sent to a mental health. He was abandoned by his family. His father went off with the mistresses. He was brought up by older sisters and grandmothers and stuff. His four sisters married Nazis. I mean, you know, a pretty, pretty interesting background. But, yeah, he did kind of go and do his own thing.

So one of the things that he used to do is they had very separate lives, the Queen and Philip in terms of their love lives. You know, I think it's pretty well known that he did. He had various mistresses, of which the best known was Penny Mountbatten at the end of his life. They didn't sleep in the same bed either, right? Well, we know when Michael Fagan broke into the Buckingham Palace, you know, he found that they had separate beds. But that's true of a lot of them. Charles and Camilla have separate beds.

Really? Or sometimes have separate beds. Lots of them do. So it's often interconnecting doors, for example. And it was very interesting when I talked to some of the ambassadors of, about to fill up on some of the trips, you know, he would have interconnecting doors with one of the, there will be, um, interconnecting doors with one of the women accompanying him who would be, who would be, I don't know, a lady typist or who would be, um, just part of his lady in

waiting wherever. They always had kind of descriptions, but, um, lady and waiting might be a good one. On it. Lady in waiting is pretty. Yeah, that's a good little, it's a good euphemism. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. Real quick. And I just got to go to the bathroom real fast and we'll come right, doctor. Right. All right, we're back. So actually, the very first thing that I can remember in my life, like, when you go back and you can't really remember when you're like two years old or one years old or anything like that. But the first thing I ever remember was across from my bedroom, my childhood bedroom was like a smaller room that was kind of like a half bedroom.

So my dad would use it early in the morning to like get ready in there and go to work and not wake up my mom. And I remember waking up and walking in the room. And he was sitting down in front of the TV. And the TV was playing Diana's funeral. And you saw it was the part where they were driving the hearse up the highway with the flowers. Yes. And they had to stop and pull all the flowers off the windshield. And I walked in and he didn't realize I walked in.

And I said something to him like, what's this, dad? And he panicked because he realized, Oh shit, I have to explain death to my son now. I've been caught watching a program out of the royals. Right. Yeah, well, that too. What's my son going to think of me? I'm a closet royalist.

He's like, does this make me gay? No, but he, so he was like explaining, he was like, they're driving the princess to heaven or something like. It was actually like pretty good thinking on his feet to do that. I was like, okay, that makes sense. But it, because it was my first memory, it was something that, like, later in my life, I started to get really interested in her life and what she had done. And she was, again, like everyone, a flawed individual, but a really fascinating character,

someone who was from the inside of society, but outside the royal family, knew the world a little bit outside the royal family, but had to come in really young and then even, like, had her own voice. And they didn't like that. Yeah. Well, that's really interesting what you say, because, I mean, I think of all members of the royal family, she's the most interesting. And that's a really good example about how a narrative was created.

I mean, and people clearly have very strong views either way about her, and more so even than Megan Markle. But, you know, when she died, I kind of had brought into the narrative, which was presented very much by Charles's side, and this has now all come out, that she was, you know,

she was very disaffected and a bit nuts. And now increasingly, I'm, the more and more I read about her, I think she was wronged. I mean, you know, Charles was having this affair with Camilla all the way through, right? I mean, he never written. She was kind of just a rude mare, I mean, for breeding purposes. And she was a sort of lamb to slaughter.

It's a young girl. And though sometimes she overreacted and was a bit emotional. My sympathies are much more now with Diana than they are with Charles. And that was, you know, that was very much a campaign. I mean, he paid, he supported, for example, a book by Penny Jr., a British writer to basically, discredit her to say she had psychiatric problems and you know she was trying to do her defense by doing her her interview on panorama and stuff but my views have very much changed and funny enough yesterday I was reading a book that I've been

sent wearing my agents had about Diana which book well it's not being published yet but it's a series of tapes that she did with people before she died in preparation for a book but but more than no no but with someone else but a bit like the Morton, but actually going much further than the Morton in terms of some of things that she was talking about. And in fact, some of the stuff was so sensational that no publisher would touch it and no agent would touch it. And so they've kind of come to me as one of the few people who was mad enough to perhaps

do this sort of book. So, and I think clearly the timing for that is the 30th anniversary of her death, which is next August. Did you just read it or have you heard the tapes too? Well, I've halfway through the book, and I haven't, I've asked to see the, I've seen transcripts, but I haven't heard the tapes, so I've asked to see the tapes. And you say, because she famously obviously passed tapes through an intermediary to Andrew Morton that later came out and was the genesis of a biography he wrote, but you say that the claims in this, and I won't make you go on the record with stuff that's off record, but you say the claims of this are way more salacious than things we've heard in the past. Yes, some really shocking things. And, I mean, again, you know, I've got to be careful by rotation.

So I've got to check up where I can verify the information to some things that said. But it kind of rings true. I mean, she talks about her childhood, being sexually abused as a child, for example. And really, really revealing stuff that go a lot further than what she said about Morton. And a lot of stuff clearly about, yeah, the way she was basically led like a lamb to the slaughter by the, very cynically, I think, by the royal family. That they didn't want things to change. Charles had to basically was under pressure to get married. And the feeling was that kind of she would do.

I think looking at her life, the thing about her that's so unique is that even though she was in that royal family, and again, it's not like she came from a poor side of. society before that, people could really see themselves in her. Like, you know, she was the one that would go hug the AIDS patient when that was something you just didn't do, you know, and yet she represented the royal family doing that. She was the one who cared about children. She was the one who saw her kids as something more than just a number in the line, you know? I think they saw us a real threat, and you're absolutely right. You know, we now congratulate Catherine for kind of bringing up a children in a normal way. But actually, Diana was doing that.

She was taking off to fun parks and breaking away from this, you know, very stiff sort of of way the Royals were brought up. But you're absolutely right. She broke, you know, and they still do it. The Royals think they've done their bit by turning up, some of shaking hands and opening, you know, pulling a string. And she kind of got down and dirty with people and kind of pushed the whole thing towards charity and a few key charities, which you can see William has kind of picked up on.

Yeah. But also you see, and this is one of the tragedies of Harry, you see that charisma that Harry had, but before he got involved with Megan, that, you know, he inherited from his mother in a way that William is much stiffer. I mean, clearly the older child has to be more careful. But yeah, she had this extraordinary quality. And for a woman, you know, who was not very bright, not at all well educated, was still very young, you know, she did become an extraordinary figure. And yeah, I think they really were worried. I mean, Charles was always, of course, very jealous of her because of course, her attention.

And also the way she kind of flowered like a sort of butterfly, you know, that, you know, she was a pretty, I mean, a pretty girl. But, I mean, by losing weight, she became this extraordinary sort of goddess-like figure. Yes. And she, you know, she was like a fashion symbol around the world, maybe the most famous woman by math to ever live as far as, like, brand awareness around the world. So, you know, that's the other thing, too. As far as I know, correct me from wrong here, that was an arranged marriage in the sense

that that's not something he ever wanted. And I, if I am correct about that, I do empathize with that a little bit because it's like he's forced to marry someone that he doesn't want to spend his life with. And then what do you expect to happen? Yes. Well, I think, you know, the assumption was that, you know, he had to get married. He couldn't get married to Camilla. She was, well, by that stage, she was already married herself.

But, you know, they needed to find a young virginal bride. And she would do, she comes from a good family and she's young and she won't, she'll be malleable. So I feel sorry, I mean, I feel sorry for him because he thought he had to go through this. But I think he always thought he was going to be just able to carry on as normal. Once she produced two children. And she did produce a child very quickly. And I mean, there's a very interesting section in the book about how basically, you know, they would, you know, she was kind of kept at Belmoral as a sort of, you know, timings and things

happened when, you know, she was at the right position in her period to produce a child. It was all done very scientifically. But, you know, sad for her because I think she did love him, feel that even if he didn't love her then, that he would grow to love her and didn't realize. I mean, it was plotted by the two grandparents. two grandmothers, Ruth, Lady Fumoy and the Queen Mother. And that's the Queen and Prince Philip had an arranged marriage. I mean, Philip, you know, was basically penniless.

He was seen as suitable. Again, the Queen was in love with him and she was very happy, but he kind of felt he was kind of pushed into it. And we know that from diary entries, going back to the 1940, you know, 41, 42. where Mountbatten and the King of Greece, for example, are talking about the marriage. And, you know, clearly some of those marriages, like it worked for the king and, sorry, for the Queen and Prince Philip. And actually, if you go back, supposedly it was, the Queen Mother was in love with Edward VIII rather than with Bertie.

and Bertie asked her several times and she turned Bertie down and eventually she kind of conceded and I think that did become a happy marriage so you know that's a long tradition you know have your heirs and then you can go off and do your own thing and the problem was in 1981

when they got married that you know you still had to have a virginal bride by the time 86 came along and Fergie was on the scene I mean okay it was only the second son that was less important a factor. And I don't think it would be a factor now. I mean, everyone has assumed that Catherine had boyfriends before she married William.

Right. Different time, I guess. Do you think Diana ever loved Charles or she loved the idea of him? No, I think she did love Charles. You know, I think she, I think Fergie loved the idea of the monarchy. I think there's certain people who suspect that Catherine love the idea of getting involved with becoming queen and Sophie Duchess of Edinburgh was prepared to do that. And I think in some ways, you know, that's not a bad thing.

I mean, there are a lot of women who just don't want that. I mean, a lot of girlfriends for Charles didn't want that and turned him down. You think of Cresta Bonas and Chelsea... Was it Chelsea Davis? who was the girlfriend of Harry. But they all didn't want to, I mean, maybe they didn't want Harry,

but they didn't want to become members of the royal family. And I think both Catherine and Sophie were prepared to put up with that. I mean, I'm sure they loved their husbands as well, but, you know, they were prepared to buy into it. I think Diana, no, I think it was a genuine belief because in some ways, you know, she never exploited a royal position. There are no stories of her monetizing a position

even after she left. You know, she always, I mean, she devoted time to charity, but I've never come across any evidence of her being paid to do things. You know, she wanted to get involved with rich men because she wanted the security that came from that and people being able to pay for security. But I never felt that she embarrassed the royal family in the way that Fergie and Megan Markle have.

So I think she's a quite a respectable figure in that respects. And I think her reputation will grow as people look back. Definitely a legendary figure already was a legend. The instant she died, I mean, it's like monumental event in world history. It's kind of crazy to think about. But when Deif and I were in Paris in December, the last night there, he was like, yo, we should go to this bar Hemingway, which is a bar in the back of the Ritz Hotel. in Paris, which is really cool because Ernest Hemingway, obviously a legend. He used to be at the Ritz

for months at a time. And so they ended up opening up this bar, maybe in like the 1980s, is that right, Dief? 1980s where it's a very small exclusive bar in the back of the Ritz, where they have all of his pictures, letters that he wrote from on the Ritz letterhead and everything. It's just like if you're, if you love Hemingway and like a history buff. Go there, yeah. Oh, you never been? I never be. Oh, you gotta go to this place. So we're like, all right, let's go do it. And I'm saying to myself, I'm like, thief, they don't let people like us in a place like the Ritz. I don't know if this is going to work. He's like, all right, we'll try it. So we walk up to the front and we just acted like, yeah, we're going to Bar Hemingway. And you see a couple of the Ritz guards. They're like, I'm like, yeah, yeah, in the back. And they're like, yeah, yeah, go to the back. So we're like, oh, shit, we're in. And you go through this place. And it's like, again, you're seeing like sultons on the side in the opening bar right there. Then you go through all these like Gucci stores with the people with white gloves on and everything. And it's it's really amazing. But you get to the back where the bar is.

And, you know, the Ritz is basically like a whole city block. So all the way in the back, once you walk through those doors, you wouldn't, if you were on the other side looking in, you wouldn't even know, in my opinion, this is the Ritz. It's like kind of nondescript. And Barr Hemingway is through these little curtains on the side. So Dief and I get there. We wait in the line. There's only like how many seats? are in there, Deef, maybe like 25?

20, 25. So it's like pretty exclusive, but we were like number 12 in line, so we got in. And I'm sitting there and I'm looking at the curtains. And then it just hit me. I was like, oh shit, Defe, this is where Diana went out. Like, she left through the, they snuck her through the back door to Rue Cambone right there. And then two minutes later, poof, you know, that unfortunately, obviously had the crash. And she was dead.

And I googled it really quick. And I was like, yeah, that's right where it was. And that was like kind of trippy to be there. But, you know, her death now almost 30 years later, I think we're at 29, almost exactly right now as we record this, is still something that people are very, very suspicious of. Because unlike other people in the car who were killed on impact, she was actually killed by, I think, like a small vessel in her heart that they couldn't see. Exactly. It was by the bleeding, internal bleeding. Yeah.

And there was the whole thing where they. They took a long route to a different hospital from there and everything. And again, she had transcended the royal family at that point. She was bigger. This is the mass media era. She was a brand problem in some ways for them. You know, have you ever looked at that one and said something's wrong there? Something else happened?

Yes, I have. I mean, there are some books which I read and that watch TV programs. And then you're absolutely right. There are a lot of anomalies about what happened and the mysteries of, And, you know, the delay, I mean, she, they stopped the ambulance, literally the gates to the hospital and to do the work on her. And certainly the tradition normally in Britain is what they call scoop and run, which is to bring people to hospital as soon as possible. Whereas there, they seem to be treating her in the ambulance. But you're absolutely right.

There are a lot of unexplained stories. And funny enough, I did talk to a man who was involved in some of the Paget Commission, which was one of the investigations. and he said that he was an expert witness who was called because of his expertise and various things and in the end they didn't use his evidence and he kind of felt the whole thing was a bit of a cover-up and I'm sure for the anniversary there will be a lot of books coming out I think the big problem with the story is who killed her and why did they kill her and no one's ever really been able to put forward a satisfaction explanation I mean, to say that it was fire that Philip was behind it is ridiculous.

To say that British intelligence services were behind it doesn't really make sense. But, you know, there are a lot of, there are lots of, you know, things about blood samples from Henri Paul, the driver that don't add up. The problems with the car. The fact that, I mean, some people say her seatbelt wasn't working, which is why she wasn't wearing it. The stories about actually she and Dodie were taking cocaine, which is that. why they weren't wearing the seatbelts. And that's what's been covered up. Some people are saying it's to do with drug dealers out to get Dode,

and she was just collateral damage. But, you know, huge, huge mysteries. And of course, when people die and suddenly, and people find it very hard to believe, that could have happened, then, of course, there will be speculation. And I think that one of the problems is one of my arguments from the importance of transparency is if you don't provide, if you cover up things, then you create this vacuum for speculation and fantasy.

So my mind is kind of open, but I'm certainly not dismissing something doesn't add up there. And I'm sure this time next year we'll know a lot more than we do now. Why do you think it wouldn't make sense for say like British intelligence to offer if she was such a potential threat to the future of the longest held establishment in the country? Well, the argument was that, you know, she was, that there was upset about her support for landmines. That was very embarrassing. It was embarrassing?

Well, it was kind of because we'd signed up to certain things and we weren't doing it and she was highlighting that. I don't think it's still a good enough reason to kill someone. And, I mean, from what I, you know, as intelligence disorder, and what I know is intelligence services are tasked by government departments. They have basically a department which, which is, you know, I don't know, the foreign officer will say we want to know about, I don't know, the president of Syria, we want to know what's going on about this guy, Epstein, who seems to be doing this.

And so they will go off and investigate that, but they don't go and do their own thing. And so someone must have given the orders from within government to do that. You wouldn't have a rogue operation. I mean, that's the argument that there were some, but there were a lot of MI6 people around there. A lot of people are not telling the truth about why they were there. So there certainly was a strong MI6 element. There was some Mossad people there too. Well, and Mossad, of course, are always the one to do the dirty work for everyone.

I mean, that's one of the arguments with that. Just saying, Henri Paul was a source for them. Just saying. Well, exactly. And I mean, but, you know, and Richard Thompson, of course, has talked about it and the in the white fiat. I mean, if you're going to kill someone, there are easier ways to do it. You fiddle with the brakes.

You fiddle with a helicopter. I mean, there are a lot of things there. You can, I mean, the Russians are experts at injections in the arm and stuff. I was told by a Russian spect-net sky that if they wanted to kill me, they would induce a heart attack in the street by just injecting me with someone. So, I mean, there are other ways to do it. And there are too many variables that could go wrong. I mean, even if you directed, because there was talk about a police motorbike at the top

that was directing people down the tunnel. and how did the white fiat with the concrete in it how did it sort of get in the right lane at the right time there are just so many things it could go wrong you know

people say that Henri Paul was told to take a certain route you know that it wasn't accidental that he went that way so I mean there are lots and lots of things so I mean certainly if I had time I would be interested in looking at this

and going right out to first principles with an open mind I think they got your next book after Philip. After Philip. I mean, yeah, I mean, the Lord books will come out for the anniversary, but it doesn't mean the story will go away. We're still looking at, you know, the death of Princess Grace. We're still looking at, you know, the death of John F. Kennedy.

So you're absolutely right, you know, and, you know, there's still clearly people around who do know something. One of the people who was involved in the case, a diplomat I interviewed, in fact, from my Andrew book. he didn't always tell me the full story on the Andrew book so I suspect I'm not going to get the full story on the other book but there will be someone who will emerge and again a lot of people who died in strange circumstances you know people who committed suicide and locked cars and stuff with a lot from the outside so yeah yes well that it would be a great book and if no one does a good book in a year's time then that might add that to the list Have you ever uncovered any evidence or things that could point to the possible existence of evidence that Princess Diana in any way was aware of the existence of Jeffrey Epstein and perhaps his relationship with people in the royal family? Well, I haven't, but I have come across the fact that Prince Edward was in touch with Epstein in 1996, so before she died. Prince Edward?

Yeah. So if Epstein had targeted Edward, I mean, mighty have targeted Dinah, I mean, there's no reason for him to target Diana. You know, he wanted the kudos of being involved with the royal family. Dina really wasn't very useful to him in that way. Well, you know, she didn't have the contacts that the others did. She didn't have, okay, I mean, maybe what could you do for him and what could he do for her? I doesn't sort of I can't see why there might be a connection there but you know who knows you know I think there are clearly stronger connections who members of the Royal Family and Epstein and those hopefully will emerge and maybe she will come into the story I mean the other great mystery which I've got hints of and everyone's talked about Megan the York girl and Andrew but I had an interesting story

from one of my Thai sources who knew nothing about those rumors who has a story of Megan in Thailand in 2012. Megan Markle. Megan Markle and her buying, not paying for some fabric that she wanted, I think, to make a shirt or something. And if we can make that, I mean, of course she can go to Thailand. It doesn't connect her with Andrew. But it does, if we can connect the two of them in Thailand at the same time, then that begins to give some. sort of substance to some of the rumors that have been circulating for years.

And what are those rumors specifically? Well, the rumors are that Andrew was involved with Megan Markle, and that's one of the great secrets. And there's a guy called HG2 Tudor, who's done a podcast claiming to have an MI5 document proving this, but he hasn't shared that document. He doesn't explain how he's got hold of it. And also, it's not something that MI5 would be investigated. it's something MI6 would be investigating.

You do foreign intelligence. Steve, you just got recruited by MI6, so you can get on this when you get in there. They've been on Deves' LinkedIn. Right. People from MI6 looking at it. Right. Well, yes. Gosh.

Well, yeah, I'd love to stay in touch. That's wild. So they may have a document that connects that. So if that's true. I mean, if, you know, that is one of the interesting things that people are looking at, the Megan Markle and Andrew. And every so often you'll see things and they'll suggest that there's a picture on a boat of Megan and there's a picture of Andrew at the same boat, but it's always someone else. I mean, he certainly hung around in Thailand quite a lot.

He used to stay at a man called Johann Eliasch's house. He had an affair in Thailand with Cornelia Guest, who's, of course, quite a well-known American figure. What about some other stuff in Thailand? Well, I mean, you know, the story that got picked up was about the 40 prostitutes. Thailand. Yeah, of what technical gender? Well, that was a really interesting thing that I dropped in. This was from my Thai source, actually. And my Thai source is a member of the Thai royal family, and her driver was very friendly with Andrew's driver. And she, the driver, said that he used to drive basically kind of tea boys to Andrew's parties. Now, that doesn't mean Andrew got involved with them,

but it does seem kind of weird. That's a little weird. But it does back up the stories, I mean, the numerous stories of the bisexuality. And bisexuality is, you know, something that is not, should we say, unknown to members of the royal family. God, that's so strange, that whole thing. What a, man, you are going through some interesting... There are a lot of little red herrings that one could explore. And maybe as a result of this, people will come forward and they will have stories. And that's always one of the wonderful things.

Yeah, they can give you their number like Peggy Siegel, apparently. You saw it there in her own hands. I was in her handwriting too. It didn't look like mail handwriting. But that's still wild. I got to ask you about that off camera some more. But the other thing is we just did like a lot of work on the forensics and investigation with some experts around like the Charlie Kirk investigation in America, which is certainly a mess and all that.

And one of the main focuses there is like the procedure of the autopsy and the timeline and everything. I think I raised this point in a recent podcast, and I'd never really actually pulled on this threat enough and looked it up. How much do we know about the autopsy that was conducted on Diana and when that was conducted? Well, I think the interesting thing was the royal family stepped in very quickly to control it. Of course, she was embalmed very quickly, which, of course, were destroyed in the evidence of drugs and things. So none of the proper autopsies were done. She embalmed in France still? In Paris, very, very quickly that night.

So none of the procedures were followed, and that, of course, was always the argument about Epstein's death. And again, the proper procedures weren't followed and autopsy reports weren't released. And, you know, it looked like the death scene had kind of been mocked up. So, I mean, of course, big stories, you know, big questions about Epstein's death. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I think the important thing is to be agnostic on these. things. I mean, some people will religiously say that's impossible. It's just made up, but they don't have any evidence it's made up. That's right. You know, people more often, you know, of course you've got to make your case that it might have happened. But, you know, and all these stories, there are lots of

unanswered questions and what one has to do is try and answer them. My friend Joseph Scott Morgan, who is the death investigator and forensics guy I've had in for years who was just in here putting on a master class about the Charlie Kirk thing. One thing that he's says very respectfully but deliberately to drive it home to people as he says i i don't mean this in an inhumane way at all but the instant a homicide victim expires their body becomes the prime piece of evidence it is the it tells the most of the story that he needs to put together to determine what happened here and one of the things i couldn't get out of my head is forget the embalming that happened i guess that night while her body was still in the hospital but it's very famously

understood that when Diana died, they just left her body in that hotel room and people were coming in and out, people from her life throughout the day and like paying their respects by the body for hours, so much so that they opened up the window right there to make sure that enough air could get in. So, you know, it's... Oh, in the hospital? In the hospital. And it's like, you know, most famous woman in the world was just killed under interesting circumstances. Imagine all it took is one little second if someone needs to go do something to that body or maneuvered in any type of way to hide what needs to be hidden that's wild to me well i think one of the suggestions was that she was killed in the ambulance at the door of the of the san peteer hospital uh and it was it was mozad or whatever agents

who in in the ambulance who who administered the final dose or whatever it was at goddum that's certainly something i've read you ever read the book giddy on spies Well, I used to represent Gordon Thomas. So that's a yes. So yes, I knew Gordon Thomas. One of the, I mean... Did he die under? Well, he died much earlier than people expected.

He had strong links. I wouldn't get too involved with him, I was six. He was very close links with Mossad. Damn it. But I went and stayed with him. He was always short of money. And he met a lot of money in his life from these books. And he was living as a tech.

as a tax exile in Ireland. And I went out to see him outside Dublin. And he'd just earned quite a lot of money. And he was saying to pleading poverty. He said, I've only got this sack of rice to feed my family at the moment. And I said, well, what about the 50,000? You got the other day. He said, I bought a sports car with that. I will say this. That was a book that I had that when I was reading it for the first time and reading that first chapter, I had a verbal, like, alone by myself reaction of, like, dropping it. Like, what the fuck did I just read? Where he's telling this story, I've talked about this before, but he's talking about this cacha with Mossad, who I think he called Peter or something like that. And he's going through how, well, you know, all agencies,

CIA, Mossad, MI6, they have safe houses throughout Europe. Paris is certainly a hotspot. So this case agent, Peter is rolling in Paris and his target is the Ritz Hotel because that's where a lot of Middle Eastern power money meets for oil deals and stuff like that. And the way Gordon explained it is he goes, to get a great source at a place like that, it's about splitting the difference. And by that, he meant you don't want a janitor because they're too low. They don't know enough that's going on. But you also don't want the manager of the whole hotel because he's too high and he's too present in front of these people and knows all the guests way too personally. You want someone in the middle who has access to them but can kind of blend in,

which is why he was sitting here on this night with a guy named Henri Paul. And I know he's writing about 1997 right now and I'm just like, and then it describes that the guy was outside in the front like haggle of press that night at the Ritz where they snuck her out the back and then the rest is history. He was in that gaggle of press as well. and I'm just looking at this going, it doesn't mean anything because there were a lot of intelligence agencies

there at the time to be clear, but you wonder, because you're like, it's never just perfectly clean. There's always something that leaves the door open to like something weird's going on here and that book,

like that went largely ignored to me as far as like I never knew that until I read it 20 some years after it came out, but that was an insane piece of reporting right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know we had very good sources in Mossad, yeah. But I mean, you know,

it's very clear, that anyone in Henri Paul's position, any security position in a hotel will be a source for intelligence agencies. And clearly there was a lot of money in Henri Paul's accounts that he couldn't explain. Just in the way there was a lot of money in the guards at the Manhattan Correctional Center who found Epstein, which they couldn't explain. So it's always about following the money. That often gives you a pretty good sense.

Did you ever have any contact Wiki Len Maxwell? No. I mean, I started this book in 2021. So, no. I only asked that because, like, you've been in London for a long time and everything and been, like, a well-known journalist writing books. So, you know, there were a lot of people that just bumped into her. Yeah, a lot of people I know knew her. And in some ways, I mean, she was kind of part of my generation.

She's a month younger than I am. and she was at Oxford at the same time I was at Cambridge but I never came across her I mean she was she was a little bit too smart for me I mean A little bit too smart for you Moving in should we say smarter circles than I did I'm not really sure what you mean by that

Well more glittering so you know she was much more a socialite than me Got it Yeah I think we weren't we playing tapes of like them making fun of Diana or something Am I remembering that correctly Yeah so she was like around the royal family years even like before Epstein and stuff and i think on these tapes she was talking about how they used to like laugh and make fun of diana behind her back because she was like the outsider or whatever yeah she was very well connected absolutely yeah that whole thing that picture of like Epstein and

gilene at the little hunting house on the royal estate yes yes well i mean they i mean there must be more pictures like that i mean you know and that was their that was their sort of insurance policy showing that they were right within the inner circle of the royal family at these private places. Yeah, absolutely. And that was seen as the hat trick. If you could have pictures of yourself taken, you know, on the throne in Buckingham Palace, you know, at Balmoral, at the little cozy sort of hut, and then at Sandringham. So the hat trick? That was the hat trick to get them all there. And of course, Epstein was, you know, he's snapping all these pictures. They didn't realize. this was all collecting information that could be used against them.

Now, one thing I kind of put a pin into my head that you've referenced a couple times today is this whole thing with Prince Andrew, former Prince Andrew, as the trade envoy. So I want to make sure I understand this because he was trade envoy in the 2000s, but he was involved somehow in the Al Yamama deal as well. Can you just explain his whole role in anything related to arms deals and trade with with the British government? Yeah, well, he was the trade envoy in 2001 and 2011. So, I mean, this was after the deal.

But he's currently things were going on. I mean, interestingly enough, he was involved with Mark Thatcher in Kazakhstan, the 1990s. And I've put in FOI requests about a lot of the, about the Al-Aama deal. And they've taken a year and a half to even respond to it. And they've just kind of kicked into the long grass. have to respond within a month. And what was the al for people out there? What was the Al Yomano do?

Well, basically, this was about greasing the palm by British BAA. Basically, to get deals for British industry in the Middle East arms deals. They were greasing people's palms and paying commission. And that was the way the business was done there. And then, of course, there was investigation by the serious fraud office about that this was corruption. Now, where Andrew comes into the story is he did go to. to the Seros fraud office and he was having a visit there and he berated them for doing this, doing their job basically and said this is, you know, you're affecting trade by putting kind of

ethics ahead of business. But, you know, to be fair, Tony Blair basically said, look, we will, I mean, the problem was, I know this from a friend of mine who worked in intelligence. the Saudis were not going to cooperate with the British and intelligence sharing about terrorism if they didn't allow this to go through. And so the whole investigation was shut down. So there were lots of people trying to shut it down, but Andrew was certainly one of them.

And time and time again, the stories of him basically trying to interfere with institutions he shouldn't, like the Seros Fraud Office. He was involved also with the National Crime Agency. He was actually picking up information about money laundering, And we now know that he was heavily involved in money laundering. I mean, that was what happened with the sale of his house at Sunning Hill. There was a lot of the ways that the Yorks were paid was through the use of art, for example.

Oh, ho. Oh, jewelry. Jewelho was melted, was given to his gifts and melted down or passed on. So they would launder money through that? So that was, yeah. And in the way that, you know, Epstein was laundering money for, the Russians and and and and and and Trump I mean Trump's Trump was laundering money for the Russians with his casinos for example I mean that's that's pretty well described by

Craig under Unger and others so I mean the money and I think this is what's so shocking that any of us involved in transactions would have would have to explain my payments but the sale of Sunning Hill was done through secretive trusts by the by by royal advisors and Coots Bank and Far of the Queen's lawyers. And they did none of the money checks, none of the laundry checks they should have done. They turned a blind eye to all this. So it's a good case of one law for them and one law for everyone else. Now when Andrew was arrested and Defe, I had you pulled this up earlier, but we didn't get to it.

So we'll bring it back. But the picture you referenced of him after he was released, I guess on bailor, however you say it, from the arrest where he actually looked really scared and he's currently under investigation for his time as trade envoy. My understanding is that this is related to him having improper relationships with Jeffrey Epstein while he was in that role. And that's what they're specifically investigating him on or am I misremembering that? Well, there are about eight police forces that are investigating him and they're investigating him for a variety of charges. Some are looking at sex trafficking. We know that 60 women were trafficked. And this is why it's

ridiculous for the Met and others to say that none of these things happened in Britain. We know that Epstein was putting up girls in flats in Kensington. We know that Andrew, for example, was paying for a mistress in Mayfairor. So there was sex trafficking going on. We know that Gordon Brown has talked about flights coming into airports all over Britain, Essex, Norfolk, Wiltshire and elsewhere. So I think there's a say the eight or nine police forces that looking at sex trafficking allegations. We also have Thames Valley Police, which is the local police to where he was living, Royal Lodge, who are looking at that and also what we call misconduct in public office, which is basically abusing a position in the public office.

Now, I'm very cynical about that because there's some debate about how easy to get a conviction on that. Some say it's difficult. Some say it's easy. They're using the excuse that he wasn't a paid official and therefore he wasn't it doesn't apply to him but the very clear evidence from the Epstein revelations of basically sharing confidential information both commercial information diplomatic secrets military secrets we know that he shared information about the sale of the Royal Bank of Scotland when it was being broken off to people who were interested in buying bits of were being broken off. We know that he shared information about during the Islamic banking crisis to David Rowlands, who was actually buying one of the banks, which became the bank Havilland.

So this is very clear breaking official secrets at and all sorts of other things. There are things under the Companies Act, under fraud, fraud out that you could come after him for. So in some ways it's the police kind of going off on a tangent saying, oh, we're doing something. Sadly, we can't, We can't see it to fruition because we can't make it stick. There are also, one of the problems of the sex trafficking is a lot of the woman aren't prepared to come forward because they don't want all the hassles. So there's a woman in 2010 who was trafficked to Andrew, given the tour of Royal Lodge, stayed, well, went to Buckingham Palace, who's represented by Brad Edwards, who you've been talking about. Right. And she, first of all, threatened a civil action against him, which seems to have gone nowhere, sadly. and now she seems to be backing off her case.

A lot of these women feel intimidated, a lot of them have signed NDAs, a lot of them have been paid off. So there is a real danger that we will not get the evidence on the sex trafficking. I mean, we're very fortunate that Virginia Jeffrey was prepared to go through all the opprobrium that she had in order to go on the record. But I think there's plenty of evidence to charge Andrew. Also, what I think would be a very interesting area, they arrested him and questioned him for, I think about seven or eight hours.

Did he have a lawyer with him? Yes, he would have had a lawyer with him. And, of course, he was tipped off. He was ready for them when they came from that day. And it wasn't a dawn raid. But there was a worry that he might be a flight risk in the way that Mandelson was a flight risk. And that's why he was arrested. But they only arrested him so that they could get search warrants.

And they've used the search warrants to look at, papers and computers and stuff. I think they even went and looked at maybe dug up bits of Royal Lodge. But the fact is Andrew knew he was going to be arrested for months. I mean, he was burning papers, he was destroying hard drives, he was throwing mobile phones into the river. He was destroying hard drives and throwing phones in the river? So he's been perverting the course of justice. He knew they were coming. So I not think they're going to find too much anyway. And that's, but what they could be doing is that, they should be bringing in his associates.

What they could do is to arrest people like Amanda Stern, and Bander Bathurstka's private secretary, David Stern, who was one of his business officials, frankly even Sarah Ferguson, and basically use them as leverage to give evidence against him in order to get their conviction, to promise them a lower sentence for basically doing a plea bargain. And that they don't seem to be doing. I mean, we've got no evidence.

anyone else has been questioned. So this all seems to be completely performative. Right. You know, look at us. Look at what we're doing. I mean, we had a ridiculous thing where they went to America to talk to Virginia Giffrey's brother. Now, Virginia, Virginia's brother, frankly, has only come on the scene in the last few

months. He wasn't there for Virginia Giffrey when she was alive. The police were not there for Virginia Giffrey when she put up all her allegations. They ignored them. And we have to remember this is not just a story about Virginia Jifrey. There are probably 60 or 70 victims, just around Andrew possibly, but I mean certainly connected with Epstein. And it's not just a story about sex trafficking. It's a story about, as I say, abuse of public office.

And if you and I had shared confidential information, for example, development opportunities in Helmand province during the war in Afghanistan, we would be in big trouble. And the really interesting question is if they're going to bring charges against Peter Mandelson, who is doing exactly the same as Andrew, why don't they bring charges against Andrew? What is the distinction between the two of them? And are they going to use that distinction

of one was a paid official and one wasn't as a way of getting Andrew off the hook? But I'll bet my bottom dollar that Andrew will not be charged because the last thing the royal family want is their secrets aired and public. Yeah, you kind of answered a question I was going to ask for me, which is you said, it's performative in your opinion. And when I look at this and I just stack up the fact that women have already been blackmailed or paid off, he was tipped off about the raid happening.

He was openly, obviously, to someone's knowledge, throwing phones and clearing hard drives from months ahead of time. And then he gets arrested. It's like, here's your bread and circus people. Look, look, you got an embarrassing picture. There you go. Exactly. No, the passport hasn't been confiscated. He's been able to travel. He's certainly, the mail on Sunday have reported a visit to a stud farm in France, but my understanding is he's been going to Middle East. He's been going to Switzerland. He's traveling. I mean, nothing has changed. And actually

what's clever is the king has got him on a private estate. No one can actually know what he's doing. We all assume he's in Sandringham looking at videos. But he could be, you know. Looking at video? Well, that's how he spends his time watching videos and playing video games and stuff like that. But actually, he may be in downtown New Jersey. I mean, who knows? Oh, that's nice. You know, we may see him in the street.

Stop through. You're welcome. You can let the side down in here. Yeah, we'll pop in. I like to chat to you. Yeah, I'll cook them like a fucking Thanksgiving dinner. Pause. But, yeah, it's just the double standard is what's really sickening.

And obviously, we have no leg to stand on here in a man. America. We haven't even gotten a symbolic arrest here. You know what I mean? Like, at least you guys got that low bar. But it's just, you know, I try to go to 30,000 feet in the air and look at things how they are and look at ways we can fix stuff. I'm an optimist. I, you know, I love living in this country. I think we got a lot of great stuff here.

I think looking at it from the American perspective, like we have some rot in certain areas and some things that maybe we're now discovering about the true, I guess, like grips of power that exists, not just here, but around the world, and I'd like to see some generational change happen, and, you know, maybe we can. But when you look at all this and you look at a story like Epstein and all the people he was tied to and the lengths it went, I mean, as sick and widespread as it was, sex trafficking was just one of the things he did. We're talking about a guy that was involved in arms deals, espionage, diplomatic, whatever, you know, around the world, was just connected in all these different places.

Do you ever wonder about, you know, the world being run by a different group of people than we even know exists, if you understand what I'm asking there? Well, I mean, I think most people don't believe in conspiracy theories, but then you get the Epstein story, and you do believe that there is a super elite who are operating in their own interests across nations, working with intelligence agencies.

I mean, I think one of the interesting things about the stories seen, first of all, as a sex story then as a financial scandal. And actually, it's an espionage scandal. I mean, the fact is, you know, he had close links with Mossad. I mean, there's certain stuff has come out now about him being a Russian asset. I've certainly talked about an FBI document I was given, showing that Andrew was involved with Russian criminal gangs linked to Russian intelligence services. But this is before we even get to the Zorro Ranch,

and the woman who found themselves having been operated on to harvest their eggs, all the huge, I mean, we now know from the plans of Zorro ranch, the huge, not just medical facilities, but all sorts of things that were built underneath the Zorro ranch. Other things built beneath it? Well, I mean, one of the interesting things about Zorro, I mean, we're talking about UFOs, it's kind of equidistance between era 51 and various other things. I mean, there are all sorts of other stories going on here. And one of the interesting things is Zorro Ranch is one era that wasn't investigated, it wasn't raided. by the FBI. But the FBI picked up a lot of stuff in both Palm Beach and Manhattan, for example, pictures and stuff. And we'd never heard about that. But you're right, it was all about

collecting compromise. So the sex was really just a way into compromising people. And, I mean, he was not just inflating the British royal family, but the Norwegians and others. I mean, he had links to Israel to... China and to Russia. So this is a huge story. And in some ways, I mean, Epstein may only be in a bit player in a bigger story because Epstein's no longer here. And yet we kind of feel the whole thing is still going on. I mean, if there is a kill list, there's clearly someone else who's organizing that kill list. I mean, Epstein's not doing it from beyond the grave. And the sort of waves of it seem to move out further and further. The story gets bigger and bigger.

more and more people seem to have been drawn in. And I mean, it brings me back, actually, to my first biography. John Buckin was a thriller writer, born in 1875, died in 1940. But his great thing is that the veneer of civilization is very thin. And actually, there are all these people walking around who we feel are respectable people who are actually out to subvert civilization. Subvert civilization. And this is sort of what we're seeing.

We're now seeing, you know, people that we thought we could trust turning out to actually be working against or in the narrow self-interest of these elites, but against the interests of the wider community. And so he was actually quite far seeing in seeing what was going on. But, you know, I think, I hope more stuff will release. The Epstein story gets bigger and bigger, I think. And I'm always been aware that I've only touched. the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, I think of Epstein sometimes. Like, if you've ever seen those videos,

those nature videos on social media where someone's like pulling on a weed and they're pulling on this weed in the side of like an embankment and they're going back and forth like this. It's one of those like satisfying videos that you watch and you see a trickle of water coming out the more they pool and then it's a bigger trickle and a bigger trickle. And then suddenly they get the whole weed out

and you see like, and all the water comes out. And that's, I really think Epstein is like that weed. Like he's the figurehead and we see him because we've had access to see what an evil man like this was and that he existed. But he's just like the surface level of some stuff that's below that. Absolutely. And it shows you how easily people can subvert to other people. I mean, how cheaply they can be bought. But I think the other thing is if Virginia Jifrey hadn't persevered with her case and she would only have persevered with

the civil case, only persevered with the civil case after she saw Andrew on Newsnight. So if Andrew, this is back to the point I made about individuals changing history, if Andrew had decided not to do the Newsnight interview, Virginia Jiffrey wouldn't have been so emboldened and outraged that she brought a civil case. The story, you know, was dead. It had been, you know, depositions have been closed. Everyone had forgotten about it. She'd been dismissed. None of this stuff would have come. But, I mean, In terms of your unraveling, it's exactly the same with the royal family, and this is what they're nervous about. You start picking it, you know, the loose thread of the bit of clothing and start pulling it. And actually, you then find the garment begins to disintegrate, you know, and that's what they're worried about.

Once, and this is why, of course, they never want to let light into the institution. Because once you have the light and the transparency, suddenly people think, what are we doing here? What are we paying? Why are we paying these people? What do they actually do? And it's, you know, then wider questions. And this is what Andrew, of course, has done. He's allowed people to begin to ask questions and shine some light.

Not enough, but, you know, they must curse him because in some ways it was all going very smoothly. They were able to keep the whole show in the road with this performative smoke and mirrors operation. And now the whole thing is disintegrating. So everything's disintegrating. And I share your optimism that eventually, you know, good will come through of this. People, enough people will feel emboldened to speak. There will be pressure. There will be, you know, we've eventually had Andrew Luzer's position.

And I think eventually there will be people. I mean, they may be low-hanging fruit in the States, but eventually some people, I think, will be brought to justice. I hope you're right about that. I don't know at this point if that's the case. It seems like they'll just distract from everything. but I hope you're right about that. And, you know, I got my little corner of the internet and I'll do whatever I can to shine a light on that stuff, just like you're shining a light on it with your books.

And I think there's enough people who are at least awake to that to try to make a point of this and improve it for the next generations. But it's just, you know, sometimes it is hard not to be a little bit cynical when you see the worst crimes going and answered for, you know? Yes, and people, you know, behaving badly very openly and almost provocatively. I mean, like Trump, and just giving two fingers. And, I mean, that was, I think, one of the frustrations with Andrew. People knew about Andrew's bad behavior, and that's why I think why they've come forward now.

But they could do nothing about it. They would be penalized if they said anything. And the fact that they would go to the Queen or the Queen's private secretary and be sent away with a flee in the ear. You know, and that's a clue in the ear. Well, it's a British term, but basically. I like that one. away with as the matron at my school would say away with your capers. So they, you know, and that's very frustrating to feel the whole system, the whole international rights, you know, legal system, international relations.

All these things are crumbling. All the structure is going. And who do you believe? It's a free-for-all of the rich and powerful. And that's, and if one can kind of stop that, that there is a rules-based system. and we can get back to an ordered society in which we have a responsibility to the wider community, then that will be a good thing. Why do you think Andrew did do that interview in 2019? Because he thought he could get the better of a skilled journalist. Because he thought he could set the record straight and he could tell his lies and no one would challenge them. Because he's so stupid that he didn't prepare for it. His advisors were so stupid they didn't prescribe the terms and the control, which of course even a B-less celebrity would have done

So it's a back to this hubris. It's a back to this arrogance and and this sense of invinci Which he'd always had and he just thought it would continue But you know, I think maybe in the hands of a less scaled interview I mean he might have got away with it in a less deferential press he might have got away with it what's that lady's name again she Emily Maitless yeah Emily Maitless fucking she killed him

she was she was good yeah no no she she's I mean she kind of led him into the trap and he walked into it and I think you know clever you know clever by having a pretty female person he thought he could kind of charm her and it'd be fine and you know well the rest is history

The rest is history. It's interesting, though, because I asked you towards the beginning of this conversation, like what you think and you're like, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you were saying like, yeah, I am someone who supports the idea of the royal family existing and the tradition of all that. What's interesting to me about that, though, is you've reported on so much of the underbelly of it and this whole conversation, like you're running through all the crazy shit and the bad stuff that they do. And in a lot of ways, you're, you're running through all the crazy shit and the bad stuff that they do. And in a lot of ways, you're a guy and I'm not faulting you at all. I think it's great reporting you do. But like, you're a guy that's like almost reporting on the things that would take it down. So how do you rectify those two? It's a very fair accusation. You know, and if you write about rogue roles, then clearly you're going to, you know, it is there, you know, it is going to be negative. You know, I see it as a corrective and it may be that the Prince Philip book, you know, actually is a very positive book about a member of the royal family. I mean, I think I've said some pretty, pretty positive things about him. And as I say, I go with an open mind and there will be things there that's critical, but I think largely it will be pretty positive. And, yeah, I mean, one of the accusations is be careful what you wish for, you know, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be raising these things. I mean, my argument is I'm in favor of monarchy, but not a corrupt monarchy. And it's not my job. as the messenger not to report things. It's their job to correct things. I mean, I'm not making

this up. This is their behavior and they need to correct it. You know, do I turn a blind eye to bad behavior because I just have worried about the consequences? Or do I kind of report as fairly and honestly as I can about what I've found and leave them hopefully? And this is why I keep saying, you know, reform, modernize, it can be corrected, you can get wind back, you know, the support of the public and respect. But let's not, I don't think there's a justification for turning a blind eye because you're worried about the consequences. You know, there are a lot of people who do take that position that basically the royals are

above the law, that they can do what they want because we want to protect the institution. But again, you know, you can believe in parliamentary democracy, but not necessarily support some of the prime ministers, for example, as part of it. You know, the sister, it's not the system. Well, but I tell you where there is a problem. If it was just about two bad apples, about Andrew and Fergie, then that would be one thing. But I think the worrying thing I discovered was it was about systematic endemic corruption with institution and others. But again, clean up the act for everyone.

There are plenty of people who are perfectly above board in the way they operate. I mean, I don't think Prince Edward's getting up to staff, I mean, or Princess Anne or any of these other people. and they must feel that all their good works being undermined by all these people who are playing the system. Clean up the bad behavior doesn't mean that the institution itself is intrinsically bad, and that's a distinction that constantly needs to be made. But of course, if you're concentrating on the negative. But again, you know, people said my book on Mountbatten was critical. Actually, if you read it, and most people who make the criticisms haven't bothered to read the books,

you'll find that actually it's much more pro and generous towards Mountbatten. about, particularly on issues like Indian independence and Dieppe, than most of the writers. So I think I... Until that last chapter. Until that last chapter. But that's a chapter, of course, that kind of overshadows the book. You can see why, though. Yeah.

But just because you're a pedophile doesn't mean you're all bad. Jesus Christ, let's not get that one out of context. I just don't, you know, I don't know how. something like that survives over the next 50 years, an institution like the monarchy, because I think living in this technological era that we do and, you know, more like open global interconnectedness and stuff, some of that, like, for lack of a better way of putting it fishbowl symbolism, I don't think it's going to drive with the younger generations. I mean, that's what I feel. Well, I mean, some of the European families, the Dutch and the Swedish and others and Norwegians have kind of evolved.

And, I mean, they're very low-key. They still are there, have a role. And so I think that, you know, it could survive under this much more low-key rule. I think it's when they all get dressed up in their uniforms and give themselves medals for attending memorial services and are making money on the side and being paid large. sums of money to do duties and they're not really doing those duties, then of course they seek into irrelevance. And that's why I say there are crossroads. And they could become irrelevant if they just continue playing the same all game. But if they evolve, light into that European model, I think they can survive. And I think because people like the sense of tradition. They like

the sense that there is something above politics. And there are very few public figures who command huge support. I mean, I can think of some of the, I mean, the president of Ireland, people like that, clearly Nelson Mandela, you know, have kind of brought the nations together and have not, you know, being raw families. But then you see what's happened post-Nelson-Mandela. And, you know, for some of the, you know, there have been brilliant presence of Ireland, but there's been some not such a good one. So that's the problem. And I'm a believer actually in the hereditary principle. I would like more, for example, hereditary peers in the House of Lords because they are completely disinterested.

They're not there because they gave money to political party or being kicked upstairs because they're discredited politicians. And they often have an expertise that isn't found from the very narrow cadre in which our politicians are drawn from. But of course, we don't have hereditary peers now. And if you don't believe in the hereditary principle in terms of your second chamber, then it becomes more difficult to justify the hereditary principle in terms of the monarchy. And we've been lucky, as you say, we generally the right son has inherited in the past. But once you get a real badden, and it could be, I mean, it looks fine for the moment, but if you suddenly get some disaster, then the whole thing will crumble. Did you ever watch the Netflix show, The Crown? Yes, of course.

I thought it was great. It was a very well-done show. Unbelievable, but like historically speaking, how close were the target? I think it's very interesting historically because so much it was absolutely, you know, accurate. And then they would go off on tangents. They were kind of, you know, some of the stuff, for example, about Philip and death of one of his sisters in an air crash was not historically accurate. Oh, it wasn't? That didn't happen?

Well, there was a crash, but it just didn't happen quite, as they say. So the various episodes, which for some strange reason, are not historically accurate. But there are some things which I think are, and for example, the Queen chatting with Jacqueline Kennedy, for example, that episode is never happened. That never happened. But it could have happened. And I think that where they're clever is they say this is a drama and this, but because its production values are so good, you'd be. you think it's true. And it's a bit about, you know, Stone on JFK.

I mean, he said this is a drama, but everyone began to believe what he said. But there were sort of in truth, there were some truths there. And I think there are truths in the crown and the depiction of various characters and the frustrations, for example, of Margaret and Philip that I think are good. And, I mean, one of the best books, for example, on the Cambridge Spies is a novel by John Banville. And he just gets the characters of Blunt and Burgess. so much better than any of the biographers, including me.

So I think fiction has a role to play here. And the crown, I think, was very clever. The trope is between public service and private pleasure. And that, of course, defines the royal family. And they saw everything through that prison. And that was a really clever way of doing it. Yeah. Also, the cinematography, the acting in that show was amazing,

but the cinematography was like next level. I mean, it's a brilliantly done show. But that's interesting. A lot of it you found to be historically accurate for sure. You know, you're going to get pedantic who say, well, the medals aren't quite right. Right. This couldn't have happened. And he went to Australia in March, not September.

But those things don't matter. It's about the eternal truth. You get a sixth sense of what you feel is right. So, yeah, and I think they got that right. That's good to hear. Everyone go check that one out. But, Andrew, it's been awesome talking with you. We've done like three hours, 10 minutes or 15 minutes at this point.

So we're going to have to do another one. Bring it on. Let's do another. Yeah. We've only just started. Angela's ready to be here all night. But we've got to talk about the Cambridge five work you've done in the past, some time in the future. I would love to really dig into the Duke of Windsors as well and that whole thing that happened there.

And then, of course, as this story continues to develop, I'm sure there will be a lot of updates there. So I really appreciate you. Pleasure. We'll watch for to it. Yeah, well, I'll be back soon. So, so you haven't seen the last of me. All right, good. And I want to hear about the Peggy Segal stuff. But everyone, everyone check out. This is when we stop now. That's when we stop. That's when the lawyers are like, cut. But everyone, go check out the links below.

I will have your Prince Andrew book link down there as well as your bibliography so people can check out your work. But thank you so much, sir. Pleasure. All right. Everybody else, you know what it is? Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. Hey guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge huge help. Thank you.