Book of the week
Prince Andrew, Epstein and the Palace by Nigel Cawthorne (Gibson Square, $45)
There’s a vignette about Prince Andrew’s childhood in this new book by the journalist Nigel Cawthorne that seems telling. The royal family were watching Coronation Street and as the barmaid Bet Lynch had an argument, Andrew cried: ‘‘Oh God, look at all those common people.’’ This two-tiered view of humanity was not something he shed as he aged, the book implies: there’s royalty and the plebs; his
daughters and the girls abused by his paedophile friend.
In Prince Andrew, Epstein and the Palace, Cawthorne charts Andrew’s descent from the ‘‘royal who could do no wrong’’ to the ‘‘pariah prince’’. This is not a book teeming with revelations or even fresh interviews; instead it relies heavily on newspaper reports. However, seeing the scandal laid out in excruciating detail hits hard.
Andrew had always cast himself as a ladies’ man. The Queen turned a blind eye to her favourite child’s flaws and floozies, tolerating his car-crash marriage to Sarah Ferguson and his proclivity for dating much younger models postdivorce.
. They did not get their day in court; Epstein died in prison last August in a reported suicide.
Andrew had been photographed with Epstein in 2010 – after the latter became a registered sex offender. Andrew categorised this meeting as a break-up trip, but stayed with his former friend for four days. A year later, Fergie admitted accepting money from Epstein. But the most damning allegation emerged last year, when Virginia Roberts Giuffre – one of Epstein’s victims – alleged that Andrew had had sex with her three times, including when she was 17. The final time Giuffre claims to have had sex with Andrew was in
an orgy with some Russian girls and Epstein. She alleged: ‘‘Jeffrey and the prince were laughing... and then they undressed and then I performed a sex act on them – Jeffrey first and then Andrew. It was disgusting.’’ A second woman, Johanna Sjoberg, claimed Andrew had groped her breast with a Spitting Image puppet of himself at Epstein’s house in 2001. The palace said that the allegations were ‘‘false and without any foundation’’.
Nonetheless, Andrew decided to end the speculation about his links with Epstein by giving an interview. It was a mistake. BBC Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis slipped him enough rope to hang himself. He made extraordinary claims – about sweat and Pizza Express – managed not to express sympathy for Epstein’s victims, and downplayed the rape of young girls as ‘‘unbecoming’’. He became so toxic that Donald Trump denied knowing him.
What’s so powerful in this book are the details. Andrew insisted on Newsnight that the pair were not close friends, yet Epstein had 13 phone numbers for him, including the direct line to his computer’s modem. Andrew also invited Epstein and Harvey Weinstein to his daughter Beatrice’s 18th birthday, getting two prolific predators into a party packed with young women.
The book hints too at the machinations of the palace to protect Andrew. ‘‘Was it a coincidence,’’ Cawthorne wonders, that ‘‘shortly after the Newsnight interview spectacularly misfired, the emigration of Harry and Meghan to Canada was leaked?’’
After Epstein’s death, many asked how the American justice system had initially allowed a man with deep pockets and powerful friends to escape a life sentence for child sex abuse. The question now is whether Andrew’s royal blood and expensive lawyers will similarly protect him from extradition to America.
– Rosamund Urwin, The Times