‘The stuff of which revolutions are made’: why King Charles should evict his brother

“You have to understand what I’m dealing with here,” the (former) Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, told a confidante. “I’m married to a man who has never been inside a supermarket.”

This quote, about Ferguson’s then-husband Prince Andrew, is one of many choice titbits from Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, a biography of the Queen’s second son by Andrew Lownie published in August. The book depicts Andrew as priggish, pompous and stupid, a cossetted man-child who relishes doling out acts of petty cruelty to underlings, such as the time he enticed a woman at a dinner party to sniff a plate of pate to see if it smelled off to her. When she obliged, he pushed it into her face, just for a lark.

The most sympathetic complexion put on the prince’s character is that he is an insecure victim of his circumstances, obsessed with sex because he was sexualised at such a young age (he lost his virginity as a pre-teen to a West End prostitute, according to the book), and so emotionally stunted he is incapable of forming authentic relationships.

Unlike people of self-made wealth and privilege, who probably have been in a supermarket at some point in their down-and-out youth, Andrew has lived in a bubble of privilege his whole life.

Ever since his infancy – his nickname was Baby Grumpling, the book reports – he has had his status reflected to him in a way that could only deform a person. As a little boy, he used to yank on the coat-tails of the footmen of Buckingham Palace. They couldn’t tell him to bugger off.

Much later, in a very different context, the underage girl he is alleged to have abused, three times, as a gift from paedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, also couldn’t tell him to bugger off. Andrew has always vehemently denied the allegations of Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April. He says he never met her.

The widely publicised photograph of the young Giuffre, with Andrew’s arm wrapped around her slim waist, Epstein’s enabler Ghislaine Maxwell grinning in the background, is a fake, he says. Giuffre said Epstein, who died by suicide in prison in 2019, took the photo.

In 2022, Giuffre settled a civil lawsuit against Andrew in a Manhattan court for an undisclosed amount and a charitable donation, but the prince made no admissions of guilt.

Giuffre’s memoir Nobody’s Girl, published posthumously this week, incinerates whatever was left of Andrew’s reputation. His denials were already thin, and they got thinner when he gave his now-notorious Newsnight interview in 2019.

Recently he was exposed in a lie he apparently told during that interview about when he cut off contact with Epstein – an email was leaked in which Andrew expressed solidarity with his paedophile friend and said he hoped they could “play some more soon”.

The denials get even thinner still when set against the detail of Giuffre’s memoir. Truth is in detail, and there is plenty of detail in Giuffre’s book. The New York Times reviewer called it “the saddest story I’ve read in years”.

The British public mostly love their monarchy, but there has always been an ebb-and-flow between reverence for the royals and resentment of them.

Andrew’s alleged sexual misdemeanours are only one genre of his disgrace – he has also been deemed a possible security risk, thanks to the ways he leveraged his job as “trade envoy” for the United Kingdom to apparently enrich himself, meeting with shady oil sheikhs and even a probable Chinese spy.

According to Lownie’s book, a Foreign Office employee asked to procure women for Andrew during the prince’s dubious trade envoy stint, objected that he was “a diplomat, not a pimp”.

Acclaimed British historian A. N. Wilson, a monarchist, said the contents of Entitled are “the stuff of which revolutions are made”.

“It made me feel I wanted a republic, that book,” Wilson said this week.

Where are the consequences? This week Andrew continued his denials of wrongdoing, even as he announced he had decided, in consultation with the King, that he will no longer use “my title or the honours which have been conferred upon me” (conferred, of course, by his mummy, the Queen).

It sounded grand, as though it was a major concession. But all it meant was he would no longer call himself the Duke of York – which also affects his ex-wife, who has shamelessly monetised her duchess title in numerous and shockingly greedy ways also detailed in Lownie’s book.

Does a dukedom even exist if the title cannot be used? It’s a question for philosophers, but there is no question that the former (dormant?) duke still enjoys great material comfort and wealth as a result of his birth.

The British parliament usually maintains a deferential silence on the various intersections between the royal family and the state – notably, how much the royals cost the taxpayer.

But this week there were efforts led by one ex-Labour MP, and fuelled by public outrage, to officially strip Andrew of his dukedom, something that can be done only through legislation.

The Liberal Democrats are also calling for a select committee inquiry into the deal that allows Andrew to live rent-free in a 31-room manor on the grounds of the Windsor Estate, with live-in staff.

For contrast, Prince William and his wife, Catherine, are soon to move to a small(er) eight-room home with no live-in staff.

The chairman of the British parliament’s influential public accounts committee, Tory MP Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, has said he will formally ask the Crown Estate and the Starmer government to provide “further information on the lease arrangements for Royal Lodge”.

The prince paid £1 million to lease Royal Lodge for 75 years, as well as stumping up £7.5 million to refurbish it. The government, led by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, is so far resisting calls to allow time in the parliamentary schedule to debate Andrew’s titles and financial affairs. It is a confounding move. It is difficult to see why the Labour government is providing any kind of political cover for Andrew, or the Crown.

A YouGov poll conducted in August showed that 67 per cent of British voters backed removing Andrew’s titles, and that was before the most recent outrages were made public. The British Social Attitudes survey published in September showed that public support for the monarchy was at its lowest since the survey began 40 years ago. Calls for its abolition have started to rise.

For many Britons and indeed, for many Australians, the thought of England without the royal family is unthinkable, and even sad. But if the price is putting up with Prince Andrew, not to mention literally putting him up, it might be deemed too steep.

World events of the past decade have taught us that no institution is untouchable, and nothing established can be taken for granted. King Charles, a student of history, has sniffed the wind and realises he needs to evict his brother. Negotiations are under way, it has been reported, but Andrew is reluctant to move.

One suggestion is that Andrew could live in the modest Frogmore Cottage, which his nephew Prince Harry and his bride, Meghan Markle, deemed too small when they were given it to live in as newlyweds.

There would be an elegant symmetry to that.

Jacqueline Maley is a columnist and author.

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