In his welcome speech, Authors Club president John Walsh joked about how ‘news responsive’ we were in getting Andrew Lownie to talk about his book ‘Entitled: The rise and fall of the house of York’. It was the very day Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested under suspicion of misconduct in a public office. Needless to say, our talk was booked months ago but the synchronicity was uncanny. ‘I’ve been shouting for him to be arrested for months!’ Lownie declared. A packed David Lloyd George room listened agog to his detailed exposé of the Yorks’ tangled monetary affairs and the dark places to which their endless pursuit of freebies and handouts led them.
‘Childhood is so important for a biographer,’ Lownie said (previous subjects have included Guy Burgess and Edward VIII). The young Prince Andrew was thoroughly spoilt, not least by his mother the Queen, with ‘no boundaries or consequences’. Thus the prince was ‘still a manchild’ when he married Sarah Ferguson in 1986. The pair had a huge staff and ‘Freebie Fergie’ began supplementing her income by leaking stories about Princess Diana to the press.
‘I try to be balanced,’ claimed Lownie, citing the Duchess of York’s admirable charity work – but having spoken to the charities concerned found that money raised was chewed into by her expense claims. He reminded us that fellow Epstein pal Peter Mandelson was behind Prince Andrew’s appointment as trade envoy – another tale of lavish expenses. One myth that Lownie quashed was that Andrew, a helicopter pilot, was ever used as an Exocet missile decoy during the Falklands war: ‘I’ve seen the flight logs.’ Another myth concerns an infamous photograph featuring Ferguson and a lover. The randy chap was apparently licking her toes, not sucking them…
‘I only have 40 minutes, so I can’t go into all Andrew’s mistresses,’ was one quip, and a picture of the York family with P Diddy spurred the comment ‘I haven’t got time to show all the sex predators the children were taken to meet.’ There was even a photo of Prince Andrew with visible sweat patches under the arms, which provoked laughter.
During the Q&A, one guest queried Lownie’s scoffing delivery. Surely these Royal antics were disgraceful, not comical? Lownie replied that when you’re poring over murky material for years at a time, a touch of black humour helps to lighten the gloom. Another guest spoke for the majority by thanking Lownie for his assiduous research. After the book signing, Lownie was off to appear on numerous TV panels. It was a privilege to have his company on such a momentous day.
Suzi Feay