The Daily Beast Podcast - Prince Andrew’s Epstein Secrets Revealed

Episode Date: January 1, 2026

Joanna Coles looks back at her sit downs with Andrew Lownie to uncover the full scope of Prince Andrew’s scandals, from secret deals and Epstein entanglements to whispers of a royal escape. Lownie lays bare a monarchy in crisis, revealing corruption, systemic failures, and a family blindsided by decades of unexamined behavior. This episode traces Andrew’s personal downfall as the spine of a much larger story about power, privilege, and protection. With shocking claims of assassination plots and palace cover-ups, nothing about this saga is as simple as it seems. The only certainty: the story is far from over. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And when we first sat down with Andrew Loney, I thought we'd be chronicling a single scandal. An errant prince, a disastrous interview, a few ill-judged friendships. But across four conversations with the historian, it became clear that Prince Andrew's undoing is not a subplot. It's the spine of a much larger story about power, protection, and a monarchy struggling to outrun its own blind spots. Andrew Loney, with his unmatched reporting on the House of York, pulled us deeper each time.

From the blistering portrait of Prince Andrew's secret deals and his entanglements with Geoffrey Epstein and Gillen Maxwell to the extraordinary account of the Princess Royal defrocking. And the whispered plans for a quiet escape to the Middle East. Then came the most surreal twist of all crowsy. credible claims that Epstein had tried to hire a British sniper to assassinate Andrew. An allegation so operatic it would sound absurd if it hadn't been echoed by multiple sources. And finally, Loney returned to map a royal family in full-scale crisis.

A corruption scandal widening by the weak, a monarchy facing its most perilous moment since the abdication, and a queen and Prince Philip who never saw, perhaps they never wanted to see what was actually going on. So stay with us. This episode brings together our most revealing, unsettling and frankly shocking interviews with Andrew Loney. If you think you know this story, you really don't. Not yet. Andrew Loney, very good to see you. I want to say that we were friends years ago before I left for America. and you have gone on to an incredible career as an author ever since. Your latest book entitled on Prince Andrew has caused a storm, I think it's fair to say, in the UK. Prince Harry, as I guess we call him now, vehemently denied, but I want to discuss the denial with you,

one accusation in the book that he hit Prince Andrew on the nose after Prince Andrew insulted Megan Markle. But let's start at the beginning. What made you decide to write about Prince Andrew? Well, it's the third of a trilogy of books on royal marriages. So the first was on the Mabattons, Louis Nidwina Mabatton, open marriage, but a very happy marriage. Then I looked at the great love story of the 20th century, or was it, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. And then I wanted to look at the happiest divorce couple in the world to see if that was true. The other advantage was there had been actually nothing on either Andrew or.

or Sarah Ferguson really at all. And, of course, he'd been in the news with the Epstein disclosures. And I thought they were both very interesting characters, both to look at them through the prism of their marriage, but also to look at their activities, which I'd already suspected of leveraging their position as royals to make private money. And that, in fact, the story of the book

is really a story of financial corruption of the heart of the royal family, as much as a story about sexual peccadilly. So let's just remind everybody, Prince Andrew was Queen Elizabeth's second son. So he's third in the line of children that she had. There was Prince Charles, who's obviously now King Charles, Princess Anne. And then there's a 10-year age gap. And then there's Prince Andrew, correct? And then following in his wake is Prince Edward. That's right. Born in 1960, part of the second family, always very much the Queen's favourite. son and very different from his three siblings, much more sort of boisterous, much more Germanic in many ways. And, you know, it's extraordinary to see the difference between the siblings. I mean, he, people were saying to me that actually in childhood, he demonstrated all

the same traits of naivety, stupidity, arrogance, pomposity. He's been searching for an identity all his life, and the only identity he has, really, is as a member of the royal family. and so this was an accident waiting to happen and the accident, of course, was meeting Jeffrey Epstein and getting involved with him. But actually, it's a bigger story. It's about, I suppose,

the way the royal family has protected someone from, I would say, criminal activity. And it says quite a lot about British society and our very deferential approach to the royal family. So, of course, Prince Andrews, since his fateful interview with the BBC, has basically been ushered out of public life, correct? I mean, he really doesn't have a public role as a prince now.

He went on to make a $12 million arrangement with a Virginia Jewfrey money that his mother had to pay on his behalf. And he's really disappeared from public view. How damaging do you think his influence has been on the royal family? And will this book add to that? Yeah, I think he's been hugely damaging. I mean, you look at all the polls. I mean, he always comes very low. And if you look at the comments in any of the articles about him, you know, they're very, very vicious about him. And indeed about his ex-wife for Sarah Ferguson. I mean, she is, I think, the darling of New York at times, and she's sort of worked her way back in. But I think he's never quite recovered from the famous Newsnight interview in November 2019 when he made all sorts of wild claims, which were easily disproved. I'm hoping the dial shifts as a result of this book. I mean, other journalists, have come forward and seem prepared to relate stories that they knew, which back up what I'm saying, which they hadn't talked about before. A interesting piece of the telegraph yesterday briefed, I think,

by the palace saying that they need to get their act together, and they should be looking at even removing titles from Andrew, removing him from being Council of State, no longer being a member of the Knight of the Garter. A letter's patent would actually remove his designation as a prince. And so this is quite serious stuff. And I think the feeling is they need to cut off the limb before. he infects the whole of the institution. I hope in some ways this is only a side issue, that it's going to lead to greater accountability and transparency from the Royal Family, particularly on their finances. The book is filled with accounts of the palace lying to the media about events, trying to put pressure on them to shut down stories, leaking stories, negative

stories about particular journalists, or indeed I discovered leaking stories against each other as members of the Roas. And there needs to be just, you know, just behave properly. And then you will earn our respect. And then we might be prepared to pay for you. So reading through the book, every now and then I would gasp at some of the bigger allegations. And I want to get into his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and his relationship with Donald Trump. But before we do, why don't you outline for us the biggest sort of corruption at the heart of this? Well, I think the thing that most shocked me was that how brazen Andrew was. I mean, he was as a special trade representative between 2001 and 2011. He was meant to be promoting British trade. He was a civil servant. He was paid by the taxpayer. And yet he was going off and doing business for himself. He was bringing his own mates like Jeffrey Epstein and a particular business advisor called David Rowlands and actually getting ambassadors to shoehorn meetings into his schedule to meet these people to do private business. business and various court cases and other legal depositions have revealed how he was taking commission

on deals, for example, Greek water companies, which had nothing to do with his role as a trade ambassador. And he knew he was protected. When things were reported back to either the palace or to number 10 Downing Street, there was a sort of embarrassed silence and people said, we just don't go there. And so he knew he could be impunity. And the shocking thing was to discover that this was supported by other members the royal family. The queen not only turned a blind eye, she actually colluded with this, entertaining some of these people, like the president of Azerbaijan, accepting gifts from them, and basically shutting down any stories that might reflect badly on her son. And that, I think, is extraordinary. Have you spoken to them since the book has come out? How have they approached

you? And what have you heard from Prince Andrew? I mean, the levels of his greed and his wife's ex-wife's avarice and this are really sort of breathtaking. And so too is what you sense the lack of agency that his aides have around him to stop him from doing this. You sense that any time they lean, they're all talking among themselves saying this isn't acceptable and yet they're unable to stop him. Yes, I mean, I think because the buck stopped with the queen. You know, I know that Christopher Gait, who was the Queen's private secretary and was the man eventually responsible for making sure that Andrew stepped down in 2011, mainly because of the Epstein revelations, not so much because of his work as trade envoy. I mean, he just gave up. He said, there's no point.

He told one of my sources reporting any of this stuff. So, you know, King Charles knew about it. King Charles tried to prevent him getting the job and tried to keep him in the Navy even. longer because he knew it would be a bad recipe to have him swaning around the world of being able to do private business. But the thing continued, even when he was kicked out in 2011, he was still doing trips on behalf the government to places like China. And then he set up something called Pitch at the Palace, which was meant to be a sort of Dragon's Den operation to bring investors and entrepreneurs together, all done as a charity, done under the auspices of the Royal Palaces with the

Queen present and the Grenadier Guards introducing the event. And yet at the same time, he set up something called Pitchat Palace Global, where he was insisting on a 2% cut of any investment that came in. And this is what was making him quite a lot of money. And this is what he was doing with Tenbo, the Chinese spy. The pitch at the palace was then developed in China, with Tenbo being his frontman. MPs were calling for the National Crime Agency to look into Andrew 20 years ago,

and nothing was done. And it's time actually they did do something. So is there an argument that four members of the royal family, they are property rich and that they all get houses, but actually they don't really have an income to survive, and they're expected to swan around and talk to diplomats and have a very sort of high lifestyle, but actually they don't really have a way of funding it.

And the Queen was notoriously stingy too. Yeah, well, I don't buy the argument. They passed money down. Andrew probably inherited money from the Queen Mother. I mean, it's all past generations before. And, you know, he was able to afford a huge 14 million pound chalet in Switzerland. His wife has just bought two, four million pounds houses in Belgravia, giving her a rental of 250,000 pounds a year. So I don't think they're short of cash. And there's a difference between members of the Royal Family who are not working roles, like, for example, Apprentice Margaret's son, Lord Snowden, who has a genuine business. He's a chairman of Christies. He's a woodmaker, woodwork maker, furniture maker and runs a business. And that's perfectly fine. No one has criticised him. It's when they use their royal status to make money as brand ambassadors. And Fergert Furgie was very blatant about this. I mean, the collections are called the Duchess Collection. She calls herself the Duchess of York, so she's not been married to him for 30 years.

she talks about things in Royal Purple. You know, it's just sort of shameless. Well, and in a way, it's the foreshadowing of what happened to Megan Markle too, isn't it? That they saw this as a business opportunity, which in fact you're not allowed, you're simply not allowed to take advantage of. Absolutely. In some ways, Sarah Ferguson was the role model for Megan Markle. The difference is that Sarah Ferguson has a bit of charm.

And Megan Markle clearly doesn't have that and doesn't clearly isn't quite as savvy. So it's certainly true that Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson were both social magnets in New York. And obviously the person that used them the most to validate his social status and his financial status was Jeffrey Epstein. What can you tell us about when they met and what the nature of their relationship was? And there are some fascinating revelations in the book, not least Jeffrey Epstein saying that Prince Andrew was, nor sex obsessed than he was. I think there's a quote of him saying I'm a pervert, but Prince Andrew is much worse than I am. He's the King of Kink, was the term. Andrew claims that he met Epstein in 1999. His own private secretary wrote to the Times pointing out that it actually

met him in the early 1990s. Steve Hoffenberg, who of course was very close to Epstein, says it was in 1991. And I think what it discovered was, was not only... Can we just contextualise who Steve Hoffenberg was? Because he ran the Ponzi scheme that Jeffrey Epstein worked with, was a partner alongside. Steve Hoffenberg ends up going to jail. Jeffrey Epstein manages to get out of it and takes a lot of the money,

which you say in the book, he spent on himself. What I found was the relationship began earlier than they claim. It lasted much longer, and it was much deeper. I think the other thing that I found surprising was that there were more numbers for Sarah Ferguson in the black books than there were for actually Andrew. So, as we know, Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump were close friends for many years. Can you talk about the relationship between Prince Andrew, Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein? Yes, well, I mean, certainly Donald Trump and Andrew were close.

They again moved in very much the same circles. They had the same interests in golf, money and sex. One of the diplomats, the New York consulate said that Andrew was always hanging around the consulate. basically looking to do things, trying to bring Epstein in on any of his business trips. And, I mean, they were shocked in the embassy when they were caught overheard talking about one of Trump's favorite words, pussy. And Trump was swapping a list of masseurs with Andrew that he could use when he came to New York. So, I mean, it was a pretty buddy-buddy relationship. Andrew and Trump, of course, though Trump has denied knowing anything about Andrew, I mean, there's plenty of photographic evidence with them together.

in New York in Marlago and elsewhere and indeed in London. So, I mean, again, you know, they're all distancing themselves, but they were all part of the same little group and their pictures of Andrew with Trump and Epstein. And so I don't think anyone can deny these people were extremely close in a particular period at the beginning of the century. Andrew, just hold on one second while we take these messages. I'm Joanna Culls of the Daily Beast.

And I'm Michael Wolfe. And where are we going, Michael? Inside Trump's head. How often are we going? Twice a week. Wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, and of course you can watch us on YouTube in the Daily Beast feed. Subscribe now.

Michael, are we ever going to come out from Trump's head? I think we may not. I think the entire country may never come out of Donald. from him. So Andrew also had an on-off again relationship with Gillen Maxwell, didn't he, who was also having an on-off again relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, who she would often refer to as her boyfriend. But talk a little bit about Gillen Maxwell's role in facilitating some of this and supplying Andrew with, let's say, never-ending entertainment. Well, I think Gillain is the person who drew Andrew clearly into the net. She could see the advantages for Epstein of having someone in his position

and prestige. You know, it would really help Epstein. She could see the vulnerabilities of Andrew and his greed and his sex addiction. So he was easy picking. And they'd sort of known each other for a while. And she was an enabler for Epstein and indeed for Andrew. And there was this weird three-way relationship. Epstein got a sort of kick from his girlfriend also being involved with Andrew. Andrew and Galane were involved in business ventures together, particularly in Thailand and Malawi. So they were all very, very closely entwined. Sarah Ferguson was worried about the relationship. She tried to distance Galane.

She tried to get people like Lynn Forrester and Evelyn and Roschard to actually lend him there flat in New York so that Andrew could stay there rather than with Epstein and get him away from the clutches of Epstein, though she herself, I would say, was very much. than the clutches of Epstein on financial towers. So, yeah, it's a very odd story. And Galane, I think, you know, played Andrew in a big way. And he kind of fell for it because, and they had this on-off relationship. The people at the security posts at Buckingham Palace said that, you know, she was a frequent visitor, overnight visitor to Buckingham Palace. He refused to sign her in.

They knew her well. Friends of Galane have talked about the relationship, particularly at the beginning if it was around 2000. But it was an on-off thing. And that's one of the signs with Andrew. He never has any long sustained relationships with women, but he has an awful lot of sort of woman in ports that he sort of comes to and goes from and uses women in a big way.

This isn't a man who loves women. It's a man who sees how woman can be useful to him. Well, one of the most fascinating moments in the book is when he goes to Thailand. And you describe him having an orgy. And it should be said, there are all sorts of people in the book commenting on the number of women that Andrew goes through. And on this particular weekend, he appears to go through about 40 women, literally in the period of a weekend.

And you've got hotel staff describing the women as one came out, another one would go in, fresh meat, as it were. Absolutely. And then he swapped them with an hour of prints, you know, his favoured girls would be passed on. But this information comes, you know, with people on the record, a righteous correspondent, a diplomat, was there and in fact a member of the dire aristocracy. And one of the extraordinary things the Thai told me was that her driver got very friendly with Andrew's driver. And it wasn't only girls that were being brought to him, but also young men. The Thailand story is extraordinary because here he was on official trips very openly

having these prostitutes brought to him. And in fact, he had a mistress in Thailand that he actually had in his car, that he would take around when he went off on particular official trips and she would then go and sit somewhere and wait for her boyfriend to come and pick her up. I mean, it's extraordinary, you know, how open he was about his behaviour. One of the private secretaries, one of the centre, he had all series of requirements when he went on these trips. He wanted a crested teapot and wheat bicks. He had a man bringing his sort of what they thought was an ironing board to iron his clothes. But he also, one of the diplomats was told, well, he likes blondes. Can you lay on some

blondes for him? And the diplomat said, I'm a diplomat. I'm not a pimp. But, you know, they were just really open. He went to the hotels to stay rather than the residence so that he could bring these women in without any form of scrutiny. Yeah, it's an astonishing story. He's also very obsessed about his title, isn't he? Funnily enough, I have a British friend staying with me at the moment who's run across him on occasion and says that he's emphatic about referring to the queen as the queen. And she was at a table where someone joked and said, oh, goodness, Andrew, your mother would be very amused by this. I think the anecdote was. And he said, do you mean the queen? And then someone else had referred to his grandmother. And he went, do you mean the queen mother?

And he's sort of obsessed and grandiose about using official titles. Absolutely. And I had several stories. I mean, he's very rude to a man called David Anderson, who was a long-term employee at Hillsborough, for calling the Queen Mother, I think the Queen Mother, and he wants the proper title. And there are plenty of stories of him at weekend parties insisting when he comes down to breakfast that everyone stands up and says, good morning, sir. I mean, he has nothing to rely on in terms of his own personality. So he relies on his status. You're so withering, I should say. You're so withering. And he also seems to be on a very short fuse. I mean, I mean, we all saw the video of Prince Charles furious with the pen when it started leaking.

And the royal family, particularly the men, and this is also said of Prince Harry, actually, that they have very short tempers, and it's sort of naught to 60 in 0.5 of a second. And then they calmed down and immediately start trying to appease for the short temper. And that seems to be a pattern in the book about Andrews. Yes, I mean, there are lots of stories of him losing his temper. and he kind of based himself on Prince Philip, who was quite accusatory in his approach to people, rather than draw them out,

he would sort of challenge them. And he has this very brusque and rather bluffed sort of naval manner, and he barks orders. And there's not a great deal of emotional intelligence there dealing with people. I wonder if there's some sort of Tourette syndrome because he does such bizarre things. So, yeah, I mean, you know, the status is all he has.

I mean, you know, people talk about, you know, one moment he's making rude jokes and the next, he's asking you to call him the Duke of York. A girlfriend said that when he danced on tables, he still wanted to be called the Duke of York. So people never quite know, you know, where to draw the line. And a lot of people in the Navy's talked about this, you know, he's put on his princess hat. So instead of being just a regular guy and he'd switch from it almost immediately, you know, they'd be just joking about something as naval colleagues. And then he would insist on his role being recognized.

So it's a sign of a very insecure man. It's not a sign of a strong man. So in Geoffrey Epstein, both Prince Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, found a financial godfather who used him as social bait and they used him as a cash machine. Then we have the accusations from Virginia Joufrey that she had been sex trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein and by Gillen Maxwell. to Prince Andrew in London when she's there. She has the story of going to Trump, meeting him, dancing. Then they go back to Gillen Maxwell's apartment in Belgravia, where Virginia Drew Frey has sex with Prince Andrew. And at that stage, she's at the age of 17, I believe.

We then have eventually, Jeffrey Epstein dies, as you have said, suspicious circumstances. Gillen Maxwell gets sentenced 20 years for sex trafficking. And her trial is extraordinary because it seems that she's every bit as guilty as Jeffrey Epstein of running a network of underage girls who are abused by both Gillen and Jeffrey Epstein. and then Prince Andrew goes on to do the interview on BBC's News Night with Emily Maitlis, where he thinks he's going on to salvage his reputation, and in fact he just digs himself into a grave in plain sight on television. Can you talk to us a little bit about the run-ups of that interview,

how he emerged out of it initially thinking he'd done a great job, and then his surprise at the fallout? Well, he was only persuaded to do the interview by Amanda. Thursk, everyone else warned him not to do the interview, or if he did do the interview, there should be prescribed limits to it. It should be short. He should clearly be well-briefed. There is a little bit in the book about, I mean, the news that I interview in Emily Maitlis has become famous, and she did a very good job. Did Prince Andrew think he'd done a good job? Yes, I mean, he did. I mean, one of the equerries came up at the end and said,

well done, sir. He was very happy to walk, you know, with, with, Emily Maitlis afterwards. And I think because he has all these sick fans around him, he thinks he's done a great job. And this is one of those problems. He has very little sense of self-awareness and very few people around him who he will listen to, who will speak truth to him.

I mean, this was a problem in the Navy. Anyone who basically tried to lick him into shape and tell him, you know, what the reality was about his naval career, found their naval career was curtailed. And the people who sucked up to him found their careers flourished. So this is, you know, the big problem. A protection officer, one of the protection officers told me that I said, well, why didn't

anyone report any of this behavior? And he said, well, we were given a choice. We could stay in this job, well paid with first class travel, or we were given the option of going back on the beaten Brixton, which would you prefer? And so, you know, he was just protected all the way through. There was no one who was, frankly, looking out for him. and it doesn't seem to be even his own family. Right, and I was going to say, I mean, just talk a little bit more about his relationship with the Queen.

He was always rumoured to be the favourite son. Yes, he was the favourite son. He made her laugh. He'd always indulged him. And that relationship clearly, I think she felt protective of him. He was perhaps, in some ways, the most vulnerable. He was the one who wasn't sort of happily settled when the others were. and of course there have been lots of rumours about Lord Portchester being and his father. I mean, people have shown facial resemblances between him, particularly the current Lord Portchester,

who's the same age as Andrew, and people whose opinion I respect hold that view. I'm not sure about it. I didn't mention it in the book, but I certainly have had stories I've been researching Prince Philip now from people, one of the lovers of Prince Philip, who said that certainly the Queen was very close to Portchester. They used to visit Kentucky a lot. And it's very likely she thinks that they had some sort of affair. But I think it's very hard for us to believe that the Queen,

who had this strong sense of public duty, would be so foolish as to do that. But who knows what goes on in a marriage? It does seem incredibly risky thing to do. It does. So just talk us. So can you talk to us about the fallout of the Newsnight interview? And really Andrew's beginning to really fall from grace, the settlement that he came up with and what he's doing now.

Sure. Well, you know, the Newsnight really was a favorite of point. I mean, I think it involved Virginia Jifrey to bring her case. I think it just exposed him for what he was. I mean, just such blatant lies. It looked ridiculous. I know that Phillips summoned him to Sandringham and said basically the show's over now and they realised they had to do something that this was reputational damage. But he's still a knight of the garter.

I think he's still a vice-admiral. He's still a councillor of state. So, you know, he didn't lose everything. And the Queen certainly showed her support for him. She, you know, would go out riding with him, sticking him in the car, going to church, but Belmoral. But the whole thing has unraveled. hasn't helped himself by refusing to cooperate with any of the American authorities investigating

this. He tried to dutch the summons by going up to Balmoral. And, you know, I don't quite know what the advice, what the reasoning was behind this, because of course, it looked awful. And, of course, he never seemed to show any sort of regret for the behaviour or any sort of concern about the victims, which didn't play very well. So the whole thing began, you know, clearly changed and, you know, clearly when the judge decided there was a case there and it would go to court, he was in a difficult position. I mean, they pretended that because the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, something had to be done. But I think all the people I talk to said that he was between a hard and a rock place and the least worst option was to settle rather than to go to court. No one I've talked to believes that he is innocent. And of course, That situation has got worse as fresh disclosures have been made in the various depositions, not least the links with Tenbo, the Chinese spy. I should say that Tenbo is not the only spy associated with him. So he was very naive and why people didn't warn him, why MI6 didn't sort of steer him away?

I just don't know, because they were certainly investigating these people. Well, perhaps they didn't, he didn't listen because one of the consistent themes throughout the book is how he knows more than every. else, he is Prince Andrew, he is your royal highness, and everybody else is lesser than. If you were King Charles, and you read this book, what would you think? Gosh, what are we going to do? And I would summon my various people, perhaps even the members of the family, and they're all up at Belmoral now. I mean, it all seems to happen in August and Belmoral. For old Fergie was there with the toe-sucking at the same time. Of course, it's when Diana died.

And when Diana died, exactly. No, it's extraordinary. So I think I would say, look, we've got to get a grip on this, and we need to get ahead of the narrative, and we need to address some of the allegations that have been made. I think we need to actually distance ourselves from Andrew. I think we need clearly people are calling for blood, and we need to offer them something. And I think, in a wider picture, we need to, for example, say we're going to be more open about our financial affairs. We are going to perhaps set up this royal register. We are going to agree to perhaps a parliamentary inquiry into his time as special representative,

kind of pass the buck to someone else and say, you know, not our problem, mate, you know, but we are not standing up for him. He doesn't have, actually, it seems to me, representatives. he's certainly not commenting on any piece. Buckingham Palace are not commenting on any of these pieces. And so he's kind of been left to dangle of it. And, you know, I think maybe they're watching to see how things play, what the public reaction is.

But from judging from the comments at the bottom of articles, people feel very strongly about what's been happening. And certainly people have been volunteering me further stories to add to the paperback of other things that both he and Sarah Ferguson, have been up to. It's fascinating. There's an anecdote about his 40th birthday and you make the point that neither the Queen nor Prince Philip nor Prince Charles as was then, Princess Anne or Prince Edward, so the senior oils, as you refer to them, attend his 40th birthday largely because they believe that Sarah Ferguson, from whom he's been divorced at this point for a couple of years,

is actually selling stories or giving stories about them to the press. And you just think, What must it be like to be living in a family like that? Yeah, no, it's like a medieval court. It is, well, it is like a medieval court. Yeah, no, I think it must be very difficult. Who do you trust? And you even see why they have these lifelong friends who they feel that they can trust. And it's ironic that the people who are most likely to betray their trust are actually people within the family as opposed to, you know, staff and others.

So, yeah, it must be awful. And I think they're caught because in some ways they need to keep Andrew and say. Sarah on side. Because, you know, who knows? One of the themes of the book is how they're constantly threatening to spill the beans. So they've got to keep them on side, but they don't want to keep them too close. And of course, Sarah is very adept at playing with the media. I think what's very interesting is to see that Andrew has passed on his ambitions to his daughters. And the PR push at the moment is the daughter should be made to working royals. They can't cope in the slimmed-down monarchy, and they would fill the bill. They're doing

wonderful work with their charities, etc. But I'm afraid the daughters are pretty deeply implemented in the whole sad story of the family. And I think that they would be unwise to put them too much in the public eye. So King Charles, as we know, is living with cancer. At some point, Prince William will ascend to the throne. What would your advice be to Prince William as he thinks about the future of the House of Windsor and how it maintains its relevance and, frankly, its survival. Yeah, well, I mean, I think he has, he's thought about this a lot.

I mean, I think, you know, he wants clearly a slimmed down monarchy. He wants us back to the old tradition of looking up to them, you know, behaving very well. It's clearly focused around the family. We have, you know, they're very good adept at promoting the family image and the fact that there is a line of succession there. And I would distance, you know, all those people on the periphery. keep Anne and Edward doing their good works, perhaps bring in the old person to fill in. But I think the Deputy Lieutenant should be doing more of the work the Royals are doing. It was an interesting report the other day showing that actually Royals don't add much to the fundraising for charities.

And certainly the research that I saw on both Andrew and Sarah Ferguson was that they actually had a negative effect. People were actually keen to distance themselves. English National Ballet couldn't wait to get rid of Andrew as his patron. And I think they have to be more open, as I keep saying, about their finances and be open to freedom information requests and parliamentary scrutiny, all these things that they shy away from. And I think they need to have a more honest relationship with the press and not playoff favourites in the Royal Rota. They need to sort of just be open and straight with everyone and then they will earn respect. and then I think they can survive. But I do think I agree with you.

I think the future is a real problem. And I say that as a monochist, and I want them to survive. And you might say I'm not doing my bit to help them. But I think we need this stuff to come out because it needs to be addressed. Well, it's hard to think of a more establishment author than yourself in many ways, Andrew, which is why the book is so interesting. So I just want to clarify one thing. You've heard nothing from Prince Andrew all Buckingham Palace since the publication of your book.

No, and nor have my publishers, at least when I spoke to this afternoon. So I know talking to one of the girlfriends that she has been trying to get him to fight back, but he refuses. He kind of just takes the punches. I mean, I'm sure I will be getting a letter from Sarah Ferguson. But of course, the book hasn't gone out yet. So we're all talking about it and the press have seen it, but you can't buy a copy yet. So I suspect once they've gone through it and once they monitor my social media and interviews, I'm sure there'll be a long letter coming.

So just for people watching the podcast or listening to the podcast, when does the book actually appear? It appears on Thursday. Thursday, the 4th. On Thursday, right. And is that dual publication in the UK and the US? Yes. Well, in the English language, at the same time, absolutely. earlier, Canada, the lot.

And finally, just tell people how difficult it was. What were some of the obstacles you came across in trying to write a book? It's always difficult writing a book about the Royals. But I think you came across more obstacles than most. Well, it's always difficult to get people to talk about the Royals, particularly on the record. So that was one challenge, getting people to, I mean, even ambassadors feel that their Her Majesty's ambassador, they have to be loyal to her. I mean, I did seek cooperation from them, from the couple, to see if they wanted to help shape the narrative by talking to, to their friends to talk to me.

They did think about this, or Sarah did, and then decided not to. But I then found that when I was interviewing some people, literally halfway through the interview, they would get a text saying, you know, basically don't talk to him. We had intimidating letters sent before the book was published. We had threats that they were monitoring my social media and watch it. The Foreign Office forbade ambassadors to talk to me. I had four years of putting in FOI requests to the Foreign Office and Department of Business and basically all of them being batted back. And there have been clearly attempts to undermine the credibility of the book and my authority as a writer,

even in the last week. So it's gloves off. I need Harry on my side really here. But yeah, no, I mean, and I think this is, you know, they say never complain, never explain, but of course there's a very sophisticated relationship between some of the tame press fed their pieces and the palace. And, you know, that's clearly going to come into play. Andrew, in your reporting of this book, which took four years, what most surprised you about Prince Andrew? Well, I think just the brazenness with which he leveraged his raw position to make money for himself personally,

shoehorning people into official meetings who were working for him, the fact the Queen sort of allowed this, in fact, colluded with it. And I think just the sort of extravagance of Sarah Ferguson's spending and his own sexual addiction, just the sheer numbers of people and his behaviour. Well, the book is unput-downable and, I think, a devastating portrait of a modern prince who perhaps felt he didn't have a role, tried to carve out a role, and instead got used by other people to his detriment. How do you think it ends for Andrew? Well, it's a good question. I mean, I think he's going to just quietly drift from view. He will be there going to family events, I think, away from the camera. You know, he's now a retired man.

He can live the life a retired man. He goes shooting. He plays golf. He sits and watches videos. And I think he's going to have a pretty quiet life, in effect, under house arrest. I can't see it changing. But he may. He's such a character who can't really sort of see what's really happening to him.

He may well just continue his business activities and think, he can get away with it and the whole thing will go quiet for a while and he'll be fine to carry on as he was. I think the interesting question is how it will affect Sarah Ferguson, who has another volume of memoir coming out this year, which will no doubt talk about her cancer and her charity work and how far attitudes towards her have changed as a result of the book. I mean, I think that's the interesting question. Andrew, thank you very much. Good luck with the book. And it's hard not to read it and just think what a waste of privilege. And what a waste of two lives? Yeah, a man who had everything at his fingertips without the awful dread of ascending to the throne.

So the incredible advantages of being a royal without the actual ultimate responsibility of being the monarch. And yet he's been unable to use his life usefully. Exactly. I mean, in some ways, I think being a spare is great. You know, they complain about it. But it is a tragic story, you know, a man brought down by hubris. Andrew, thank you very much. Good luck with the book. Andrew Loney, welcome back. Last time, I'm very pleased to say we had you on the podcast on the day of the release of your book entitled, subtitled, the rise and fall of the House of York. And the fall has continued since the publication of your book and, of course, the publication of Nobody's Fool by Virginia Jouffery.

Can you bring us up to date with what on earth is happening with Andrew formerly known as Prince? Well, I mean, he's been sent in effect into exile, exile in Britain. So he, I mean, finally the palace have got to grips with this scandal. They're actually trying to get ahead of it. They realised that public opinion was way ahead of them, that the public opinion was very concerned about all the information that was coming out. And as you say, the Virginia Giffrey book, I think it really sort of personalised and humanised the story. But we'd had a whole series of leaks showing that his links with Epstein went on for much longer than he claimed.

He was basically lying. And that's true of Sarah at Ferguson as well. So the king felt he needs to act. I mean, people were asking bigger questions now about the monarchy, its purpose, its finances. And they kind of wanted to shut that story down. So Andrew basically has been thrown under the bus to save the wrong. rest of them. And so he, at the moment, he's going to Sandringham, the royal estate, which is a private estate. It's not Crown Estate property, so therefore nothing to do with the taxpayer.

His wife, who claimed to be very loyal to him, is now become less loyal since he's no longer a prince and living in Royal Lodge and is going off to Portugal or Switzerland. He may well end up going to the Middle East because there are also calls for him to be investigated for his sexual and financial crimes. And that's coming from the former head of royal security, from a former chief prosecutor in Britain. And so I don't think the story's over for him. And that's why the royal family is so keen to distance himself from him.

So there's a good chance he may end up actually going physically abroad into exile to somewhere where there isn't an extradition treaty. Well, I mean, this is such an extraordinary development, isn't it? Because when you came on in September, you were talking about. your biggest hope was that they would be somehow pulled off the public financial role, so they were no longer supported. Is this much wilder than you could have imagined? Oh, absolutely.

The whole thing is, you know, almost a perfect storm. But there was clearly a deep public resentment about the way some of the roles, particularly these two had operated. And that kind of emerged. And I think, you know, particularly seeing there was a recent appearance of them at a funeral where people felt they were pretty shameless and tried to sort of groundstand it. And that, I think, was another factor. But there's clearly been underlying sort of concern about how elites have operated in their own interests,

taking advantage of other people. And I think it plays into that sort of trope at the moment. But yeah, I never expected this reaction. Congratulations. And as many people say, you couldn't be more of the establishment. You're a Cambridge educated historian. and here you are now really causing some serious movement within the establishment. So can you just talk us through what Andrew is alleged to have done

and why it might be that he can't just stay in exile in the UK, but he actually has to move to a country with no extradition order? What is it actually that he's most likely do you think to be accused of? And then let's talk about people that used to work for him. him now beginning to tell on him, as it were. Yeah, well, I'm getting, I'm getting, you know, two or three people a day coming forward, quite senior people, former protection officers and staff, people who I think want to get on the right side of history or don't feel,

I feel more emboldened now. I think the most likely charge is malfeasance in public office or misconduct in public office, which carries life imprisonment. And there are two, I suppose, elements to this. One is recently in elite email. It was shown that he had tried to get a public office. public official, his PPO, to investigate Jiffrey and indeed smear hair. So that's one element. Can you just remind Americans what a PPO is? Sorry, PPO is a police protection officer.

So these are the close protection officers around him. So someone who would have known him very well, but is paid for by the taxpayer, reports the Metropolitan Police. I think there's other things. I mean, he was looked at 20 years ago by the National Crime Agency, or certainly him peace called for it. And this is for his time as a special trial. trade envoy where he basically was lining his own pockets, those things, I think, would be grounds for investigation and I think for charges to be brought. And in the past, no one has really dared go there for a member of the royal family. The Mets sort of skirted some of this stuff, particularly the stuff around sex trafficking. The Met being the Metropolitan Police.

Sorry, you need to have a little dictionary with me. And so the Metropolitan Police looked at some of the sex allegations and said there was nothing to see. Well, the office for basically scrutinising the police, for independent policing, has now come forward and said, look, you need to look at this properly. I mean, I found even when I put in a freedom information request, they wouldn't even tell me whether they'd investigated Andrew or not. So we've got that. We've got a private prosecution being launched by Republic, the anti-monicist group. We have the former head of Royal Security and the former, I was to say, head of the prosecution service for the north of England, saying there are grants for him to be possibly charged. So there is a sort of a groundswell.

And I think public opinion still feels he hasn't been held to account properly. The only thing that's changed is he's moved house and he's no longer Prince. He hasn't really had to explain himself. And we've now got the Senate Oversight Committee wanting him to give testimony, if necessary, by Zoom. We've got people calling for him again to talk. talk to the FBI, to talk to the lawyers of the victims. So there's a groundswell of opinion that is really pushing. And the Royal Family was sort of behind all this. They thought they had seized initiative last Thursday by getting rid of the titles, getting them out of Royal Lodge.

But I think they still haven't gone far enough. And I think people want a little bit more openness about the two very rich estates that the Dutch of Cornwall, which is run by the Prince of Wales, and Duchy of Lancaster, which is run by the King. They're making huge sums of money from them, and often taking advantage for us up or charging parking in hospitals, which people feel is not really very suitable for them. The way they have their money is called the sovereign grant, and they've been given it a percentage of basically the incomes coming in

to some of these estates. But they're making a lot of money, particularly from wind farms, on the seabed around Britain because they own the seabed immediately around the perimeter. So people are just feeling they're making a lot of money. We don't know how they're making the money. They're not paying taxes, a lot of these estates.

There are a lot of very shady trusts which are paying out money. For example, the sale of Andrews a wedding gift house, Sunning Hill Park, which was bought by the son-in-law of the president of Kazakhstan, someone he was doing business with, they paid $3 million over the asking price, even though there'd be no interest in the property for a period of five years. So there are lots and lots of questions being asked, which the Royal Family would prefer not to have to answer. So, Andrew, a serious

question, do you think the British Royal Family actually survives? Yeah, I think they'll survive, but I think they'll only survive if they adapt. They're very good at doing that. They did that when there was a public outcry after Diana's death that they needed to be more sort of a response to that. So the Queen did a broadcast. The flags were lowered and they got through that crisis. They'll get through this crisis. But I think increasingly there's a sense that they become less and less relevant. There are few of them to do the jobs now with Andrew out of the way, Harry and Megan out of the way. So I think we're going to move to this much more slim down monarchy, a much more European style, just the direct line of succession. I think we now have got a precedent for people

losing their titles. So I suspect Harry, Megan, Beatrice and Eugenie and all these people will have their titles taken away at some point because they're not working royals. And I think the focus will be more on good works than on pomp and ceremony. I mean, I understand that they're reducing the number of working royals, but one of the things that seem to be a statistic, which we've talked about on the podcast before, is that one in six British people have met a member of the royal family. And there's no doubt that if you do mean, one of them, especially at an event if they're opening a new factory or they've turned up at some charity event, that people tend to warm towards them. So isn't it a sort of vicious circle that if you have fewer working members of the royal family, fewer members of the public meet them? And there's fewer people to support them. Well, I think the problem is the cost. And people get very concerned about supporting them. If they were all working royals, then that would be one thing. But a lot of them don't want to be working royals. And I mean, Princess Anne's children. she didn't want to have titles and they had their own careers.

I think that'll happen with Prince Edward. So we're actually left with not many of them wanting to do the job in the first place. And I think we just have to accept that, you know, we're not going to meet so many people, you know, not so many people are going to meet the royals. And although the jobs that they used to do will have to be done by what to call deputy lieutenants, who are their representatives in each of the counties.

But I think also a recent research has shown that actually the royals don't necessarily raise more, depending on the royal, but they don't necessarily add to the coffers of charities. And actually, they can, for example, Andrew and Sarah be counterproductive. So I think there's a new thinking about the role they play. Well, I live by Buckingham Palace and often have to cross St. James's Park when there are events going on. And certainly, for example, the big events like tripping at the colour,

which used to have lots of British people there, my experience is actually filled just with tourists. So there's a sort of curiosity value about the royal family, but I think most of us kind of see them as a slight irrelevance. So, I mean, there's definitely a role there, but I think the younger generation are less interested. So you think Prince William will be a much more modern European-style, possibly bicycling royal?

Yes. I mean, I think William does want to sort of make it a more low-key thing. I mean, he wants to, to get the balance, particularly now with his family right. So he doesn't, you know, his father, and other members of the family is a sort of workaholics. And everyone respects them for that. But it's been very damaging to their own family lives. And I think William's very keen to get that balance right for himself

and for all the members of the family. I don't think he's going to be more open than the others. I think he's actually more secretive than his father. So the transparency a lot of people are calling for, I think, may take some time. But, you know, they may adapt. the fact is that, you know, there is pressure on them now to be more transparent, and they may just for their own sake survival, except they need to make concessions.

Andrew, what do you know about Prince Andrews' relationship with Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein? Because we've also got pictures of them together. Well, Donald Trump claims not to have met to Andrew, though there's plenty of photographic evidence. I mean, they were close. They had the same interest in women and golf and making money. and I've certainly got lots of testimony of them meeting. In fact, Andrew was kind of the designated role for Trump because of the golf interests. And, you know, Andrew went to Moralago.

There are pictures of him there with Melania and with Gwendolyn Beck, who was one of the people supposedly he took to the island. No, there's plenty. I mean, they went off and played golf. Andrew was designated to show Trump around when he came on his first state visit. So, you know, the links between them are pretty extensive. So, Andrew, can you take us inside the family dynamics of the decision to strip Prince Andrew of his title? Because we know there's William waiting in the wings. According to what I've heard and read, the decision to strip Andrew of his titles last week was pretty much driven by William.

Charles, but I think Charles had been heckled. He could see the comments and the papers, lots and lots of editorials, including a front page of the new states when saying, is this the end of the monarchy? And I think they realized they needed to act. And I think Camilla was probably quite instrumental here. She was very instrumental in adding a note to the statement

that they were thinking for the victims, and that was the most important thing. They, I think, realized that the wider questions were being asked and they needed to basically seize the story and make it their own. Was there a sense in which the king was reluctant to? Because there has been this sense that he was trying to, you know, reconcile with Harry by Harry coming over for a visit recently and also trying to sort of, I thought, help Prince Andrew,

but perhaps I'm wrong. Yes, no, I think the King Charles is very sentimental. It's his younger brother. I think he gave an undertaking to the queen that he would take care of the brother, the runt of the letter as he's called. And so I think he found it very difficult to make these tough decisions. I mean, the narrative that's been spun from Buckingham Palace is it was very much the king's decision. He's been thinking of doing this for a long time. I think people just eventually got both fed up with Andrew in his stubbornness, insistence, and staying in raw lodge,

despite the bad optics. But also, I think they could just see the way public opinion was going. and they were going to be in big trouble. So it will be interesting to see how things play out over the next few weeks even, whether people are now satisfied that justice has been served or will look for more. And I think that they will be looking for more, that Andrew hasn't really been fully held to account for his actions. He hasn't given a statement explaining everything in his relationship with Epstein

and that he is, I think, vulnerable to charges being brought against him. So, Andrew, one of the things that has certainly happened over the last few years is that the British Royal Correspondence for the tabloids and the broadsheets in the UK have become much more timorous of writing about the Royal Family. It's one of the reasons that your book are entitled, got so much attention because you were incredibly robust in your reporting. Are you noticing a change at all?

Yes, I am, and I welcome it. So I've noticed that a number of journalists that I thought were very much on side and reliant on the royal family for their tip-offs are now much more critical. There's, I mean, some of the new books that are coming out, again, are much more questioning of the royals. So this is good.

I do feel there is a change of mood. And certainly the press have been running some quite hard-hitting investigations. They've been running leaks, which I don't think they would have written before. They're criticising even the king and the Prince of Wales. And so there's a complete sea change, I think, in attitudes, which is welcome. I mean, I think that, you know, if they have nothing to hide, they should have no problems about having this proper scrutiny.

So let me ask you one final question. Andrew is now going to be referred to as Andrew Mountbatten, Windsor. There is a certain irony to this because his fall from grace is to do. with his connection to Jeffrey Epstein, a sexual predator. But in taking the name Mountbatten, he also has a connection to a predator that you wrote another book about. Well, one of the ironies is one of my previous subjects, Lord Mountbatten, who was Prince Phillips' uncle. And it's now emerged, having had a very distinguished public career as for the last viceroy of India. It's been revealed, well, revealed in my book that he was a paedophile. There's actually a case going through

the courts in Belfast about a young boy who was trafficked him from one of the boys' homes there. So this is on top of the two witnesses I had, and indeed the FBI files I found talking about as paedophilia. So there is a second paedophile in the family with the same surname now as Andrew, who we used to know as Prince. Good Lord. Well, William has his work cut out for him when he eventually takes over. Andrew, thank you very much for joining us. And I'm glad your book is going up the bestseller list again. Thank you, yes.

No, it's gratifying. And it's good that in some ways these issues are now being aired, which I've been calling for for years and nothing was done. So I really feel confident there's going to be some change. Great. Well, Andrew Loney, thank you very much. And if you haven't read it entitled The Rise and the Fall of the House of York, well, I guess you'll be rapidly coming out with an update

edition of it, won't you? We will. It's going to be called Untitled. Okay, Andrew, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. Andrew, I can't believe how much has happened since we last talked. And it was only, I think, three weeks ago. And you have, in your new substack, to absolutely explosive allegations, which we are going to unpack. and when I say explosive, they really are.

We will get to them in a minute. But what I wanted you to do first was give us an update with where we are. We had some embarrassing emails of Prince Andrew coming out from the Epstein Trove, the emails that came out last week. But where is Prince Andrew right now? Has he left Royal Lodge? And what are the developments since we last spoke when he just lost his title of Prince? Well, I mean, from what I'm hearing, he doesn't seem too concerned.

He feels he's a free man now. He's saying he's going to go on dating apps. He's going to go on dating apps, really. And, you know, he's still in Royal Lodge. They still haven't opened all the parcels that Sir Ferguson ordered and hadn't opened herself. So I think they're not going to go up to Sandringham until after the new year. I'm clearly when all the Royal Family have left. And I'm not totally convinced he will go to Sandring.

him, I, the suspects that he may go somewhere else. We've got a private prosecution being brought by Republic. We have calls from former head of Royal Security and others saying that he should be investigated, both for sexual and financial irregularities. So he's kidding out of the woods. I mean, there's been a lot of speculation about whether he might go to the Middle East, and a lot of speculation about what Sarah Ferguson is going to do. Will she go to Switzerland, Portugal?

Will she have a little cater to tear in London? she's been said that she's going to promote herself as a speaker for empowerment and positivity. I don't know how well that's going to go. Empowerment. How is she a speaker for empowerment? She was being funded by the world's most notorious pedophile. Well, she is a woman with her own logic. But she is a survivor.

She's been, you know, she's been pretty much a broken spirit, particularly in 2010 when she was caught sitting access to Andrew, and she came back. She went on Oprah, and people gave her the benefit of the doubt that she'd repented. And I think she's going to try this again. I don't think many people think that she's a busted flush. So a lot of it's up in the air. I mean, there are really tensions between the King and the Prince of Wales

over how this is handled. The King's authority, I think, has been a bit diminished by the fact that he didn't act sooner and more ruthlessly. As you say, there are these lines coming out, Andrew from the Etstein disclosure, showing him to be panicking, really, when the story of Geoffrey broke. And of course, that kind of goes against the conventional line that he was pushing that, you know, he didn't know her and he didn't know what this was all about. But of course, it confirms what I found in my research and other people have written about. For those of us who haven't gone through the emails in as much depth as you have,

Can you tell us exactly how he did react when it first became clear the allegations were that he'd slept with Virginia Jufrey? Yeah, well, basically, keep me out of the story. And he went to PR people, our PR people to undermine Jifrey. He tried to get information about it through his police protection officer using his contacts with the FBI. It was all about damage limitations and about distancing himself from the story. and he is only one, actually, many revelations that have come out with the disclosures in the EPST files. We've got more, I think, imminent. I mean, interesting that Trump has now kind of changed this tune and is happy for the material to be released. I would say I'm not sure if he's happy for the

material to be released. He realizes that he wasn't going to win the battle to keep them suppressed. So he's sort of lent into the rebels in the Republican Party, I would say. I think it's more of a political maneuver rather than he's happy for them to be released? Absolutely right. Yeah. No, he sees that, you know, that there's no advantage in trying to prevent their release as he has done up till now and he's having to go with the mood. And I mean, thank goodness we're seeing this stuff. I think, again, we've seen the publication, of course, Virginia Jiffra's own book, goes to by Amy Wallace, which has been well received and been a bestseller. And I think has again changed the dial for a lot of people. It really brings home how awful the situation was and

how entitled these people felt they were. So, as you say, there have been a lot of developments, and I think there will be more. I mean, I think more people will come forward now. I'm certainly finding from my own research that people are coming forward, protection officers, former members of staff, ambassadors, who I think are appalled by what they've discovered and learnt, and I think also want to be on the right side of history here. And clearly, that's what's motivated Trump to a certain extent as well. And there have been lots of accusations, Tina Brown.

made it over the weekend that the Queen really enabled Andrew's behaviour. Do you think that's fair? Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I was vilified when I said this in August because the Queen, of course, was a saint and wouldn't have done anything like that. So it's great that, you know, people like Tina Brown are saying these things. But it's exactly what I found. I mean, we know that attempts were made to suppress this story.

ABC television were threatened, basically. If they went ahead, they would lose access to the Royals. I know from talking to ambassadors and others that they were basically sent away with a flea in their ear when they tried to bring concerns to the Queen and her staff about Andrew. And of course, every time he seemed to be involved in some scandal, the Queen seemed to either take him with her to church

or give him some new honour. So I think it was pretty apparent at the time, just no one was prepared to say it. And there was even a leak in the Sunday times the other day, I think by the palace, but trying to basically put the blame on the queen for not basically sorting this problem out and handing a time bomb to King Charles. So there's a lot of buck passing going on at the moment. In your book entitled The Rise and Fall of the House of York, which we've talked about extensively on this podcast, you talk about a weekend in Thailand where Prince Andrew went through 40 prostitutes. I mean, subsequent reporting has also found that he appeared to have prostitutes coming into Buckingham Palace with no security clearance checks whatsoever.

No, absolutely. And I think Paul Page has gone public on that. He was one of the policemen on the North Gate. And I think this isn't it, this was of concern to the police because there were always people, they didn't know who they were. It was pretty clear that they were escorts. And, I mean, there were lots and lots of them coming in. and we got lots of stories of escorts for Zoppel in Hong Kong. He took over the top floor of the landmark hotel and entertained escorts there on, I think, a trade mission. So everyone was turning a blind eye to his activities, which is extraordinary. And I think one of the things that hasn't really come out yet

is the whole national security element of this story. We've had hints of alleged Chinese spies, but there are all spies running around this story. You would have seen it's easy to see that both Andrew and Sir Ferguson were very easy ways into they were very vulnerable because of their greed. And they did have some very useful context. Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. And of course, greed does make people vulnerable. And we've seen that with members of the family time and again.

So let's move on to Andrew, two remarkable allegations in your substack, which I couldn't. believe I was reading. The second one, which will come onto, is that Jeffrey Epstein was actually killed. But let's look at the first one, which sort of leads to the second one, which is that Jeffrey Epstein had had enough of Prince Andrew and Fergie. He was concerned that they would perhaps spill his secrets and that he had hired a hitman to basic. to remove them? Yes, I mean, this comes from two sources. One in Paris and another one in Palm Beach, who were very close to Epstein.

I mean, you know, Epstein said all sorts of things. We can't always believe everything he said. But I think he was getting very nervous. He thought particularly Sarah Ferguson might spill the beans on him. And this was a precautionary measure, I suppose. Now, how far he went down the line of trying to get more details of that in terms of the sniper. But the sniper was Bridgett. special forces, trained.

And had he actually had conversations with this particular sniper? I mean, it sounds so conspiracy theorist. I find it hard to believe. But then so much about this story is hard to believe. Exactly. No, and I was very nervous about putting it up because clearly, you know, it's an easy way of undermining my credibility. So we'll see what comes.

I mean, we do know that Sarah was very concerned. I mean, that was a reason that she kind of kept in with Epstein because she was scared of him. And I think this could have been just a threat. It could have been just as paranoia. As I said, I haven't been able to follow up the story to find any more detail. Though I've been told I will be given the name of the sniper. But it is an extraordinary story.

But it's, you know, as you say, the story is bizarre anyway. And we're dealing with people who are not necessarily in the realms of reality. If you're a sniper actively in the special sense, services in the UK, the idea of being commissioned by an American to kill members of the British royal family. I mean, how on earth would he get away with it? I mean, it just seems remarkable. Well, I do think this was serving member of Special Forces as someone who'd been trained as a British Special Forces person. You know, I'm just thinking of the update of the Freddie Forsyth novel. The Day of the Jackal. And isn't that, I think, then the update, it is about

the next British Special Forces person who is basically a gun for hire. So in some ways, that isn't that odd. It's interesting that I've got, you know, that's come from two different sources, but, you know, often that happens. It doesn't mean it's true. But, you know, it's interesting to see if it does bring forward anything else in terms of disclosures. A lot of these things are rumours and you just kind of float them and just see what happens and maybe they have to be disregarded.

Well, and in the hierarchy of people that Epstein was frightened or, I wouldn't have thought Sarah Ferguson would be very high on his list. No, I agree. But, I mean, maybe she's more garrulous than the others. I don't know. I mean, I don't know what she knew that he was concerned about. But, you know, we have had, you know, these rumors, for example, moving on to the second part of the revelation,

that, you know, Trump and Epstein, though they had broken contact, that Epstein was making threats to explain. exposed Trump. That was one of the stories. Trump was concerned about that. Epstein thought he might be given a pardon protected by Trump. And those rumors are circulated for a while. And that might explain the story of Epstein's deaths, which I think, you know, a lot of people have questions, and I question in the book, I mean, just in terms of Epstein being one of the great survivors. He was at the beginning of his court problems. He had always got out of them in the past by paying people off and having good lawyers.

And he was not someone talking to, for example, the lawyers who were dealing with and was someone who was suicidal. And then we have all the strange things going on in the prison with the cameras not working and the guards falling asleep. We have Michael Baden's autopsy suggesting it was homicide rather than suicide. We've got former members of other correctional facilities saying it was impossible to kill. kill yourself just because of the heights and the sheets and various all things. And then, as I say, the source, which has come from a good FBI source, talking about a fellow convict who was brought in to do this. Can you explain to me how this all unfolded?

So you were contacted by a former FBI agent. How did this play out? If you're the historian, hugely respected historian, you have a PhD in history. How did you get this information? How did it come to you? It didn't come to me. I went to them. I knew about a case that they worked on. I know they'd left the FBI. I approached them and they'd kindly in confidence shared some correspondence with me that revealed this. And the correspondence was between whom? Internal FBI correspondence. Internal FBI correspondence. Has Jeffrey Epstein being killed in. his cell. That's what I was told. And this is what actually Galane Maxwell also said, I think, when she was interviewed by Daphne Barrett a few months ago. And it, of course, makes sense,

you know, someone who is very little to lose and a lot to gain. Set the scene, what did the correspondence say, Andrew, and how was he killed? I don't know. I don't think it says that in the correspondence from what I remember looking at. Well, were these internal emails that you saw? Yes. Does this was the investigation into into the, this character and there seemed to be a correspondence talking about this particular figure and the and what had happened. What did you have done? But it's only a fragment, shall we say. So again, you know, it would be useful. I know the FBI had been looking at this. I mean, it's, you know, it's kind of been passed off. You know, it was suicide and that's been the line.

But I do know that people were looking at it. And I think a lot of people suspected that. And that would all fit into the sort of his paranoia when he went into prison and the worries about Sarah Ferguson and others. So I just want to get this completely straight because I know you talked at the Chiswick Book Fair this weekend and you talked about being told by FBI agents that Epstein was killed in his prison cell by another prison inmate. And you're now saying you saw correspondence, FBI correspondence, respondents that discussed this. Were they discussing it as a possibility? Were they floating it as a theory? Or were they saying they were confident this is what had happened? From what I remember, it's a little while since I looked at it. I was shown it, but it was treated

as fact. This wasn't speculation. And they know, and you know, who the inmate was. Yes. There was a name there, yeah. And why haven't you shared the name? Well, I mean, you know, I haven't got, this is the only bit of evidence I've got. I mean, clearly, their libel considerations. And, you know, given that what's happened to various people in this story, perhaps why I didn't share it too publicly. But, you know, at some point I hope I can. And, you know, it's still sort of ongoing research.

So a lot of people are going to say, Andrew Loney's just launched a substack. He's trying to sell more copies of his book. He's now floating conspiracies that have been around. What do you say to people who, are just saying this is wild exaggerations from a man who can't possibly know. Well, I'd like to be able to follow up on this as soon as I can. I mean, this story has slightly run earlier than I expected,

and the decision was taken by the people doing my sub-stack, that we would release it when I was waiting to do more. But didn't you say it when you were actually at the Chiswick Book Fair, so you sort of put it out into the world? I did, and no one picked it up, so I thought it was okay. No one picked it up. What are the British press doing? Oh, my goodness. It's only smart people like you. So it had all gone rather quiet.

And then people doing myself, I thought we should put it out there. But, yeah, I'm a bit more cautious. Yes, you should put it out there. Yeah. So, but you're absolutely right. You know, I can understand, you know, people want more evidence. I mean, the problem with this story is often difficult to get the affidavits and things that people want. It is, yeah, of course, I'm sure. starting a substack and I've got a book to sell. So there's a perfectly fair comments to make.

But, you know, lots of people have substacks and books to sell. It doesn't mean what they say isn't true. Right. And also I think what's so interesting about your book entitled The Rise and the Fall of the House of York is that so much of what you said in the book that the Yorks were trying to stop coming out. I mean, we know that they tried to stop their friends from speaking to you. They wouldn't speak to you. So much of what has come out in the book has proven not only to be true, certainly more than the tip of the iceberg, but it's led to, along with Virginia Joufrey's book, Nobody's Fool, the Prince losing his title. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's extraordinary. I mean, I think they realized that there were wider questions about royal privilege and accountability being asked by the media, by social media, and they felt that they had to kind of cut him loose before he. infected the rest of them. And I think when the king saw him, you know, was being hackled at Litchfield, when I think they were worried that there might be more empty material.

They may know what's there. I don't know. I think they realized that they had to distance themselves. And he, you know, there had been increasing calls that he should be investigated and could be charged. And in those circumstances, clearly they needed to distance themselves. And, you know, in some ways, they should have been dealing with this problem years ago. They shouldn't have allowed it to drag on as long as it has.

Well, I was going to ask you about because in a sense this story has become so prominent because of Jeffrey Epstein. And yet the prince was off frequently, as you have pointed out, on taxpayers' money, on diplomatic jaunts, supposedly trade jaunts, where in fact he didn't want to stay at the residences of the ambassador because it clearly becomes evident that he wanted hot and cold running prostitutes where he was staying. And I'm surprised that, given how many people knew this was going on in the palace, that nobody reigned him in. Was it because the Queen and Prince Philip gave him cover and that you can't, you know, once you know that they support him, even if you're a respected member of the household, the royal household staff, your word is not going to be taken seriously? Yes. I mean, the problem was, you know, the policeman were reporting not to the Commission of the Bachelor of the Metropolitan Department. police, but to the head of the household, in the fact. And even Tony Johnson-Burt, he's the head of the household, when people brought him complaints, said, look, you know, we just got to do our

master's bidding. He wasn't a great fan of Andrew. In fact, he got into fisticuffs themselves at one point. They got into fisticuffs? Supposedly, it's supposed to have turned physical when Andrew couldn't get hold of a room that he wanted. So Johnson-Burt did sort of stand up to him, but Andrew just always went to mummy and mummy would overrule the one. Ambassadors did complain, and then found that their sort of careers were pretty curtailed. Simon Wilson, who was the deputy ambassador in Bahrain, spoke out and then found his security clearance, I think, was withdrawn for a job he had later on. So they have ways of making life difficult for people who don't play ball.

And I think the view was taken just given what he wants. I mean, talking to members of the Royal Household last week, I was amazed that both he and Sarah Farquson still seem to have staffs. Sarah was coming in and getting her laundry done at Windsor or at Buckingham Palace, and they were still entertaining businessmen in royal palaces and were still operating under the radar. So I think what we're told and what's happening are some two very different things. But you're obviously right. I mean, you know, the Epstein thing is kind of taken everyone's attention away from what is the real scandal, I think,

which is where they've abused their position as royals to make money from themselves. I mean, some ambassadors refuse to play ball. And when they were given a list of people that Andrew wanted, and either he or his mates to meet, didn't provide it or said they were unsuitable and kind of warned him off. But there was quite a lot, I forgot the book, and I'm not casting any aspersions, but Andrew had close connections with banks. Banks that dealt with the sort of customers that no one else wanted to deal with. And so, you know, you can see how the system might have worked. So Peter Morgan, the writer of the brilliant Netflix series, The Crown, I read said that when he was envisaging writing about the royal family, he thought about the queen as almost as Tony Soprano that this was a business and she was the sort of head of it. I'm not saying he was likening it to the mob, but as he was thinking about it unfolding over seasons, how did you?

sustain the story? Now you look back on the queen and Prince Philip, given all we know now, and the love and respect and awe with which the queen was held. Do you think that if she was still alive, she would still have that? Or do you think she's been subsequently revealed as enabling a very corrupt son fully knowing what he was up to? Yeah, I know it's interesting whether, you know, my book might have been published and whether the press would have been as confident as some of them were in running some of the stories they did. Because, I mean, I know there are a lot of stories that's suppressed. So, you know, I suspect now the Queen's dead and Philip's dead, it was a little easier for me to get published. I had a very supportive publisher and big publisher, and that helped.

And I think then, you know, people felt the ground had been softened and they could come back. and there was clearly a very strong feeling among the population that elites were getting away with some pretty bad behaviour and needed to be held to account. And, you know, that actually was a big factor in the States, but I think it was also a stronger feeling in Britain too. So, you know, I think the whole softening up process was beginning and it made it possible.

But yeah, I think the wing was still alive. I think it would be very difficult. I wanted to ask you about the Queen's husband, Prince Philip, otherwise known as the Duke of Edinburgh. What was his role in all this? Was he a supporter of Andrew? Did he try and rein him in? Did the Queen always take preference over the Duke of Edinburgh? I mean, as a married couple, as parents, how were they trying to influence Andrew? Well, I mean, my understanding had always been that, you know, the Duke of Edinburgh was the chap who ran the family and he ran a pretty tight ship. I mean, he was the one who basically summoned Andrew to wood farm and told him, basically, you know, you've got to.

got to resign all your things, and this is it. And he was pretty tough. And the queen did sort of listen to him. So I find it's extraordinary that that wasn't to what happened. And all I've been told is that he did obey the queen. The queen said no, you know, we're going to sort of tough this one out. And he had to go with that. I mean, to be fair, he was also by this stage in his 70s. and I think he just didn't really want to have all the fights, as she was, that might be required. They thought they could probably get away with it, or they perhaps thought they could deal with it.

They thought maybe the problems at the time weren't worth addressing because of the Baparvisti, and they do it quietly behind the scenes, and it never happened. They may not have been told the full story by Andrew. I mean, one of the interesting things I picked up last week was that Andrew hadn't told the staff. They didn't know about the interview with Newsnight in Vukki. Palace and therefore the room hadn't been prepared. It hadn't actually been cleaned.

And the staff were very upset that actually it wasn't in a, where they didn't think in a fit state to have TV cameras on it. The Queen and Prince Philip must have been older than in their 70s, weren't they? Were they in their 70? Because I thought the first story about Andrew and Epstein came out, I think, in the mail or mail on Sunday, in 2011. So they were would have, so wouldn't they have been in their 80s at that stage? Ages, sorry. Just a, yes, so they're older. Yes, exactly.

So, I mean, so in some ways, you know, they were kind of, they had the attitude of sticking their head in the sand sometimes, and I think that's what they did. And maybe they thought someone else would deal with it, who didn't deal with it. Who knows? I mean, they're not here to tell us. You know, I mean, to be fair, it was also a problem for King Charles. I mean, he was taking a much more active role. by that stage

and in the way that Williams is taking more actual rule now so it was kind of on his watch as well and he's not a great, you know, there's no love loss between the brothers and he has a full measure of his younger brother he was the one who didn't want him to have this job as a special envoy because he knew how he would

abuse a position so it's it is a mystery how this was allowed to happen and you know maybe we'll know, maybe someone's courteous will eventually talk. I was very interested that you said that since the publication of the book and since Prince

Andrew has lost his title, that now members of the household, of the royal household, feel much freer to talk to you, even off the record, because they're much less frightened of him. Yes, absolutely. It seems to be, you know, I'm amazed. I mean, I had dinner last week with the former equerry. And these are people who would have given me a very wide birth before the what was published. So, and again, you've got to wonder why are these people coming forward?

Is it that they, that they want to share information, feel uncomfortable about what they know, and feel that there's a higher loyalty than there is to the NDA or their previous job? Or are they giving you disinformation in the words to undermine your credibility? Or are they, is there some factor that, I mean, a lot of them didn't like Andrew, and we're very happy to see him, you know, a fallen figure. So you're constantly assessing why people are talking to you. But certainly I've gone back to a lot of people, and they've talked to a lot of people in now prepared to go on the record as well.

Very interesting. So, and I know you're doing a follow-up to your book entitled, calling it untitled. Is that going to be packed with new revelations? Yeah, well, I've got 150 pages of notes so far just from the material from people. you've come forward. Wow. And so this is some, you know, this book is a couple of years away. So, yeah, I think it will all be completely new. And, you know, we will cover some of the same period, clearly,

but I'm just getting a lot more new information, for example, about as time as a trade envoy. And activities and places like Kazakhstan, places I didn't know about, like Mongolia. We took out, I think, almost all the material about his activities in Libya, for example. And those have now been, I think we could now, got that stuff back in. Good Lord.

You know, the stuff from Peter Mandelson and Epstein was taken out because people didn't, the lawyers didn't believe it. And now, of course, we've got the revelations about Mandelson and Epstein's activities together and how close they were. So, you know, it's been gratifying to see that a lot of my sources proved to be absolutely right, which is why I sort of felt, I felt it was okay to get out in the substat because the sources have proved to be reliable in the past. And I'm hopeful that, you know, they're continuing to do some.

Well, now that the Epstein files are about to be released, I'm assuming that there will be more, more emails, more texts, more communications with the former Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. Are you expecting more? Oh, absolutely. I mean, and other names, you know, because clearly the focus has been on him and, you know, clearly we've had Mandelson, but very little on the American side. So, you know, given the number of documents there are, I mean, there's, they've got to be huge number of revelations. And if you remember, there were 40, I think 40 girls came forward to give evidence in the original Palm Beach investigation. So there's, you know, I still think we've only got the tip of the iceberg here in terms of what even law enforcement nodes, let alone what may emerge quite separately from other witnesses and testimony. Do you think there is the chance that Andrew, Prince Andrew, as he was known, will end up coming to the United States to give evidence? No, I think that's very unlikely. I mean, I think that was a little bit of groundstanding by the Democrats. I mean, he's been caught between a rock and a hard place for a long time because clearly if he didn't give evidence or didn't cooperate with authorities before, everyone assumed he was guilty.

but if he did, clearly he was going to probably implicate himself. So he's in exactly the same position now. I'm sure the lawyers will just say this is a sort of a political trick. Democrats are a minority on the committee. He's not an American citizen. So I can't see him cooperating until he's forced to do so. But I can see material being passed to the British authorities for him to be investigated, both in terms of, say, the sexual trafficking and the misconduct in public office,

which is, I think, the most obvious charge that we leveled against him. And I think that, you know, there are good grounds there. And I've offered to offer the material that wasn't put in the book, but for legal reasons, to give that to the National Crime Agency. I think I have a story in my substacker, about $5 million in a suitcase in Kazakhstan, for example. This was a suitcase of cash. This is a suitcase of cash that he was given. We know, you know, for example, that he was offered a 3.85 million pounds of 1% of a huge deal to bring a Greek water company into Kazakhstan.

And that emerged, I think, through email leaks. I think the deal never took place, though, right? It didn't take place because of internal unrest. But we do know that there were these sort of deals going on. And so I think we may find other things emerge. other people may come forward and talk. You know, Elon Musk has said various things in the past. There are people who've seen the files before they were redacted

who may again be prepared to talk or leap material. Are these just the things that were in Jeffrey Epstein's safe? Or what do we actually think they were? Are these the supposed documents and information that he was in theory or alleged to have been blackmailing people with? Well, I mean, there's material for the department to just. and the FBI, this is all part of the investigations. So there will be witness testimony with people who interviewed.

There will be material that they've collected. So, for example, we know that there were videos and tapes that he made of people who came to the house or the various homes. And those may be released. I think one of them has been briefly shown on the internet. So there's a lot of material. As you say, the stuff that he just kept himself that was confiscated when they raised. the homes, we don't really know. I mean, this is, this is what's so interesting. But there certainly is a lot of material. And, you know, just to see how devastating the limited amount that's

being leaped so far has been, it suggests that there's some really big damaging disclosures to come. Well, well, you couldn't have launched a substack at a better time, Andrew. I can't wait for the next, the next installment. You know, I hope you get more information on what actually happened to Jeffrey Epstein in jail. But good luck with, you know, solving what sometimes feels like the world's biggest mystery. Yes. Well, I mean, think how much has come out just in the last few months. So I'm hopeful that a pretty full story will eventually emerge. But it just may take time.

Yeah. And as they say, you really couldn't make it up. Every day there's something coming at you and you just think, how is this even possible? Anyway, I'm glad to know that you haven't entirely jumped the shark. And we will come back to the moment the Epstein files are released because we would love your take on what you've found in there. So promise us you'll come back. Of course. I look forward to it. All right. Andrew Loney. Thank you so much.

pleasure. So exciting to have British author and historian, Andrew Loney, in the studio. I'm amazed you're even allowed into America. Well, I did fly Air Lingus, so I thought if I'm going to go through preclearance, I'll be sent back from Dublin rather than from here. Okay, very smart. Also a cheaper flight, I think. It is, yes. So, Andrew, we have talked about your book entitled The Rise and Fall of the House of York repeatedly on this podcast.

And I think it's fair to say that partly as a result of your book and Nobody's Girl, the Virginia Jewfrey book, Prince Andrew has now had to give up his title. But it feels as if the entire royal family is in some kind of transitional phase. What are your thoughts about where the royal family is right now? Well, I think it's beyond transitional. I think they're in trouble. I think there's... You actually think they're in trouble?

Yes. I mean, I think, you know, the whole point of the book was this was about financial corruption at the heart of the royal family and Andrew was being protected. It was operating with the connivance of the institution. And so now people are asking wider questions, beyond Andrew, about how this was allowed to happen, why he wasn't dealt with earlier, and how he continues to be protected. So, for example, there's a story in the paper today about how the king has had a meeting with the king of Bahrain in order basically to facilitate Andrew's escape to Bahrain. So Andrew, formerly known as Prince Andrew, is moving actually, as you had predicted, to Bahrain, you think? Yes, I think there's a good chance for that.

I mean, I've always said that if charges were brought, and I think they will be brought, that he would scopper in the way that King Juan Carlos of Spain has done so, and gone to live in Dubai. And what would the charges likely be against Andrew formerly known as Prince? Well, there are lots. I mean, there's a whole sex trafficking. I mean, the point is that Virginia Geoffrey was ordered out of a book by Andrew. She didn't go there voluntarily. The matter of investigative this three times said there was nothing to see there. There's now pressure on them to actually do a proper investigation.

When I asked the freedom information question, they wouldn't even answer me. This whole crisis has been driven by the public who are kind of fed up with cover-ups, with the protection of elites. And the press have realized that, which is why they've felt emboldened to ask tougher and tougher questions. And the royals are now aware of that. And to save themselves, to save wider questions about royal privilege and accountability, they've thrown Andrew to the walls in effect. There are also clearly all the questions about as time as a trade envoy.

I think there's a lot of material there. All that material I would happily pass to the National Crime Agency or to the Met. And have they asked you for your help? Nope. No. I repeatedly said that I would give them help. In fact, 20 years ago, MPs were very keen that the National Crime Agency did investigate Andrew. They're still holding back all the files on Andrew. and covering his time as a trade envoy, these files by law should actually be in the public archives.

And even now, I'm getting, for example, redacted names of people who accompanied him when we even had those names 30 years ago in the court circular. So they're actually going backwards on what we actually was in the public domain before. Wow, it's an amazing story. So one of the things you said when we last spoke, you were in London, I was here,

which generated an enormous number of comments. And I'd love to address and sort of unpack with you properly. Is this idea that he was the Queen's favourite son, so he was the number two son, and that she protected him. And that both her and her husband, both the Queen and Prince Philip, knew of Andrew's bad behaviour and really didn't do anything to rein him in.

it seems so unlike the queen we think of, who was always talking about duty first, and yet she appears to have had this second son who had no interest in duty, apart from to himself and to serve his own needs. Yeah, it is shocking. It's one of the most shocking things I found in the book, and it goes against the narrative. The narrative was always she put the monarchy ahead of her family, often to their cost. But, you know, time and time again, I've got stories of diplomats going to her with complaints about Andrew. The palace tried to suppress all stories about Andrew and Geoffrey to the extent

of forbidding or telling ABC that if television, if they wanted to run a story, they wouldn't have access to any members of the Royal Family again. Time, time again, she would give Andrew a new appointment when he was in the news on Epstein. So he was made a Knight of the Garter. He was made a Vice Admiral of the Navy, which he still is. He was made that after the revelations about Virginia you dofrey yeah absolutely so she rewarded him with a knight of the garter which sounds like the most insane arcane british thing what even is the knight of the garter well the knights the garter i think restricted about 20 of them it's for the most prestigious uh i suppose people in public life in britain who've really achieved something very very notable but half of them members of the royal

family so you kind of think it's just them giving themselves baubles and they like to parade around in their robes it's one of the things that andrew liked best and even after he lost his royal role, he was still able to go to the lunch, even though he wasn't able to parade in the street because he'd clearly be pelted with eggs. So she was, you know, she was escorting him to events, getting to sit beside her in the car, going to church,

everything to send out the signal that the royal family actually believed that he was an innocent man. And so the queen was giving him air cover and baubles, as you say, What about the Duke of Edinburgh, her husband, who was supposed to be the one that sort of led the actual family? Yeah, this is a great mystery. I can't explain it. I mean, he, I know, was very concerned about the Sunning Hill Stale. This was the sale of the house the Queen had given Andrews a wedding present, which was sold for three million pounds more than the asking price when there was no other bidder. And he realised that didn't look good. He was the one who basically said to Andrew the games up, and you've got to drop out of public life. So he did call the shots in respects.

But my understanding is that when he raises matters with the Queen, she just had a complete blind spot and her son could do no wrong. And yet she seems to have been harder. And, you know, I'm just going on things I've read, perhaps written by you. But she seemed harder on Prince Charles who would become king. Is that fair? Yes, I mean, I think, and Philip was certainly very hard on Charles. I mean, there would, it is a very odd scenario where, you know, I suppose they had higher expectations of Charles and they kind of let Andrew do what he wanted.

And this goes right back to Andrew's sort of childhood where there were no barriers. He didn't have to follow the rules. And he realized he could get away and the rules didn't really apply to him. And that's happened right up to the present day. You know, the fact is that this problem. should have been dealt with 10, 15 years ago. And even in 2019 or 2022, when he was withdrawing from public life, they didn't really do anything. You know, even now, he hasn't lost his titles.

He's been taken away from the peerage, but he still hauls his titles. And as I say, he's still a vice-admiral in the Navy. So it's all window dressing. He's not going to move to a little two-up, two down in Sandringham. He's going to move to a nice big house with servants. his life is not really going to change and possibly he is going to be aided to basically get away from justice in this country with the help of the king. So let's think about the king's role in all this because this is also complicated by the fact that we know he has cancer. We don't know what kind of cancer because in classic royal family sort of tradition they put out some of the information but not all of the information.

So we're told that he's living with cancer, but it can't be cured, which has led to speculation about how much time he's got left. And then you've got Prince William, Prince of Wales, sort of limbering up in the sidelines to get ready to take over. So between the king and Prince William, who has the most say at the moment now about what happens to Andrew? Well, I think we're in a transitional stage in the way we were when Charles was taking over the duties of the Queen in the last few years of her life. And William is calling more of the shots.

Charles is interested in legacy. William is interested in governance. And he doesn't want to inherit the problem of Andrew. So he wants the stables clean before he gets there. Charles is reluctant to do that. There are tensions between the two of them. Charles are still the workaholic who feels that the royal family should be there and kind of spread themselves pretty thinly. William feels that they should be focused on a few key things.

They should get their mental health and their families as a priority and wants a much more slimmed down European-style monarchy. So there is this tension. There's always tension between Prince of Wales and a monarch. But it does seem to be, you know, particularly over Andrew, Charles is much more forgiving. William, I think, is much more ruthless. He doesn't have any sentimental attachment to his uncle.

So when William takes over as king, Sandringham will be his Norfolk property, right? I mean, I'm assuming that he'll take it over. So will he want Andrew living on the premises? I don't think Andrew will be there. I think Sandringham is a temporary spot. He may not even ever go there. As I say, if charges are brought, I think he will leave the country.

One of the things with Bahrain, I think, is that he will be protected there. They will not be able to extradite him to, either Britain or the states. So, and I think he may be going there sooner than everyone thinks. The line always also is security, so we won't tell you where he's going for his own security. So he may not even go to Sandringham. He may go somewhere else. So he'll go direct, you think, from Royal Lodge, which is where he still is, right, with his 30 bedrooms,

to Bahrain to avoid ending up in jail? I think so. You know, he was meant to leave Royal Lodge as soon as was practicable. Well, that was a couple of, you know, to a month ago. There's no sign that he's going to move any time until sometime next year. I suspect it will be quite late next year. So, you know, they're playing the whole thing long. What they're saying in public and what's actually happening in reality are two very different things.

And that, I'm afraid, is the same story as always with the royal family. It's all smoke and mirrors and window dressing. So the third child in the Queen's four children is Princess Anne, who I think is probably the child that people are most fond of. She seems to work very hard. She's kept below the radar. She doesn't seem to behave badly as far as we know. What does she think about all this?

Do we have any sense of it? And of course she had her own mysterious accident where she was found in a field, right, with a head injury. Yes, well, you know, so much we don't know, and this is why, you know, everyone is calling for greater accountability about, I mean, not so much health, but certainly on financial issues. I think there is some sympathy in the royal family for Andrew. I mean, that he's clearly not in a good way at the moment. He's kind of fighting this. He feels he's been hard done by, and they, I think, were wanting to keep him on side. The real worry is Sarah Ferguson, and what he's. she might do because of course she's also now lost her property and she's lost or where she's living and she's also lost her title. So has she moved out of Royal Lodge? No, she's still there for the moment but I think she's trying to work out where to go and there are various options. One is to go and live with one daughter in the Cotswolds and other is to go and live in Portugal with another.

I think Richard Branson and some of her sort of mentors have offered her things. She's just sold a four million pound house in Belgrade in London. So she's not short of money. She could easily go and rent somewhere. She at one point was going to move to Switzerland, so that's another option. I doubt she'll want to go to the Middle East. But, you know, there are a lot of options there.

And people say she may even come to the States where she's always been far more popular than she is in Britain. I mean, this is just the most extraordinary story to think of the British royal family sort of imploding like this and the Queen's favourite son being banished to the Middle East to avoid legal proceedings

and his ex-wife threatening a tell-all. Do you think they continue? Is there actually a sort of sense now a drumbeat almost in the UK for a proper republic? I think that this is probably the most dangerous moment in royal history since the abdication and perhaps before that. And that would be the abdication of Henry, oh, Henry the 8th of Edward. Edward, the 18th, in 1976.

Or December 35. That was because of Wallace Simpson, who he wanted to marry, but she was divorced. So that meant he had to give up the throne if he wanted to marry her, which he did. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it is a dangerous point because I think what we're seeing here, as I say, is financial corruption within the royal family. People asking much wider questions about the apakness of their finances, which they don't want to answer. We've got, actually, they're running out of people to man the fort.

You know, Harry and Megan are off, Andrew and Sarah Ferguson are out. I think the only ones under 60 now are basically the Prince of Wales and Catherine. The children are clearly too young to have any role. So this plays to the argument of concentrating everything on the direct line of succession and only those in direct line of succession having titles. So that would mean Beatrice and Eugenie would also lose titles. I mean, this is another whole error of the debate. What's their future?

are they compromised by their parents' activities? And this is Andrew and Fergie's children, Beatrice New Jamie. Sorry, yes, who are in their late 30s, married with children, but there are lots of stories about them doing business off the back of their parents' contacts, particularly in the Middle East. They've been told to basically rein in their activities and that there should be some sort of audit of who they're dealing with,

which they've refused to do, which in itself is quite revealing. So we've got them. So I think the likelihood is that when William comes to power, and I think it could be much soon that people realise that all of them, Eugenie, Beatrice, Harry, Megan and their children will all lose their titles. It will move to a much more simple, say, European-style monarchy. We saw this the other day with Williams' interview with Eugene Levy. There he turns up on a bicycle. You know, all this was very carefully, it's a very careful calibrated PR campaign. This is just another. a normal family. They live quite modestly. They're focused on their children. They dress in the sort of clothes that you would normally dress in. So that's the picture that's been sent out that William wants to present. It's not the picture that his father feels comfortable with. So that's where there's some slight tension. But yeah, things are breaking up, I think. You know, the young can't relate to the royal family. There's terrific apathy. Republic, which is the anti-monicist organization, is feeling quite sort of strong at the moment.

moment. Poles have shown that levels of support have fallen from about 80 to 50% or less. And so they do need to sort of regroup and rethink what they do. And as more of these stories come out, not just about Andrew, but the question's now being asked about the King and cash for honours with him, other slightly wider, further afield members of the royal family, Peter Phillips and Zara Phillips and some of their sponsorship deals. And they're the kids of Princess Anne. Sorry, yes, the children of Princess Anne. So these are more grandchildren of the Queen, but who have got their own careers.

But the worry is that their careers are slightly predicated on their royal status. Now, there are other members of the royal family who have had independent careers, Lord Lindley, who's the son of Princess Margaret, who was the sister of the Queen, has got his own career. He's a chairman of Christy's. He's forged his own career. His sister is an artist. Never gets into the papers. So there are members of the Royal Family who've dropped out. The famous occasion where many people in the public

realised what Andrew and Sarah were like was the Duchess of Kent's funeral a few months ago. And the Kent family again have forged a very independent line outside royal circles with their own careers. And the Duchess of Kent had left Royal Service and was just a music teacher in outside London. So it can be done.

I think the worry is when they try and monetise their royal status. Right, which is of course what Megan Markle wanted to do and Harry with their Sussex seal and the Queen told them that they couldn't do it. Can we just, for those people who haven't seen the photos from that funeral for the Duchess of Kent, I mean Tom Sykes, our royalist columnist, had a series of those photos which were fantastic, but can you quite describe them for people? I mean, because they all looked absolutely at down. daggers, didn't they? I mean, the photos told an amazing story of animosity. Yeah, yes, it was like watching the Kremlin or something. It really was. It's, um, the, the background is the Duchess of Kent

had a funeral. I understand that actually Andrew and Sarah weren't even invited, but turned up. They were given an armed escort from Windsor, which someone must have provided, though they were not working royals. Instead of going in the side door, they went down the middle of the, of the aisle at the cathedral and sat in the front row. And then, instead of slipping out quietly out of the side. Wow. They sat in the front row. Yes. The relationship is that Andrew's mother is a cousin of the husband of the woman who died. I mean, it's not a particularly close relationship.

Okay. Hold on. Andrew's mother. So the queen was a cousin of the Duchess. So her cousin was the Duke of Kent? Yes. Okay. Yeah. But when they come out and everyone is paying their respects to the hearse, Andrew and Sarah are treating it like it's a cocktail party, wandering around, chatting to people, trying to get themselves into the photos to show that everyone loves them, a little bit like a kid at school who wants to sort of cozy up to the prefects. There was a lot of pick-mey energy, I thought, in it. Yeah.

I mean, and also William was there and looked like he didn't want to talk to them at all. You could see Andrew trying to engage him in conversation and William looking away or barely. muttering a word too. I mean, they were all trying to pay respects. The house was about to leave. It was a solemn moment. And then cheeky chippy chappy, Andrew comes and wants to make conversation. And you're absolutely right. William totally ignores him. And also, they kind of move right to the center of the sort of pictures. Instead of hanging back at the sides or at the back, they kind of want the front stage. And we've seen this time and time again when they were invited back to Sandringham, which was the first time that Sarah Ferguson had been divided back for many years, she kind of gurns her way and

goes and waves to the crowd as if she's the centre of attraction. But we've got to remember, we're dealing with two prime narcissists here. And this was their opportunity for a bit more, you know, a bit of attention. Well, they certainly got the attention. Does Fergie get on with the king? I mean, what do the king and Camilla think of Fergie? Well, that's an interesting relationship. Prince Philip couldn't stand, Fergie, and she was banned from all royal events while he was alive. Fergie pretends that the Queen was very fond of her, which she was, to a limited extent, in that she was fond of her grandchildren. She was pleased that Fergie had basically taken Andrew off of their hands. But, you know, she could see her faults. The, Camilla had been

very friendly with Sarah Ferguson's mother, and indeed Markshan, her brother, had worked with Aaron in an animal charity. So there was a bond there. And when Philip died and then the queen died, Fergie used Camilla as a way back into the family. Charles is quite sentimental. He's quite forgiving. And he kind of thought, well, we better get her back in the fold. She's sort of kind of safer here. And we're all one big happy family. And William didn't like that. Many other members of all family didn't like that. Edward particularly has, and Sophie haven't got a good relationship. And Edward is the younger child. He's the fourth child of the queen.

He's the fourth child. Right. So she kind of wormed her way back in. So having been the outcast for 20 years, suddenly she was having Charles kiss her hand at Ascot. She was in the Royal Box at Wimbledon. And everyone was slightly surprised because of all the embarrassment she brought to the royal family over the previous years. But this clearly was a sort of reset. And now, of course, they're now realizing that was a bad idea.

And I think the worry is Charles is going to do this naively all over again. with Beatrice and Eugenie. The deal for Andrew leaving Royal Lodge, because he's an iron cast lease there, and Tom Sykes is very good on this, is that there was no voluntary, he could only go voluntarily. Well, the only way he was going to go

was if he was paid large sums of money to go, and he felt that his family was going to be protected. His ambitions have all been transferred to his daughters, Batten, both in terms of the business certificates, but also their role in the royal family, has been handed to them. And so the deal was they would retain their titles, which of course is their calling card for doing business in the Middle East. And they would be welcome at Sandring at Christmas. They would be part of the royal family.

And on that basis, he was prepared to go. And that's what Charles is trying to maintain, you know, to allow that to happen against opposition from other members of the right family. So Charles, in a way, has inherited his mother's ability to protect certain members of the family. I just wanted to go back to one thing you said that Prince Philip really didn't like Fergie and didn't want her around. Is that because the first line of your book entitled says that he had an affair with Fergie's mother? Yes, you did have an affair with Fergie's mother, which, you know, no one... A very arresting first line of the book. Well, it must be interesting psychologically.

If you're about to get married to someone whose mother has slept with your father, that must be slightly unusual. and maybe not. Father-in-law, whose mother slept with your brother-in-law. Well, but the two of them together. So Andrew's talking to home. It's a bit weird. But absolutely. No, I think Philip, the reason that Fergie's father kept his job as polo manager to Charles

was because he clearly knew all the secrets and was prepared to keep quiet. In the way that, for example, Andrew Parker Bowles kept quiet about Camilla's relationship with Charles. It's all kept very much within this little tight circle. I think Philip wanted Fugia out because he could see the reputational damage that she was doing. She didn't feel she was good for her son. His son, he couldn't move on in his life. He could see how she was capitalizing on her royal position. He didn't really like her.

So I don't think it was back to the mum. Although maybe every time he looked at her, he just thought of her mum, Susie Barantas. Well, he kept in touch with Susie Barantus. whether there was still a sexual relationship, I don't know, but on the night of the fire in 1992 at Windsor, November, which was actually his wedding anniversary with the Queen, he was with Susan Brantus in Argentina. So that relationship or that friendship had continued.

Now, I think they could separate it, but I think he did know that she was trouble. And Charles, I think it was just, Fergie has this great ability to manipulate people and to worm her way back and to reinvent herself. And she's done it three or four times in the States, and people fall for it. And I think members of the Royal Family had fallen for it with, you know, time and time again.

Wow. Wow, wow, wow. It's just, it's such a soap opera. It's just an extraordinary soap opera. And it keeps people, I guess, amused. But it must be painful to be a member of the Royal Family and be living through this. So final question, Andrew. I mean, everybody says that the most popular member of the Royal Family is, Kate is Kate Middleton or Princess Kate, Princess of Wales.

How is her health? I mean, she looks painfully thin whenever you see her. But people clearly love her and she seems brilliant and has the sort of Princess Diana touch with the crowds. We recently saw her accepting flowers from some people that had been outside somewhere where she'd been and she was so sweet with them and they'd obviously been waiting a long time. What do you know about her health and how she's feeling about a member,

a member of the monarchy? Yeah, I just don't know what the state of her health is. I mean, I do know that she is, as you say, the most popular member. They're placing all their hopes in her. She's carrying the whole thing at the moment. You know, she, in some ways, it needs a nice middle-class girl to actually show how it's done properly. They're putting a lot of pressure on the children.

They're being forced to do royal duties, I think, much sooner than people realize, particularly George, because they want to show the sense of continuity, that they're here to stay, and because they are so popular. But yeah, she gets it. And I think both she and William has said that service and duty

is the root of all they're doing. The trope of the crown was between public duty and private pleasure. And people like Andrew and Fergie are in the private pleasure bit. And, you know, William and Kater are in the public duty bit. So this is their sort of addition

to say, look, you know, the royal family can survive. It's in good hands of the future. But as you say, we know the big unknown is her health. And clearly if she is as ill as some people say, then that is a real problem for them. Wow. Well, Andrew, it's wonderful to have you in the studio. Our viewers and listeners love hearing from you. We've had huge numbers of comments.

So promise me that you will keep us up to date with this extraordinary soap opera. and of course the minute you hear that Prince Andrew, or Andrew formerly known as Prince, as we should say, hops on a plane to Bahrain, you must call us and we must get a full debrief. Would you a special Middle East and special? Exactly. Exactly right. I mean, King Juan Carlos is now living in Dubai, right? Because he helped himself to the royal purse and got hounded out.

Exactly. I mean, the Crown Princess of Norway's son is on charges of rape. So, you know, things have changed. the royals are no longer above the law. And I think that's what the public want. They want Andrew to be held to account. They don't want any more cover-ups. And that's why I think he will face charges. Well, and he'll face the new updated version of your book, Untitled.

Well, I hope so. All right, Andrew, thank you very much for coming in. Looking back at these conversations, a single through-line emerges. The Andrew Mountbatten Windsor saga is not merely. about personal failure, but systemic failure, where privilege insulated power until the scaffolding finally collapsed. Andrew Loney's reporting shows us how Epstein's world, the palisist denials, and decades of unexamined behavior converged into a crisis that continues to reshape the British monarchy. What once seemed like isolated scandals now read as chapters of the same cautionary tale. And as

New Revelations surface, the only certainty is this story is far from over. We love you, and I notice a lot of you are beginning to comment too. So thank you to Heidi Riley, Karen White, Connie Rutherford, Sharon Shipley, Bocock, D.C., who Michael sometimes calls Bobcock, but it's Bocock, D.C., Andrea Hodel, Val Love Francisco Bonzo, Las Condé, Andrew Meller, Herbie, Fulvia, Orlando, M. Griner, Daniel Dogglover, Dawn McCarthy, Harry Clark, Cappinator, Andrew Beaver, travels with Carl, me thinks, and Sandra Clark. Thank you very much. Thank you to our production team, Devin Roderino, Annabon,erson, and Jesse Millwood.

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