Was it strange, finding the woman he had uncovered so much about, suddenly in his house? “Yes,” Lownie says. He alleges several eye-watering details about Fergie in the book: that she frequently failed to pay her staff, that she continued to associate with Jeffrey Epstein years after publicly disowning him, that she once spent £25,000 in a single hour at Bloomingdale’s. Even so, Lownie airily admits, he was “charmed by her. You know, she’s very charismatic. She’s like a Labrador, a bundle of energy. These are the two sides to her.”
Around us is some of the evidence of Lownie’s industry: scruffy boxes filled with Freedom of Information requests, tome after tome about the Royal family, acres of press cuttings. Lownie used, he says, only around 10 per cent of the material he collected. It took him two years just to read it all and to compose a list of names to approach, which eventually numbered some 3,000 people. Of those, just 300 agreed to speak to him – “but”, he points out, “that’s probably about 250 more than most books”.
Andrew’s ‘possible sexual assault’
Many in the publishing world admire Lownie’s completionism, his Pied Piper ability to coax apparently slight but telling anecdotes from an extraordinary range of sources. One of many marmalade droppers in the new edition of Entitled are comments from an armed police officer who used to work at Heathrow, and who recalls Andrew meeting a British Airways crew member on a plane, spinning her around when she tried to shake his hand and bending her forward “so that his groin was clearly and firmly in contact with her backside”. The police officer judged that the then-prince’s action amounted to a “possible sexual assault” but no action, of course, was taken.
At another point in the updated edition, Lownie returns to his theme of Fergie’s Marie Antoinette attitude to food, reporting that her chef was ordered to “make a sizeable cream cake” every day. If it wasn’t eaten, the cake was thrown away – and a fresh one baked the following day regardless.
The book itself begins, as with all of Lownie’s books, with a question – in this case, whether Andrew and Fergie really were, as they used to be described, “‘the happiest divorced couple ever’. I thought, of course, that was a myth.” In general, Lownie admits, he is drawn to “what I call rogue royals, the bad boys. They’re more fun.” Still, when he started on Andrew, he was warned off it. “Everyone said ‘You’re crazy, he’s so boring, no one’s interested’.”
It turned out, of course, that people are very interested in Andrew – including various members of America’s Congress. “I was lucky it was part of the news agenda,” he says. When Entitled was first published, “though it got a bit of attention, nothing happened. If there hadn’t been the Epstein releases, it would have just died a death.”
Why Epstein’s death may not have been a suicide
Lownie sets out persuasive evidence that suggests that Epstein may not have died by suicide – a position long dismissed as an outlandish conspiracy theory. “I think the thing with the Epstein revelations is we all say, ‘Oh conspiracies don’t happen, it’s all cock-up’. Then you suddenly realise that there is sort of a conspiracy here. This is all carefully planned and it’s sort of supranational.”
When the news of Andrew’s arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office broke in February, and the press had a field day, a quiet minority of people felt some empathy for the former prince. Does Lownie?
“Well, he’s basically under house arrest. His reputation has been trashed. I mean, that look of absolute terror on his face when he came back from the police station. So, of course anyone who’s human will have sympathy – and have sympathy for Sarah Ferguson.”
‘Andrew’s still quite cocky, he’s not very remorseful’
But, Lownie points out: “they brought all this on themselves. And actually, I had a contact who’s close to him, saying he’s still quite cocky, he’s not very remorseful… I mean, he is so nasty to people.”
Earlier this month, a man pleaded not guilty at Westminster magistrates’ court for using threatening words towards Andrew, while he was out walking his dogs near his home in Norfolk. Lownie estimates that although he does have some protection, if he were to be, “I don’t know, in his car with one policeman and five cars turn up and ram him, and they try to kidnap him – I mean, yes, he is vulnerable.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk ’
