The updated paperback of Entitled is out now and is this week’s Number One Sunday Times Bestseller! Order your copy here with 50% off!
I’m delighted to share this week’s Lownie Report Podcast where we discuss the latest developments regarding Andrew and Fergie and also cover some pertinent parallels taking us back, via Mountbatten, to the Cambridge Spy Ring and how I first learnt about the British establishment’s cover-up playbook while writing Stalin’s Englishman: The Lives of Guy Burgess.
We cover a fascinating 1997 TV interview with Sarah Ferguson that has recently been uploaded to YouTube by Ruby Wax. It was recorded when some of her biggest early scandals were only just in the rear-view mirror. Wax’s inimitable interview technique is highly effective in revealing as much about Ferguson’s modus operandi post-scandal as the multitude of reasons she gives for her mistakes.
She claims ignorance and naivety in her consistent attraction to the wrong men and bad decisions, refers to the solace of the words of St Francis of Assisi, compares herself to Morgan Freeman’s character in Shawshank Redemption and doesn’t demur when Wax generously posits that she’s actually more of a Robin Hood figure, since she donated some of her £5m Coutts overdraft to charity.
As I wrote in Entitled, the former Duchess would wheel out exactly the same excuses after the scandals that peppered the following three decades of her career, ostensibly outside the Royal Family but very much operating within its protection via her ex-husband.
I also discuss my meeting with Sarah Ferguson when I began work on my book back in 2022. She had all the charisma you might expect and brought her recent Mills & Boon book and some Ginger & Moss products as a gift, and initially seemed co-operative. Discussions with her team carried on for a few weeks before interviewees began to drop out and letters from lawyers began to drop in through the letterbox.
The conversation also looks at the mixed messages coming out of the police investigation, with briefing that seems contradictory at times, and how there seems a distinct possibility that if no charges are brought, the public will be told the matter is closed as far as the Crown and the government are concerned.
We also looked at what effect this has actually had on the Royal Family and whether anything substantial has changed in respect of public accountability and transparency.
I quoted Harold Macmillan’s line: “When my gamekeeper shoots a fox, he doesn’t go and hang it up outside the Master of Foxhounds’ drawing room; he buries it out of sight.” An apt metaphor and an attitude that still seemed apparent in the way the establishment covered up for Andrew until Virginia Giuffre and the Epstein Files forced them into action. An example of the “Jolly Good Chaps” theory of history, which has a habit of protecting men who are quite the opposite.
The updated paperback of Entitled is out now and is this week’s Number One Sunday Times Bestseller! Order your copy here with 50% off!
