Entitled by Andrew Lownie

Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York

By Andrew Lownie

William Collins 2025

Lowly subjects of the magisterial crown, whether they be the poorest crabmen or the richest choreographers, have always relied on the probity of those throned from reach. However self-evident its righteousness may be, republicanism on this sceptered Isle has suffered when faced with the monarchy’s golden pomp and its dourly respectable figureheads. In Andrew Lownie’s royal biography Entitled, these assumptions are shown through lucid, forceful, quietly convincing prose to be erroneous. In 400 lawyerly and damning pages he shows the unworthy Duke of York and his catty, reckless Duchess to be in receipt of no more divine contract than you or I, dear reader, even as we drink from the food bowl or foul in the footbath.

Right from the off, it is shown to us how guiltily desperate the Palace was in its attempts to slow this book down. “[The Duke and Duchess] told their contacts not to talk to me” Lownie writes “and threatening legal letters were sent to my publishers even before publication saying the Duchess was monitoring my social media.” These aren’t the actions of blameless people. Already there is something dark and verboten about the material soon to be fleshed out.

Prince Andrew’s wife Sarah Ferguson is definitely the lesser of these two plum-throated reprobates. Coming to us already neat from privileged brushes (counting Charles II and a Devonshire Duke as ancestors can’t be bad) but begins her trip down the moral sluice almost as soon as the ring sparkles on her finger. Connecting at least some character defects to the fickle British press, Lownie tells us “her exuberance, her social gaffes, her lack of dress sense, her obvious enjoyment of having a good time, her unpretentiousness and good humour which at first endeared her to the public had become a liability.” Do I sense euphemisms for the vindictive immodesty of spoilt horse-girls to be seen at every Berkshire dressage meet today? Fergie’s near-Georgian level of financial excess also earns a mention by its egregiousness. “Her expenses included not only the £6,000 monthly rent for Kingsbourne, but a staff bill of £32,000 a month…£25,000 on frocks, shoes and handbags…and £3,000 on a champagne tea party” are only a few of the many zeros spaffed up the wall by this showy extrovert. Most of it comes - naturally - from the public purse.

As for the swineful, rebarbative, pedo-humouring Duke with his straightforward shooting weekends and his unverifiable trips to Pizza Express in Woking, there isn’t a circle of hell hot enough for this contemptible hedonist. Readers will go to Entitled not for the typical bug-squishing cruelty most children deal in (“He was fond of practical jokes…tying the shoelaces of sentries…putting itching powder in his mother’s bed”) but for his relationships with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Epstein’s evil toady Ghislaine Maxwell alongside European authoritarians and the Chinese Communist elite.

The controversy at times has related to the Prince’s intent. Was the late Queen’s son goofily credulous in Epstein’s company, reacting as many animalistic heterosexuals have done in the presence of attractive models? Or was he the boorish instigator zooming off to Little Saint James for disgusting massages and selecting young women like chandeliers from a catalogue? Epstein’s staff settle the matter of solicitation with their atomic testimony: “Ivan Novikov, Jeffrey Epstein’s personal driver, remembered: ‘Whenever Andrew was in town I’d be picking up young girls who were essentially prostitutes…One time I drove Prince Andrew and two young girls around age eighteen to the Gansevoort Hotel in the Meatpacking District.’” Epstein’s housekeeper is then quoted saying “when the girls would leave Andrew’s bedroom I’d give them an envelope Mr Epstein had left with anywhere from one to 25 thousand dollars in it.” These repellant details corroborate Virginia Giuffre’s credible words alleging Andrew sought her company as a sexually trafficked minor. Andrew is also known to have forged corrupt profitable relationships with Colonel Gaddafi’s entourage and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Time and again the eighth in line proved himself able to befriend the worst bloke in the room.

It would have been forgivable had Lownie been too loud and too detrimentally emphatic as he shaped this reality. He is in fact too calm. In a more politically motivated person’s hands this evidence would take on a frostier and starker regicidal outlook. While thanking him for his courtesy, some may still wish he’d channelled his inner Thomas Paine and chinned a few Saxe-Coburgs in print. What Lownie does give to those listening is a factually dense trampoline from which spotty republicans, such as this crown-toppling critic, can jump. If ever the current gormless potentate of Britain hears a low meritocratic thud on his chamber doors, or if ever hive-minded, media-driven acquiescence in regard to blue blood’s supremacy is overborne, then Entitled shall stand as a foundational text in such a fight.

Joe Spivey is a book critic currently residing in Kingston upon Hull