Andrew Lownie’s latest book, ‘Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York,’ confronts the controversial life of Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, particularly his association with Jeffrey Epstein and the subsequent fallout.
It follows in the same vein as two of Lownie’s previous works, ‘The Mountbattens’ (2019) and ‘Traitor King’ (2021).
‘The Mountbattens’ featured interviews with two boys who had been sexually abused by Prince Andrew’s granduncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten. One of his interviewees, Richard Kerr, was a resident of Kincora Boys’ Home in Belfast at the time of the abuse.
‘Entitled’ is a further blow to the British establishment’s attempts to suppress the sordid details of the Epstein saga, one that continues to unravel with each new revelation.
In 2015, Amy Robach, a US broadcaster on ABC TV, interviewed one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Roberts, in New York City. Robach was not allowed to broadcast the interview.
Buckingham Palace was to the fore in suppressing the story. Royal officials bartered access to Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge, as a threat and a bribe to ABC TV. The efforts were successful and permitted Epstein to rape children and teens for a further three years, 2015-18. It also meant that the spotlight did not fall on other paedophiles and traffickers in his circle such as Ghislaine Maxwell and Jean-Luc Brunel.
French prosecutors suspected Brunel of raping, sexually assaulting and sexually harassing multiple minors. They also suspected him of transporting young girls for Epstein.
Brunel remained a free man until 2020. He was detained at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport in December 2020 as he tried to board a flight to Senegal.
Brunel was found hanging in his cell in La Santé prison in 2022.
Andrew continued his friendship with Epstein during the period 2015 to 2018.
Lownie paints a disturbing portrait of Prince Andrew, revealing a pattern of behaviour marked by arrogance, rudeness and questionable judgment. Epstein is quoted describing Andrew as ‘the most perverted animal in the bedroom.‘
A maid cited in the book describes finding Prince Andrew and a naval friend in a compromising position at Buckingham Palace, with Andrew clad only in underwear and a shirt, while his companion was naked save for socks, with his wife, Sarah Ferguson, telling him: ‘Make up your mind! It’s me or your bloody boyfriends, but you can’t have both.‘ [‘Entitled’ page 115.]
One of the prince’s former drivers told the author that Andrew’s parties weren’t limited to women; he also ‘had a thing for effeminate young men in their twenties.‘ [‘Entitled’ page 207.]
The book, which is over 400 pages long, could not possibly include each and every piece of information excavated by the prodigious Mr Lownie. One Palace staff member – not quoted in the book – told the author that:
‘As for being bisexual, I’ve never seen him in action, but I have always suspected he is. I’ve seen him around many young lads, who he claims were business associates. It didn’t quite make sense. They were too young to be involved in business transactions with a person like the Duke of York. Epstein wasn’t the only paedophile Andrew surrounded himself with. There were others, several others, who preyed on young boys.‘
One of these other paedophiles was Lord Greville Janner. Janner’s abuse of children is touched upon elsewhere on this website – as part of the biography of Alan Kerr. Kerr was born in Belfast. He was placed in care, sexually abused and fled to London as a young teenager.
Janner and Prince Andrew were friends. Lownie’s research enables us to make more sense of that relationship.
Janner brought Alan Kerr to a theatrical performance of ‘The Prince and the Pauper’ at the Earl’s Court’s Olympia in London. Both Janner and Kerr were guests of Prince Andrew that night. At the time Alan was a male prostitute, aged 17 or 18.
Andrew and Sarah Ferguson were engaged at the time.
The Royal couple sat in the front row, or very close to it. While they were waiting for the show to begin, Alan and Prince Andrew conversed. They also chatted during the intermission. ‘I had a good conversation with him. He had character. He was a cheerful guy. He was not snobby or anything. He told me he was going to open a hospital in Northern Ireland. I didn’t feel I had to bow down to him. I wasn’t nervous. Janner let me do the talking. They seemed to know each other quite well. That’s why I was able to talk to him. Sarah Ferguson didn’t speak much. She really just ignored us.’
Prince Andrew visited Belfast and Hillsborough on 25 June 1986. Andrew and Sarah were married on 23 July. This means that Kerr was aged 17 or had possibly just turned 18 at the time of the performance as he was born on 8 May of 1968.
While Alan Kerr was in his late teens, he did not match the prince’s above-quoted interest in ‘effeminate’ young men. Nothing came of the encounter. Kerr never met the prince again.
Nonetheless, it is beginning to look like Kerr was brought along to the play by Janner to see if he whetted Prince Andrew’s appetite for young men.
Janner was playing with fire: Alan is the brother of Richard Kerr. Richard was a resident at Kincora Boys’ Home in Belfast. In 1986 the Kincora scandal was a lethal threat to the British Establishment. One of the Kincora abusers was Lord Mountbatten. MI5 and MI6 lured paedophiles to the home as part of a ‘honey trap’ operation to collect ‘kompromat’. At least four Loyalist MPs were part of the abuse network that swirled around Kincora. One of them is still alive.
At the time of his death in December 2015, Janner was awaiting trial for the sexual abuse of minors. He faced nine complainants. The Crown Prosecution Service was in the process of adding further charges in relation to three additional victims.
Further research is required to establish if Janner knew Prince Andrew’s friends Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
As a Labour MP elected in 1970, Janner probably knew Maxwell’s father, Robert, who had been a Labour MP in the 1960s. (Robert Maxwell lost his seat in 1970.) Both men also moved in pro-Israeli circles.
Prince Andrew’s controversial connections, including his relationships with the Libyan regime are also explored in the book. He became involved with Colonel Gaddafi, the man who had supplied the Provisional IRA with arms, the same organisation which had blown up his granduncle, Ld Mountbatten, in Sligo, in 1979.
Andrew enjoyed a lavish holiday funded by a Libyan gun-smuggler and had multiple meetings with Colonel Gaddafi and his son, Saif Gaddafi.
Beyond the personal scandals, Lownie’s book highlights Prince Andrew’s professional failings, particularly his tenure as a UK trade envoy. Sir Ivor Roberts, a former ambassador to Ireland, describes Andrew’s ‘unfortunate manner of being brusque to the point of rudeness,’ highlighting the damage his behaviour inflicted on diplomatic relations. Roberts is quoted as saying that Andrew was not ‘the natural choice to be trade envoy in the first place’.
There is another interesting Irish angle in the book, one that is so bizarre it could not be invented: Sarah Ferguson became a frequent visitor to Ireland after her marriage to Andrew failed in the early 1990s. She presented herself as Sally Metcalfe, in an effort to conceal her true identity.
Lownie describes how she spent every other weekend in Kinsale, Co Cork. At the time she was trying to make a living as an author, attracted to Ireland by Charlie Haughey’s tax breaks for writers. Clearly oblivious to the dangers of residing in the Republic, she considered buying a Georgian mansion overlooking Kinsale harbour with her boyfriend, Texan John Bryan. She was told that living in Ireland would not be possible because of the security risks.
While in Ireland, she often stayed in Belgooly, at a stud farm owned by Robert Splaine, one of Ireland’s leading international show jumpers, and his wife Eileen. As Sally Metcalfe, the Duchess took part in small, local gymkhanas with a view to qualifying for the Millstreet International Horse Show.
Lownie’s next project will focus on Prince Philip, the father of Prince Andrew. It promises further revelations about the inner workings of the royal family. One of these will describe Philip’s illicit relationship with Sarah Ferguson’s mother.
In the meantime you can read this: Prince Philip’s illicit sex life was monitored by Soviet spies. [WebBook]
See also: Kneeling Nation.
