Andrew’s farmhouse exile sparks blunt talk about the royals

On a soggy stretch of land within King Charles III‘s bucolic Sandringham estate, reporters and photographers recently gathered, hoping for a glimpse of the latest British royal to suffer a spectacular fall from grace.

According to an entertaining dispatch from New Statesman‘s Emily Lawford, members of the media spent days waiting outside Wood Farm — the quiet farmhouse where Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has been living — as they traded stories about the royal family members they’ve encountered over the years.

The stakeout in England’s Norfolk region came after the former Duke of York — who lost his royal titles in late 2025 and his Crown Estate home, Royal Lodge, in early 2026 amid renewed scrutiny of his ties to predator Jeffrey Epstein — was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office. The move came weeks after the U.S. Justice Department released emails suggesting he had passed along sensitive government documents to the disgraced financier while serving as Britain’s trade envoy.

New Statesman shared snippets from the photojournalists and a few locals who offered their candid assessments of the Windsors, from the royals photographers say are the most difficult to deal with to the one they still miss most.

Keep reading to see what they had to say…

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The heir to the throne

After talking to some of the veteran photographers who’ve grown familiar with members of Britain’s royal family and their antics over the years, New Statesman‘s reporter came to the conclusion that Prince William “was the rudest of the lot, apparently,” Lawford wrote. One photographer described the Prince of Wales with three choice words — “Horrible. Arrogant. C***.” — and said he “always tells me to f*** off.”

The monarch

Charles seems to be, as New Statesman put it, “a bit more forgiving” than his heir. As one seasoned photographer who was staking out His Majesty’s Sandringham estate told Lawford, “Charles will give me a boll****** and then shake my hand the next day.” Charles has seemingly been just as hot and cold with his disgraced brother, announcing post-arrest that “the law must take its course” as the police investigation into the former Duke of York’s behavior continues, while the king continues to pay for his brother’s upkeep at Sandringham.

The untitled royal

It seems there’s no love lost between photographers and Princess Anne‘s daughter, Zara Tindall, who’s described as one of the royals “who didn’t even make for good photos.” As New Statesman learned, the Olympic silver medal-winning equestrian “always shouted at them, chasing them off racecourses and demanding they put away their cameras,” Lawford wrote, even though the “papers didn’t even want pictures of her.” As one photographer shared, “Flipping Zara, I can’t give her away.”

The people’s princess

There’s one royal the photographers truly miss — Princess Diana. “She played the game, didn’t she?” one snapper told New Statesman. Diana tragically died at 36 in 1997 — just a year after her divorce from Charles was finalized — when the car she was riding in with boyfriend Dodi Fayed crashed in a Paris tunnel during a high-speed attempt to evade paparazzi.

The disgraced former duke

Some of the Norfolk locals had a few things to say about Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor, Sandringham’s newest resident. “I’ve lost all respect for him,” 60-something Alan, who lives nearby, told New Statesman. A local chef named Stephen shared that he’d “unfortunately” seen an unfriendly former Duke of York around on a few occasions. “Doesn’t want to socialize with the great unwashed,” the chef explained. Another local — a woman in her 20s named Freya — was heartened that the former Prince Andrew was arrested. “In a country with quite a strong class system, it’s actually quite revelatory,” she told New Statesman. “It shows the royals aren’t above the law.”