Yorks await biography that will tell ‘what became of Andrew the blue-eyed boy’
THE Duke and Duchess of York are bracing for further potential damaging revelations about their private lives, with an author who has written exposés about the Mountbattens and the Windsors planning a new book on them.
By his own admission, Andrew Lownie is “not exactly flavour of the month at Buckingham Palace” after writing a sensational book in 2020 about the sex lives of Lord Mountbatten, the former viceroy of India, and his wife Edwina.
Last year, the 61-year-old literary editor published Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, detailing Edward VIII’s links to the Nazis.
The book also suggested that “far from a love story, Wallis (Simpson) felt trapped in a marriage she had never wanted with a pathetic and suffocating husband, one of the reasons she took several lovers, including the gay playboy Jimmy Donahue”.
Now he plans to complete the trilogy by setting his sights on Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, who still lives with him at Royal Lodge, his seven-bedroom mansion near Windsor Castle, despite their divorce in 1996.
The couple are thought to be aware that the book, due to be published in 2024, is being written about them.
Cambridge-educated Mr Lownie, who has run his own literary agency since 1988, told The Sunday Telegraph: “It’s the third book in a trilogy about unusual royal marriages.
“It’s going to be a full-scale biography of both of them, like the Mountbatten and the Windsor books, which, as far as I can tell, has never been written before.
I’ve no agenda, I simply want to tell the story of why this blue-eyed boy became a pariah figure.
“He’s the Queen’s favourite son and she’s made a point of publicly supporting him.
“We all trust the Queen’s judgment so maybe she knows something we don’t? At a time when everyone is happy to put the boot in, I’m hoping to humanise the story and see if there is another side.”
The book is expected to chronicle both the Duke and Duchess’s childhoods, the Duke’s Navy career and role as a trade envoy and their charitable endeavours and as well as detailing “why the marriage failed and how their relationship has survived”.
Mr Lownie added: “They are both clearly devoted and very loyal to each other. He’s bailed her out many times and she has stuck by him.
“It’s going to take me two years to write it and I hope to speak to as many people as possible who know them both personally. I hope they will also speak to me.”
It is also likely to take in the fallout from the Duke’s relationship with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein after he reportedly paid a £12million out-ofcourt settlement to one of the billionaire’s victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, although Mr Lownie insisted: “Epstein is a small part of a much bigger story.”
The Duke has always vehemently denied the allegations, insisting he has “no recollection” of meeting Mrs Giuffre. He made no admission of liability when he came to a settlement with her.
The Duke triggered outrage for making a more prominent than expected appearance at Prince Philip’s memorial service last month, when he not only travelled by car from Windsor to Westminster Abbey with the Queen but then insisted on walking her to her seat in the pews.