Under the Crown: Privilege, Corruption, and the Royal Family

Transcript of conversation with Andrew Lownie published 15 October 2025

Transcript prepared by JAS Virtual Services.

Listen to this conversation here or watch it here.

Today’s guest is the best selling author, Andrew Lownie, who is widely regarded as the leading biographer of the British royal family. Andrew was educated at Cambridge and Edinburgh universities and has been a bookseller, a publisher and a journalist, writing for the Times, the Telegraph, the Wall Street Journal, the Spectator and The Guardian. Since 1988 he’s run his own literary agency specialising in history and biography. He is president of the Biographers Club and sits on the Campaign for Freedom of Information. I don’t consider myself to be a royalist at all, but I have to say, Andrew, your books are absolutely fascinating. There’s so much overlap with the kind of work that David and I have done over our careers. So really excited to have you on today to talk with us.

Andrew Lownie [00:01:06]:

Well, very pleased to be with you. I write about rogue royals, so I can see the crossover.

David Jones [00:01:11]:

Well, there’s plenty of ammunition there. Rogue royals. I was just reading a book called Sceptred Isle, which I think was about the kings in the 13th century and they were a pretty rough lot. But anyway, very nice to meet you and thanks very much for coming along today. Andrew, so you’re a historian by background. What drew you to writing about the royals in particular? Because I think you began by writing about Guy Burgess, who of course was a notorious spy.

Andrew Lownie [00:01:44]:

Yes, I mean, I was drawn to it by, I suppose, money and by curiosity. Actually, my first biography is a book as a literary biography. It’s a biography of the writer John Buchan. I then, as you say, moved on to writing about spies. I then discovered that actually it’s even more difficult to write about the royal family than it is to write about the intelligence services. But I think I was drawn to them because I felt that no one actually was writing serious books about the royals based on research. The books that were written were by journalists, often relying on other books, news cuts and a few sources. And I felt there was room for a book which perhaps did a deep dive, got lots of sources on the record, used documents, and I felt there was a rather distorted narrative, that the story that was being sold was really what suited the royals, that they basically were controlling this narrative and that there were other stories to be told.

Andrew Lownie [00:02:38]:

So, for example, the book on Lord Mountbatten reveals that he was a paedophile. The book on Traitor King shows that Edward VIII was actually a Nazi sympathiser, and that was one of the reasons why he was kind of bounced off the throne. And then this book on Andrew and Sarah, the theme is, I suppose, financial corruption within the royal family. And I think that’s what was so shocking to discover that it wasn’t just these two rogue royals, but that the problem actually stretched right into the institution and they were able to operate with the connivance of the institution itself.

David Jones [00:03:10]:

Thank you. You mentioned earlier on that it was more difficult writing about the royals than about the Secret Service. So why was that?

Andrew Lownie [00:03:20]:

Well, is the Secret Service actually, MI5, do release their files and so you can go and look at them after a period of time. So when I did the Guy Burgess book, there were actually a lot of books, a lot of files I could use. The royals, actually, there are very few files released. Material that should be in The National Archives is sent to The Royal Archives and you’re very lucky if you get to see it. I think I was the first person to see some of the Edward VIII’s papers, but that was some 70, 80 years after the events I was writing about. And, you know, the law here is it’s 20 years.

Andrew Lownie [00:03:53]:

So that’s one of the problems. There’s very little accountability or transparency with the royal family. Their wills are sealed, there’s very little parliamentary oversight. They’re exempt from the freedom of information. So it makes writing about them difficult, which I think is why historians have shied away from the subject and why it’s been left to journalists to do.

David Jones [00:04:12]:

Right. So access is very difficult. So history books are sometimes accused of being a bit stuffy, but that’s not really the word that describes your work, I don’t think. If you think about your work on Edward VIII, Mountbatten, Prince Andrew, why do you think these stories need to be told?

Andrew Lownie [00:04:35]:

Well, royal history, I mean, all these stories, as a biographer, you know, you feel these lies are important. I mean, these are people who change the course of history. So, I mean, John Buchan clearly has, there’s interest in his books and indeed in his career, eventually ended up as Governor General of Canada. Guy Burgess and the Cambridge spy ring. Again, a subject of great interest, popular interest, but also important in terms of shaping the Cold War. And I think royal history is important. I mean, of course, they’re allowed a bit of a private life, but, you know, their behaviour does impact on our history nowhere more obviously than the abdication.

Andrew Lownie [00:05:17]:

And I would argue that the monarchy basically depends on the respect and support of the population, and they will only earn that when they behave well. And if we feel they’re monetising their royal position to make money for themselves, then that undermines the whole institution The Spectator described, I think my last book is “readable and scholarly”, and I think that’s what all books should be. There are a lot of scholarly books which are not very readable, and there are a lot of very readable books which are not very scholarly. But you can combine the two, but you just have to really do the work. And I think a lot of people, a lot of writers just don’t do their homework.

Naomi Murphy [00:05:53]:

Andrew, it seems as if your motivation for doing what you do is probably quite similar to David and I’s in terms of being quite curious about why people end up, you know, doing things that aren’t entirely above board. It seems like you are drawn to these sort of darker stories about people yourself.

Andrew Lownie [00:06:16]:

Yes, absolutely. I mean, you know, John Buchan is a lovely man and therefore not that interesting in the way that someone like Andrew and Fergie are interesting because they are so complex and as you say, there are dark elements there. And I think what interests me too is how the establishment protects a lot of these powerful people and allows them to behave badly. So that’s always an element of the establishment cover up, whether it was of Guy Burgess’s treachery or indeed the Duke of Windsor’s treachery. But yes, these people who do behave in a strange way, outside the norms are always more interesting than people who are rather boring and just do the normal life like everyone else. And it’s, yes, what motivates them and how they get away with it, I think, are the two things that interest me.

David Jones [00:07:03]:

Thank you, Andrew. Most of the themes that Naomi and I have explored relating to criminal justice revolve around marginalisation, people at the margins of society. And of course, as I’m saying this, I realise in a way royalty is at the margins of society. A different part of the volume, as it were. But what’s it been like exploring the kind of nefarious activities of people of privilege?

Andrew Lownie [00:07:35]:

Yeah, well, as you say, these people are not on the margins of society. They’re actually part of a society, though they might always agree. I mean, I think they would see it as relative. So Guy Burgess, though he was an Old Etonian gone to Cambridge member of the smartest club, felt he was an outsider and the people looked down at him and that was part of the motivation for his spying. You know, I think the Duke of Windsor too, I mean clearly all the privileges that could come, but he didn’t feel satisfied with that. Indeed, Fergie and Andrew again born or at least been able to live lives of great privilege. But they want more, they want to be with the jet set, they want to, you know, fly in jets and have the best of everything.

Andrew Lownie [00:08:21]:

And most members of the royal family are actually quite frugal and they clearly wanted a very different sort of lifestyle and I think they just got greedy.

Naomi Murphy [00:08:31]:

It’s interesting to see that kind of insecurity being acted out amongst people who, you know, most people in society would consider already to be very wealthy and have access to lots of resources, wouldn’t they? So it’s interesting to see that kind of insecurity about wealth being played out with this group because obviously when you compare yourself with, I guess, people like Musk and Epstein, these people who’ve got access to masses of resources, it’s clearly triggering some kind of anxiety and feelings of inadequacy.

Andrew Lownie [00:09:01]:

Yes, it’s all relative and I think you’re absolutely right. I mean Fergie’s certainly driven by a strong low sense of self worth. I think by being generous and giving presents to people and appearing to be rich and it gives her some sort of validation and you know, in the way that Guy Burgess, I suppose got validation from being able to, you know, play with the hares and the hounds and that, you know, the Russians sort of took him seriously. So they’re all looking for different things, but all these things are relative. It’s a bit like how much sleep do you need? Well, often people say I need five minutes more. And that’s sort of, I think, what drives them. As you say, they can never be as rich as the mosques of this, but that’s what they aspire to and they’re never satisfied in the way that Andrew was never satisfied with his sexual conquests.

Andrew Lownie [00:09:53]:

He had to have this constant gratification, you know, a bit like Epstein, three women a day and it must be exhausting to never feel absolutely sort of satisfied.

David Jones [00:10:04]:

Thank you. And you referred to Andrew and Sarah Ferguson and your book Entitled, explores the lives of those two. Can you tell our listeners something about their activities that brush up against the law?

Andrew Lownie [00:10:20]:

Well, I think there are a lot of activities. So I mean with Sarah it is the mixing of her charitable work with her social ambitions and her business activities. They’re not always very clear demarcation lines there. The fact that she’s paid to promote products and to endorse things which she’s not entirely open about. There are court cases where she’s paid large sums of money which she’s unable to explain. With Andrew, it’s the way that he abused his position as a trade envoy between 2001 and 2011, supposedly promoting British trade, but actually promoting the interests of some of his business associates like Jeffrey Epstein and David Rowlands. How he used basically taxpayers money to fund these trips, which he then used to, for example, build the Filofaxes for his daughters and their business activities. How he basically traded his royal privileges with people like Epstein and Rowlands, allowing them to come to royal events, to have tea with the Queen, to visit the royal residences, in return for basically lending him money which he didn’t need to return, or giving him money for business activities.

Andrew Lownie [00:11:30]:

So a lot of things which are just not very, should we say, transparent and really aren’t the things that he should be doing. He also ran a charity called Pitch at Palace, operated through Buckingham palace, in which he took a 2% cut of all the investor income given to entrepreneurs. So confusing again, charitable activities with his own personal business interests.

David Jones [00:11:49]:

But I bet, perhaps you’ve done this, perhaps if you asked him about those things, he would probably think they were perfectly legitimate activities and a way of making a living.

Andrew Lownie [00:12:02]:

Well, I think that’s why the book’s called Entitled. I mean, he doesn’t understand where the boundaries lie. He’s never actually been given boundaries. He’s been allowed to behave exactly as he wanted to set his own rules. The rules for him don’t apply. You know, even back at school, the school rules didn’t apply. He just ignored them. And no one sort of brought him short for that and disciplined him.

Andrew Lownie [00:12:22]:

And so he knows that throughout his life he can do exactly what he wants. He’ll never actually face the consequences, he’ll never be disciplined. He’ll always be protected by the institutions of state and his family. And that I’m afraid is what’s driven his behaviour and why he’s in problems now. But even then, I mean, there have been people calling for him to be investigated, not just on the Epstein allegations, but on his work as a special trade envoy investigated by the National Crime Agency. But nothing, of course, is ever done. No one is going to investigate a member of the royal family. And so he begins to think that he’s above the law.

David Jones [00:12:55]:

Did you know him separately, apart from the work you were doing in your book?

Naomi Murphy [00:12:59]:

No.

Andrew Lownie [00:13:00]:

I’ve met Fergie once and I had a meeting with her to discuss collaborating because I wanted to give her a chance to present her side of the story to help us shape the narrative. I’ve never met him, but, you know, we kind of have moved slightly in the same circles because I was also at school in Scotland. I’m exactly the same year at school as him, and so our paths have crossed with mutual friends in that respect.

David Jones [00:13:23]:

Thank you. So I think you’ve written undocumented behaviour on other people that’s been questionable and possibly illegal. Is there something you can say about that?

Photo by Isai Ramos on Unsplash

Andrew Lownie [00:13:38]:

Well, other people whose activities are illegal? Yes. Well, you know, Guy Burgess clearly was a traitor and a spy. I would argue the Duke of Windsor was a traitor. He could have been executed during the Second World War if the things he had done had come out at that point. A lot of the information only came out later from captured German documents. But again, the British and American authorities tried to suppress the revelation of those documents to protect him. So, you know, it’s always these in some ways, the double standards. I’m interested in people’s secret lives, so whether they’re criminal or not.

Andrew Lownie [00:14:17]:

So that’s always quite interesting. The Burgess book was called Stalin’s Englishman, showing the two sides of his personality. The Buchan was called The Presbyterian Cavalier, giving a sense of the two sides of his personality. And I’m going to be doing Prince Philip next. And again, I’ll be looking at his public role, which is admirable, but also looking at his private life, which is a subject which hasn’t really ever been addressed in a biography before, and when you had rumours in the press. So, yeah, I’m interested in these people who in a sense, go outside the boundaries of normal behaviour. But actually my own experiences is most people have some dark secret, whether it’s the paedophilia of Mountbatten. I’m not suggesting many people have that, but everyone has something they’re hiding in their lives.

Andrew Lownie [00:15:02]:

And what interests me is to try and find that and how they reconcile that with the picture that they present in their much more sort of public facing life.

David Jones [00:15:10]:

Have you ever felt yourself to be under threat personally, Andrew?

Andrew Lownie [00:15:14]:

Well, I’ve never felt threat. I suspect if I went to Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, I might not have a good time. I’m nervous whether I can go to the States now. I suspect I would have problems there. I’ve said some rude things about or some things that Donald Trump doesn’t like. But I am aware that people have tried to undermine my reputation, to discredit the work I do and dismiss it, to just say I’m just a gossip. And I make it up because, of course, a lot of people don’t want these stories coming out. And that’s why I think it’s always essential to have really good source material.

Andrew Lownie [00:15:46]:

I always have extensive footnotes. I’m always very careful to verify everything, try and have double sources, because it’s very easy to try and discredit what I’ve written and say for example, I’m a conspiracy theorist. And there’s a lot of stuff clearly I don’t put in because either for legal reasons or because they can’t entirely be stood up. But, you know, for example, I had material in this new book on Peter Mandelson and his links with Epstein, which have now, of course, been proved to be true. And that’s one of the frustrating things. Lots of stuff I know are true. Unless you can prove it or you’re to go into court with some pretty litigious people, it’s sometimes wiser to leave that stuff out.

Andrew Lownie [00:16:28]:

But I’m a great believer that, we have a duty to speak truth to power and that people shouldn’t be allowed to get away with their bad behaviour just because they’re rich and powerful.

Naomi Murphy [00:16:37]:

I really had a sense of that, actually, from seeing when you were interviewed about your Mountbatten book previously, that it seemed like there was a bit of a backlash against that. And we’ve had lots of conversations with whistleblowers, for instance, who, speaking truth to power, then end up being denigrated, having their character assassinated. I think it does take quite a robust person to continue to tell those kind of truths. So that was one of the reasons why I really wanted to have you on the podcast because I felt you had some similarities with the other people that we’ve had on for that reason.

Andrew Lownie [00:17:14]:

That’s interesting. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, they do, clearly. There is a price we paid. I mean, you put your reputation on the line. Of course, it’s easier to sort of pull your punches. And certainly on the Mountbatten case, which was an attempt to ensure that papers bought with public funds were made available to the public. It cost me a huge sum in legal costs.

Andrew Lownie [00:17:34]:

I mean, almost half a million pounds. So there is a price to pay. And that was money I didn’t have. I only had to re-mortgage and sell things. And that’s of course one of the ways that they kind of get at you because clearly that is a vulnerability of an individual to get them through money and the law. But there are other ways they can leak information about you. All these things work on pressure and patronage.

Andrew Lownie [00:17:58]:

And you know, if you play ball, you get the quangos, you get the honours. And if you don’t, people will leak material about you and try and try and discredit you. I mean, they’re even, for example, with this book, I’ve had a succession of one star ratings on Amazon. I’ve never had before, which my social media people say is coming from bots that have been sent out there. So, you know, the royal family pretend that they ignore everything, but actually behind the scenes there’s often quite a lot of activity to try and suppress information. And we’ve got to remember that it was the palace who actually prevented ABC Television from running a story about Virginia Giuffre and Andrew, years before the story broke, threatening to withhold any access to members of the royal family to ABC Television. And you know, I have to say, not to their credit, they gave in to the royal family.

Andrew Lownie [00:18:47]:

I think the News of the World had the story in 2009 and didn’t run anything. So, you know, powerful institutions. We’ve just seen this. My publishers, Harper Collins, have bowed to Donald Trump and taken a few lines out in my book about Donald Trump and Melania, not because it’s not true, but because they just didn’t want the hassle of being sued. And even if they won, the costs and that and the sort of time involved and I think that’s a problem. You know, we should never be seen to be giving in to bullies because it just encourages them.

Naomi Murphy [00:19:17]:

Yeah, absolutely. But also just thinking about, particularly in the case of Mountbatten, for instance, obviously large numbers of victims who, you know, one of the things that helps people heal in their recovery from trauma is to have their pain acknowledged, whereas to have that buried and it all become about one man’s individual reputation rather than acknowledging the hurt that’s been caused. And that’s the kind of behaviour that damages whole lives, isn’t it. Rather than. It’s not just a moment.

Andrew Lownie [00:19:48]:

And it’s not just Mountbatten, it’s clearly Andrew as well, I mean a lot of these female victims, you know, talk.

Naomi Murphy [00:19:53]:

Yeah. I’m struck by the fact that you’re blending, really, I guess, journalism with your history background, and that probably brings something quite special to telling these stories. So you’ve got this kind of investigative attitude. But why do you think we have such a different attitude to investigating suspected criminal activity when it’s on behalf of the royals?

Andrew Lownie [00:20:15]:

Well, I think it’s very difficult to research these books. It’s very difficult to stand them up because a lot of people won’t speak. There’s still a lot of deference and obsequiousness around. So I think that’s why a lot of historians shy off the royals. In the past, I have been able to work off documents. So this is the first book which is reliant entirely on interviews. But you’re right, I do use interviews in the other books because actually, a lot of these documents aren’t available, and therefore we only have the oral history.

Andrew Lownie [00:20:40]:

A good example is when I did the book on Traitor King. The official line is that there’s no contact between Ribbentrop and Wallace, his supposed lover, and no documents to be found. And I kind of just had to accept that. And then, by chance, lecturing somewhere, someone came up to me at the end of the lecture and said, I’m the grandson of Ribbentrop’s chauffeur, and I know from family stories that Ribbentrop and Wallace were constantly seeing each other. So, you know, that shows how sometimes oral history can trump documents which, as I say, are destroyed. I mean, one of the scandals is how many thousands of documents which should be preserved as part of our history are destroyed with no record being kept. So I think one of the reasons that the books get some sort of attention is because it is that mix that there is a trained historian there.

Andrew Lownie [00:21:30]:

So I’m putting my reputation on the line. I’ve got a doctorate, and therefore, it’s not just the tabloid journalist doing these books. And I think people do take that more serious, I hope take more seriously, and people are more inclined to talk to me. And again, a lot of the things come through personal connections, and that always helps. Much easier to research and talk to people who you know or kind of part of your circle. And so that helped with this book. I’d been the Navy, so I knew people who knew Andrew there. I’d say I’d been to school in Scotland.

Andrew Lownie [00:22:01]:

My mother in law had been at school with Sarah Ferguson’s mother. They actually knew each other as adults and actually were next door neighbours. So again, moving in the same milieu helps people sort of feel you talk the same language and are not an outsider. But there is this terrific feeling that, you know, you don’t snitch on people. If you’re an ambassador or a naval officer and have picked up information in the course of your job, don’t reveal that. And you’re right, it is a real problem with whistleblowers. There’s very little protection for whistleblowers and often it’s only through whistleblowers that the truth actually emerges. And as you say, it’s often about protecting the victims.

Andrew Lownie [00:22:36]:

We get in some ways everything in the wrong order. We’re there actually, as you say, protecting people like members of the royal family when we should actually be exposing the terrible things that have been done to very innocent, vulnerable people.

Naomi Murphy [00:22:49]:

Absolutely. Andrew, I was really struck by the similarities in listening to your book on Audible and working in the criminal justice system. In forensic work you can often feel really repulsed by the behaviour but have to find a way to see the more vulnerable person in order to build a relationship and get a connection going in order to provide something therapeutic. I wondered what it was like for you to be documenting, researching the really quite repugnant behaviour of this couple and in previous books. What is that like for you personally to be engaged in that work?

Andrew Lownie [00:23:22]:

Well, that’s an interesting question. I mean in some ways the biographer needs to empathise with the characters. You need to find something for the reader to sympathise with. And so you look at vulnerabilities, you look at what shaped them, the fact that they may themselves have been abused like Mountbatten and Andrew and with Guy Burgess, you know, I tried to bring out some of his good qualities. You can do a lot through humour. I’m quite good at distancing myself, you know, separating myself from the stuff I’m reporting on. Sometimes you do identify with certain elements.

Andrew Lownie [00:23:52]:

I certainly identify with bits of John Buchan for example, because of bringing similar interests. And so you draw inside yourself to try and understand them. Clearly slightly more difficult for people like Andrew. But you’ve got to be careful not to be too judgmental. I’m not there to sort of bring a court case against him. I’m there to try and explore character and tell the story. So, one is always trying to find something that will balance it because clearly something that’s unremittingly hostile is not very interesting. But you’re right, people do say when they finish the book that they feel dirty because, there’s just one terrible thing after another. But you do try and mitigate. You know, people said they felt very angry after they read Entitled, but at the same time you can leaven that with humour so that you actually begin to laugh at them sometimes because of their bizarre behaviour just as much as you think how appalling it is.

Andrew Lownie [00:24:44]:

And at times there are things with both of them that you think, well, actually, Sarah, she can be very good with young children. She can be very good with people who have suffered. And her actual work is actually very commendable. And with Andrew, you can see elements where he was effective or where he was brave or he did his bit. And I suppose everyone is very complex. You know, everyone has very different sides and that’s what makes it interesting.

Andrew Lownie [00:25:08]:

So it’s a mosaic of impressions, sort of what I call the surah approach to biography. And you put these dots in and you try and put the pieces in the puzzle and clearly there will be some gaps and people will see a different picture to the one that you perhaps think they might see. But one of the things I like about the books, particularly this is true of the Burgess book, but also the Buchan and Mountbatten, actually people came to it and said, actually, you know, I really liked them or I didn’t like them. And that is, by the selection of the evidence you present. And I try and present both sides and people kind of just pick their side that they clearly want. But you don’t want to have an echo chamber where you’re just giving people what they expect.

Naomi Murphy [00:25:47]:

Yeah, I think, I mean, alongside feeling quite repulsed, I also did feel quite sad for each of them. I mean, one of the things I think that comes through in your book is the kind of emotional stuntedness of both of them. And I wondered if you could describe some of the emotional immaturity that you reveal. I mean, you do give a very balanced, very fair perspective with good and bad. But this emotional immaturity does come through quite strongly in connection to both of them.

Andrew Lownie [00:26:12]:

Yes. Well, neither of them are very bright. They both have very juvenile senses of humour. I think both of them are kind of stuck in their childhood. Sarah, because her mother left the family when she was 13 she never really had a proper mother after that and you know, she makes a big play herself for being a good mother. I don’t think she was, I think she was pretty negligent mother but that does give you some sympathy for her. And again him, I mean, you know, though the Queen claims to have been hands on with him, she wasn’t and he didn’t really have any proper guidance and supervision and so that does make them feel more vulnerable.

Andrew Lownie [00:26:51]:

They’re both, I mean he’s like a man child. I mean Burgess was a bit the same of sort of Peter Pan figure but you know, Sarah, says she’s never happier than pretending to be a five year old and she’ll read things in funny voices and she gets on very, very well with very young children. I mean he again he has his practical jokes. He’s like a little boy who’s never really grown up. Yeah, very unsophisticated both of them in many ways not particularly thoughtful or reflective. They don’t have a huge inner life either of them. They seem to have stopped at the age of, I would say younger than 13, I mean more like the age of 8 and that would be, you know, interesting to talk to psychiatrists and psychologists about that, you know, if they agree a lot of things, I mean again pushing the boundaries, making themselves sometimes unpopular, not being able to read the room properly, a complete lack of self awareness, very self-centred. I mean all the things that you expect with a spoiled brat child.

Naomi Murphy [00:27:58]:

Yeah, Both David and I have specialised in working with people who would be diagnosed as personality disorder but quite often what that means is they’ve had a lot of trauma during their childhood and I think people who are traumatised often seem quite developmentally stuck at the age in which they experience those kind of gross traumas. I think, you know, in listening to your account of Sarah and Andrea it’s quite easy to see that. I’m not suggesting they’ve got personality disorders but certainly you can see that this kind of like being stuck as much younger people than they actually are. And I think one of the things that you reveal in the book is about Andrew’s sexual abuse initially at age 8 and then also other instances. Were you surprised to learn about these experiences?

Andrew Lownie [00:28:49]:

Yes, I was and I almost didn’t put them in because I found them hard to believe but they came from a good source and I felt in some ways if I put them out I might be pilloried for them but people might also come forward which has indeed been the case. So, for example, I was talking to an author of mine, Lisa St Aubin de Terán, and she said, actually, it’s very common at the age of 11 or 12 in Mexico, for example, for a boy to be taken to a brothel and basically introduced to sex and for people to get married at the age of 12 and have children, at that age. So, I mean, clearly a different culture, but it’s not clearly what we expect here. But it’s not that unusual. I talk to friends who talk about people losing their virginity even before they’re teenagers.

Andrew Lownie [00:29:35]:

There were stories I picked up about Andrew having some sort of sexual relationship with a female member of staff at school. So, I mean, there were quite a lot of things, you know, circumstantial, but that were running around and it did kind of explain his behaviour later and I think also presented in a much more sympathetic light. And it was the same with Mountbatten. Mountbatten was abused at the age of 13, 14 by a teacher who he had when he missed lessons at school and who he kept in touch with. Interestingly enough, she was the vicar who married him. And yet all the papers relating to him had been destroyed. So you had this person he kept in touch with was sufficiently close to marry him, and yet all the documentation had gone.

Andrew Lownie [00:30:18]:

And that’s unusual because every single sort of school report, everything had been kept by Mountbatten going back. I’m hoping other people may come forward, other people who are experts may be able to show why these experiences were important. But Andrew, in some ways, was physically quite mature when he was young, but emotionally he was very immature. And that must have been damaging, you know, this constant need for prostitutes, his inability to sustain relationships actually with both men and women, the hints of bisexuality. All these things, you know, may well have been triggered by his experiences in his youth.

Naomi Murphy [00:30:54]:

I mean, I think that that’s very likely, I think, for men and boys. But for men, I think it’s really hard to talk about experiences of sexual abuse because so much inside society gives the message that you’re expected to view all sex as desirable, if you like. But actually, even if our bodies are physically capable of sexual activity, mentally and emotionally, we’re not prepared for that when there’s an age difference of five years, you know, even with a child that’s, say, 15, if the sexual partner is five years older, that would be defined as abuse. So you’d expect, I wasn’t that surprised, actually, to learn about these experiences that Andrew had, because he does present, as a sex addict, in many ways, his need for sexual activity and actually reminds me very much of, you know, some of the men I’ve worked with in prison who sometimes were masturbating several times a day. There’s a sense of compulsion to it.

Andrew Lownie [00:31:56]:

Yes.

Naomi Murphy [00:31:57]:

To me, that does sound like a traumatic experience. Yes, and sometimes there’s a need to kind of almost embrace something and own it, rather than deal with the pain of actually something happening that shouldn’t have happened. It can be responded to in quite a way that we find hard to comprehend when that’s not been our experience. But, you know, these are commonly the kind of things that people bring to therapy to work through because people recognise that it distorts their sexuality.

Andrew Lownie [00:32:28]:

Yes. Well, I mean, the fact that there are these young women that he doesn’t seem to be, well, he is involved with, one of the same age, but then there seems to be, like, Epstein, this desire for much younger, well, almost girls, which, you know, clearly is very unusual. And it’s interesting, you know, that Mountbatten should have had the same sort of drive.

Naomi Murphy [00:32:52]:

I’m not saying this is true of Andrew, but I know, working with people in prison who’d been sexually abused by adult women that often, because the size of their genitals was inadequate for an adult woman’s body, there was often this sense that they needed to have sex with younger women in order to be able to satisfy the woman. So I’m not saying that is the case for Andrew, but again, I think it’s quite a common pattern amongst people who’ve been abused. That along with the emotional stuntedness, perhaps making younger people seem more emotionally congregated.

Andrew Lownie [00:33:25]:

Yeah, gosh, yes. That’s interesting.

David Jones [00:33:28]:

Thanks, Andrew. And you touched already on the kind of pressures that you or people in your situation might kind of experience. And sometimes these pressures might be explicit threats or they may seem less explicit, but nevertheless, as in the Trump threat to sue anybody who says anything that he doesn’t like, and that must feel like quite a pressure at times. Have you ever found yourself in a dilemma whereby you thought that you needed to say something, otherwise you’d be complicit in some untoward act? And yet you’ve also experienced the threat of the pressure as well? Do I make myself clear?

Andrew Lownie [00:34:20]:

Yeah I would say I’m pretty, maybe stupid or fearless. So I do tend to put it all in, and then if the lawyers take it out, then that’s taken out, because I don’t want to be sued. I never felt I was complicit in anything. I mean, I’ve always felt that actually, hopefully I’m bringing stuff out that should come out. I mean, clearly the events I’m writing about happened many years before, but I’ve never knowingly covered up for anything that I felt was wrong because I was scared the consequences. Legally, one has always been able to somehow get the inference out, if nothing else, about what’s happening. I mean, clearly, pressure is put, whether it’s legal pressure, as Trump did with Collins, and we’ve had rude letters from Sarah Ferguson’s lawyers as well.

Andrew Lownie [00:35:05]:

But I’ve sort of got used to it. And I mean, unfortunately, you know, I can hide behind Collins as long as I don’t go beyond what’s in the book. And I hate bullies. And maybe this is experience from my school days. And so I’ve always been slightly anti establishment, never perhaps accepting the accepted version of events, questioning, I suppose, of authority, because I never really trusted authority because of bad experiences and maybe because I wanted things to be wonderful. You know, I wanted everyone to be fair and just, and it doesn’t happen. And I think most people, as they get older, become a bit more cynical and accepting of that.

Andrew Lownie [00:35:42]:

And in some ways, I’ve become slightly more radicalised. And I suppose when people deny you access to things, deny you access to documents, or try and shut you up, all it does is encourage you to keep going and fight back.

David Jones [00:35:54]:

Thank you. That’s an interesting comment. So do you think the process of writing these books changes you? What kind of personal growth do you experience with the books that you write?

Andrew Lownie [00:36:07]:

Oh, absolutely. You know, I never thought I would be a sort of radical inverted commas. I questioned authority, but I kind of went along with things. And I become slightly more bolshy as I got older. So most people move to the right as they get older, I kind of move to the left.

Andrew Lownie [00:36:25]:

And, you know, clearly that has cut me off from a lot of people who were friends and I think find that very difficult, feel it very uncomfortable that we don’t have the, perhaps the same shared values as we may have had before. I would say that sometimes people keep a distance from me and maybe, you know, because they feel that maybe I’m a conspiracy theorist or I’m a gossip monger, that I’m a less serious person, I don’t know. But yeah, of course, when one sees one’s relationship with other people’s change. I mean, one of the nice things with this book is because I’ve been sort of saying a lot of these things for many years and I’ve had to say them in isolation and often fight the battles on my own is more and more people seem to be agreeing with me and are being supportive and that is very reassuring to feel that one isn’t this lone voice, you know, when you put your head above the parapet, that there may be some other people there.

David Jones [00:37:20]:

Thank you.

Naomi Murphy [00:37:21]:

How do you hold on for hope for British society when you’re knee deep in these kinds of stories and dreams?

Andrew Lownie [00:37:26]:

Well, it is very depressing. I mean, it’s not just these stories. It’s all sorts of other things, insoluble problems, you know, whether it’s climate change or world events and we’re all going to be nuked. And yeah, one does feel, particularly one has children, what sort of world we’re living in. I do feel that some of the old standards, this is maybe what John Bucker and I identify. Some of the old standards of behaviour are going that more people are in it just for themselves. Bit like Andrew and Fergie, that some of that sort of sense of noblesse oblige and neutral civil service and politicians going in with this desire to do public duty and good. The fact that so much of the Civil Service, the Foreign Office, the judiciary have been politicised, all those things I find rather depressing.

Andrew Lownie [00:38:10]:

And maybe, you know, there’s an idea I’m a disillusioned idealist. But those things that I think are important, I think a lot of us feel important about the structure of society and about order, law and order are diminishing. And maybe things were corrupt before and we didn’t know about them, but yeah, I do feel that. But people, you know, John Buchan’s generation were writing about this and pretty depressed. So maybe it’s just a generation. Every generation feels the same. But in some ways Buchan is my great hero because I think he was a man of wide, actually quite liberal interests and views and a quite a modest man and just kind of got a very talented man.

Andrew Lownie [00:38:48]:

And in some ways the people one’s dealing with, like Andrew and Fergie are just grifters who have just played the system. And you know, I don’t like that happening. I want people to get on on their own merits and for those merits to be rewarded and not to have nepo babies like their children.

Naomi Murphy [00:39:03]:

Thank you. That was a really fascinating discussion, Andrew. Good to have the heads up of what your next book is going to be about. I’m sure we’ve got lots of material there because he seemed to make enough faux pas to attract a bit of negative press anyway when he was still alive. So look forward to reading that book. Thank you.