SILENCED Royals Expert on Princess Diana COVERUP, Supra Elites & Evil Encounter | Andrew Lownie

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You know, obviously a lot was going on there. But can you explain to me what happened with your book about him? Because you're like a long time noted, heralded, extremely respected author. And something happened with your book deal where they pulled it at the last minute. Because you wrote about him? Yes, I mean, interesting experience, which I've never had before in 40 years of writing books. So the book was sold to Harper Collins in the UK. And that went through very smoothly. They were doing all the editing. And gallery books of SNS bought the book in the States. And they were meant to basically offset from the Collins edition. The agreement we sold, the book was sold on a finished manuscript. There was a little bit of editing to be done back in February. And then suddenly in May I was actually on holiday in Berlin. SNS cancelled the contract without even going through the termination clause. And they said the book was unpublishable. And since I won prizes of my books, they've been took last two of being top 10 best sellers. Collins were very happy with it. This was a little bit of a surprise. And I don't know what the background is. But suddenly, weeks before the book was due to come out, I had no American publisher and I was forced to self-publish. And of course, if you do that, you're not going to get any support from any of the media in the States. I mean, this was my big breakout book for America after 40 years of writing. And so Kim was a bit of a shock. And so I've worked as an agent since 1985. I've been representing the interests of authors. I thought I need to take a stand because I felt this was cavalier and casual. They, as you say, hadn't gone even through their termination clause. They thought I'm just a small guy. They can do what they want. And so I pushed back and I took on lawyers and we are going to court in the autumn. Good for you. And we'll see what happens. And it's very interesting, the stuff of the depositions that they put forward. This, they claimed that I was uncooperative when the fat dies prepared to pay for another writer to come in and change the book if they wanted. And changed the book that you had written the whole thing on. You were going to give up that kind of creative license to make it happen. To make it happen. And I was desperate to really. I mean, I've been published in the States by St. Martin's and others. But the books hadn't really had the coverage I hoped. And, yeah, fascinating. The head of SNS got in touch with the editor and he said, "Didn't we buy this book? It's number one in Britain." And it's making waves. Prince Andrews had to basically being chucked out of the royal family because of this book. And we had it. What happened? Oh, Andrew Loney wouldn't cooperate. But don't worry, he's agreed to do the book with us, which I hadn't agreed to do. So a lot of lies from Simon and Shuster, which I think need to be exposed. Hey, guys, if you're not following me on Spotify, please hit that follow button and leave a five-star review. They're both a huge help. Thank you. Absolutely. And when we can help do stuff like that here where people have been wrong, we love to do that. So thank you. You were saying, obviously, this is one that could really break through in America as well because people over here are at least very aware of some of our troublesome leadership as it relates to certain Epstein files and things like that. And obviously, Prince Andrew from over there is someone at the middle of all of it. But, you know, by the way, we'll put the link to the book down below so you guys can all go check that out. But it's also got to be a fascinating experience to write about, I don't know if the proper word is like tragic character while he's still alive, like as a biographer. What was that like? Well, it was the first time, well, my books have always been written based on documents. I've never done a living person. I mean, I've done some people whether people are alive that I could talk to you, who knew them. But, you know, this is particularly always difficult about the royals. There's a sort of merger around them and particularly around someone like Prince Andrew. No one wants to talk. No one wants to be associated with them. There's a huge difference towards the royal family. People feel they serve the crown, whether they're diplomats or in the services. So it was. I had 3,000 people I approached and 2,700 didn't talk. But it is an interesting story, because in some ways, you know, this was a man who was so proud and arrogant that he kind of brought a lot of the problems on himself. There were so many ways that he could have saved himself. And, again, you know, giving that into to News 9 in November 2019, only encouraged Virginia Jeffrey to bring her case. It was kind of forgotten about until then. So he's kind of brought it on himself. He's brought it on other members of the royal family. You know, wider questions now been asked about royal accountability and privilege. And so they must be cursing him because, you know, so far, they've got away with very little transparency, particularly on their finances. And he's opened up the whole kind of worms here because of his behavior. And then there's something kind of admirable almost about a guy who's just going to go down with the ship without doing anything. But it's part of his arrogance that somehow he feels he's entitled. And these are just little people he can do what he wants. And we've only really had one moment where I felt I saw fear in his face. And that was that famous photograph taken on the night he came back from the police station in February 26. Can we pull that up, Dave? That's a great job. But otherwise, I mean, even now he's he's he's ranting at people. He's blaming everyone else. He's fussing about whether he can go out riding or playing golf or where he's going to park his cars. There's no sense of any sort of remorse for the way he's behaved. And I talk to actually, funnily enough, one of the people who was a commanding officer in the in the Armed Forces and dealt with them, who's now when he was in the Navy, when he's training the Navy, he's a guy who took him through the he did a kind of green beret course. In fact, he was kind of pushed through it by this guy and didn't really do it. But he then became a kind of psychiatrist and he said he ticks all the boxes for associate path. And I think that was a problem. He's a complete narcissist. He can only see things in terms of his own interests. And that's why there's no empathy for anyone else. Yeah, I you know, we kind of fought a war over the whole like king and queen thing over here. So it's not like an America or naturally fans of that. That said, I've always wondered how you could possibly turn out even remotely normal, whether that be like not associate path or not someone who is completely divorced from reality. When you were born into what is a very archaic system where you live in opulence, everything's taken care of for you, but you're also you have all this duty and you have to go around and do all these things because that's what we've always done. You know, do you think that people born in the modern royal family can possibly live any kind of semblance of like a normal lived human experience? Well, I think, you know, Prince William and Catherine, I mean clearly those who married into royal family have had a life before they do that. I mean, I think William, particularly, he's brought his children up to try and have a normal upbringing. And in some ways, Andrew did have, he went off to boarding school. I mean, he wasn't at least educated at home like a lot of them. He went into the rough and tumble of the Navy. So there were opportunities, but you're absolutely right. They're brought up in this echo chamber. The only people who kind of surround them are sick of fans who tell them what they want to hear. They tell them how wonderful they are. As you say, they're used to people buying and scraping and providing everything they want. And I think there's a further complication with people like Andrew and Harry who are second in the fetch, second in line, they're kind of the reserve. If anything had happened, for example, to Charles, Andrew would have been before 1982. And then after William was born, he would have been regent until Andrew William was 18. So then, of course, they moved steadily down the pecking order. And that's quite difficult to accept. But other members are all family. I mean, Princess Anne and Edward were born into the same background, but they do have a strong sense of duty. So I think it's personality rather than actually positioning. But there is always this trope when we've seen it in the crown between public duty and private pleasure and the rogue royals, the Duke of Windsor, the Harrys, the Andrews, who kind of push that Princess Margaret, who kind of feel that the position is basically to have a good time. And then there are others, and Prince Philip is a good example, the Queen, George VI, who felt that the only way for the royal family to operate is because it's through a strong sense of public service. And that's what the public want. That's why they have prepared a ton of blind eye sometimes to some of the royal behavior and the privileges. And the deal is, we'll pay huge sums of security. We'll allow you to live in palaces and to have a pretty good lifestyle. But in return, we want you to serve us. And when that contract breaks down, which it's broken down with, certainly with Harry, but also with Andrew and Fergie, then people begin to wonder, what are we paying for? Why are we doing this? And that's when the trust and respect is broken. And one of the arguments that I and others who are supporters of the monarchy and want it to survive make is the need for it to reform, modernize, make itself fit for purpose in the 21st century and regain the trust and respect that it's lost through the activities of people like Andrew. And what is the purpose of the monarchy to you? Well, I think it's done right. If it's done right, I think it has a terrific unifying power to bring people together, particularly in times of during the war for example, national crisis, when they are, should be, you know, they are a political, they are people that can in some ways serve as an example to the rest of the country. And Georgia 5th and 6th recognizes they're the sort of family of the nation. They set the example, they, they, they, you know, shouldn't be going off and having affairs and stuff. I mean, they do. But and of course, a lot of that was protected because we just never heard about it. But then we had to set an example to make us feel, to show us how to behave. It's almost like a religion. And then of course, there's a soft power which we saw with, with Charles and his talk to Congress. You know, a lot of the royal family have deployed. And the way that Andrew was later deployed to do, for example, arm sales, to reach bits of of other countries, which politicians can't reach because there is a respect for members of the royal family. So they do serve a purpose. And people love the pomp and the ceremony. And, you know, it is more than just a soap opera. But at the base of it, there has to be, they have to behave well and they have a restriction of public service. And in the end, it's, it's meant to try and make us all think we can behave well too, to set an example and encourage us to behave the same way. For people out there who don't really know the balance of power as it pertains to the Britain, to the British government and where the royal family does play a role, as you did lay out there, they're supposed to be a political, it's not like they're on one of the parties or something like that. But it's been a while, I want to say there was something like maybe like 1761 or something like that to where it got divorced from them running parliament. Maybe I said that wrong and they became more of a figurehead symbolic leader at that point. Is that fair to say? And is that what exists today? You ever feel exhausted all day, even after a good night's sleep or like your stomach is holding on to more fat, despite having good workouts or even just feeling more mentally drained all day when you feel like you shouldn't be. None of it makes sense. 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Yes, it goes back to the Civil War, and we had this moment in direct them where Chrome will basically took over and the king went. And then it was kind of restored later on. And it's kind of evolved the whole time. So, particularly, I think, far from the First World War, I mean, clearly they were seen as a kind of German family, and they made it very keen, clear that they were a British family. They took on the name of Windsor and dropped the Saxo-Coburg Gotha. And increasingly, they'd just been seen to be there to. There was a famous political scientist called Bajit in the 19th century who said they're there to kind of inform, to listen, give wise advice like an elder statesman, but they shouldn't really have any power. But the fact is they do have residual powers. There's something called kings and princes consent, where they can actually shape legislation before it reaches the statute book that a lot of people don't know about. They do lobbies, we found with Charles and what were called the spidery letters, where he does lobby or did his Prince of Wales government departments to push through things that he felt more important, particularly issues on things like architecture. And that's kind of a burden. They're meant to be above politics. But, you know, there are ways that they steer things. You know, we know that they believe in keeping the four parts of the nation, so England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland together. They don't want that to break up. There was a moment with Scottish devolution and a referendum that America, but that Scotland might break off and indeed Ireland might eventually. And the Queen kind of nudged a few people and put the word out that she was not in favour of this. And people kind of listened to that. And then of course with Brexit, there's a big debate whether the Queen was actually a Brexit here and wanted to see us break off links with Europe or actually wanted us to remain part of the European Union. And the jury's out on that. My own feeling is that she was in favour of she's in favour of supernatural organisations. I mean, she's a great supporter of the Commonwealth. And I think she would have been a supporter of the European Union. Well, unless David Ike is to believe, these are people still, right? They they have, they have flow. That's a rather reference in there. They have flaws and they still have feelings and emotions. I know like one example that's always brought up is like the back and forth between Margaret thatcher and Queen Elizabeth when they were Prime Minister and Queen respectively. And like there are political disagreements that still occur behind the scenes under the under the tension of a politicality if you will. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the Queen was very, very supportive of the Commonwealth. That's kind of how she was defining her legacy. And there were some problems there with thatcher, particularly about apartheid in South Africa. And then of course we had the the Reagan's invasion of gosh, what's Caribbean Island beginning with Grenada. Grenada. Yeah. And clearly that was that was a part of the Commonwealth and there was a bit of tension there between America and the Queen. So, you know, she did get involved. But the problems we just don't know when she's got involved because all the papers have been closed since she came to the throne in 1952. So we just don't know what goes on. behind the scenes. All the papers relating to Andrew's times, the trade end void remain closed when we have what's a public records act, which says that all papers should be released after 20 years. So a lot of this stuff, when I talk to what's called the sensitivity for review is the people who basically decide where papers go in the archives. So everything basically on the royals gets sent to Buckingham Palace and gets locked in a room never to be seen again. Is there anyone in the British government who can mandate things being seen if they're supposed to be seen after I think you said 20 years? Absolutely. I mean, and I mean it's part of the law. So I mean the prime minister or one of the government ministers could easily say, and this was campaign that I've been pushing, all the papers relating to Andrew as a trade end void should be released under the 20 year rule. So he became a trade end void in 2001. And so the files up to 2006 should be released. And that would be a very easy thing to do just to tell that the head of the foreign office, the minister there and the minister in charge of business and trade, could just say to records management, this stuff should be in the public domain. But they don't do so. And there's still a deference from civil, from civil servants and politicians. So for example, the money that we pay the royal family for there, what they do, the sovereign grant has tripled in the last few years, even though their fewer members of the royal family and they actually do less work. How'd they do that? Well, by being very, very persuasive. And it's pushed through by three people, the keeper of the previous person who works for the court for the royal family, the prime minister and the chancellor, it's chequer. And this should have gone to Parliament. It should have been debated. And it was slipped through one afternoon with no one knowing about it. Which prime minister, you guys about a lot of those? Well, it was, it was the few days and we had Keir Starmer. So, and what happens, of course, is these people then get warded. George Osborne, who's the previous chancellor, did it, he was their middle order of merit. And I'm sure Keir Starmer will get some nice bubble as a result of doing their bidding. Yeah, but triple is a big number. That's not like number. And it's never discussed. I mean, one of the things again that people like me want is that the crown, or the, the royals, should be accountable to Parliament. I mean, everyone else is. It's the last protected institution where they basically can do what they want. And it's not just this money, which is now, I think, about 76 million pounds a year. This doesn't include security, which goes through the police, doesn't include some of the military staff, like the flights and the equaries who work for the royal family, which goes through the minister's defence. And none of these questions we answered if you asked these departments. And then, of course, we had Andrew in his massages. And this stuff wasn't, wasn't put in a special little file saying massages for Andrew. It was lost in general accounting. So they know they're going to get away. Yeah. Yeah. They know they're going to get away with anything they want. And so, of course, that makes them feel invincible. And that's why they feel they can do what they want. It's very New York Italian. It's always a good place to put massages, I find. Yeah, what? So the massages you're referring to, I mean, we've got to be careful with that in here, because that can mean a few different things based on his relationships. Are you talking about stuff that's relayed Epstein or is this entirely separate? No, these are sort of a massages Epstein gave happy ending ones. These are ones with escorts. Oh, and the taxpayer was paying British taxpayer was paying for it. And given the number of massages, that was quite a big bill. I'll say. Yeah. Now, Queen Elizabeth obviously lived until I think 2022, September, something like that. She was on the throne for effectively 70 years at that point. And that was like the longest reign since Victoria, right? Longer than Victoria. I mean, no one is, I think, ever going to beat that, because I mean, she came to the throne as a very young woman. Right. And she lived, I mean, she could have gone to over a hundred, like her mother. So, but she didn't do badly. I think 96. No matter what you think of her, woman lived a very full life. I mean, she saw a lot of things in her years for sure. Like you said, she had to take over a young woman or father died. But, you know, it's got to be a very kind of unprecedented psychological dynamic to have the children. She had four of them to where the weight for power is that long. And that is supposed for someone like now, King Charles, that's supposed to be his entire life's purpose that he's taught from a young age. And then as you alluded to earlier, someone like Andrew, who's already spent so much time and technically like the second in line, the more and more years to go by while his mom's on the throne, he's fallen to fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth. And again, I got to imagine that has a, especially for someone who's pretty disposed of being a sociopath that has quite a psychological effect on his purpose over the years and maybe makes him feel even more invincible and for lack of a better way of putting it like, fuck it, I'll do what I want. Yes, I think there was an element of that. I mean, I think he was always very jealous of Charles. He didn't think Charles, he felt Charles was weak and that he could do a better job. And Fergie was getting psychics telling her that Charles would die in a skiing accident, which in fact, he almost did. Almost dead, yeah. And if that had happened, then Andrew would have come in as regents. And I mean, we've got to remember that if Williams family are all killed in an air crash together, we're going to get King Harry. So, I mean, there's a big debate in Britain, the moment about the line of succession, whether the Harry and his family should be removed and Andrew and his family should be removed, because we have this extraordinary situation. Eugenie, the daughter of Andrew, has just had a third child and that's Bump to Prince Edward, who's a working royal, further down, and further down the line of succession. But I think you're absolutely right that and no one knows who, you know, Ernest Brooksbank is or Athena Motsimaphelli. But they're actually higher up in terms of the order of succession than people like Princess Anne and Prince Edward. They're the grandchildren of Prince Andrew. But I think there is a strong sense of actually, why should I care? Because, you know, I'm not going to get it now. I can do what I want. And actually, what Andrew was doing was he was basically his ambitions were now invested in his children. So, both Bertras' elder daughter and Eugenie were given police protection at huge public costs long after there was any risk to them. I mean, they were basically on their year off from school. They were just going in and out nightclubs. So, policemen, dozens of policemen guarding them, having to accompany them rather well and just basically drive them home from the light club. And Andrew was keen that they should inherit a title, which of course you can only inherit titles through the male. So, he was really keen. I'm sorry, you can only inherit titles through the male? Through the male side. So, we have male, that has changed recently. But even in the aristocracy, all the titles go through the male. So, you can have five daughters and none of them are going to inherit. It's going to be a distant cousin who's a male. And he tried to change those rules. So, his daughter couldn't inherit. He was very keen to use his time as a trade envoy to build contacts for their business contacts, particularly in the Middle East. So, he took them on these taxpayer-funded trips secretly to get stuff. They're not working royals. They have free accommodation in royal palaces. So, basically, the deal he did I think with Charles, and certainly when his mother was alive with his mother, was basically, "Okay, I'll accept that my days are over in terms of what I can do, but I want my daughters to get all the benefits of being royals without any of the responsibilities." Why was Andrew his mom's favourite? Did we ever figure that out? Well, so, it's a really good question. I think he was very good. He was very attentive to, I mean, the others had families. He was a divorce man on his own. He used to go and see her a lot. He lived quite close by. Royal Lodge is literally only a few miles from Windsor. Royal Lodge was the home that he had. He inherited an effect from the Queen mother after she died 25 years ago. So, that would be Elizabeth's mom? So, Elizabeth's mother, yes, went to live in royal Lodge, but Royal Lodge had very strong royal associations. It's when the Queen grew up before she narrated the throne as a child. So, and it's where her father, the previous Duke of York had lived. Traditionally, the second child of the monarch has called the Duke of York. And so, it had a particular sort of poignancy for the Queen. But it's a good question. I think, you know, Andrew was boisterous. He was part of the second family, which he had more time for. He's 10 years younger than Anne. And, you know, in all families, there's often a favorite. And he was the favorite. When I talk to some people, their argument was he was the most vulnerable. And therefore, she was very protective of him. Most vulnerable. Most vulnerable because he was, we think that he had mental health problems, or has mental health problems. There's something, he's somewhere on the spectrum, for sure. And therefore, she felt that the others could take care of themselves. So, who knows? She never talked about it. But I mean, each time there was some new scandal with Andrew, particularly with Epstein, instead of kind of distancing herself, she kind of threw a protective arm around him, set a beside her as they drove to church, gave him some new honor, sending out the signal that she basically had complete a faith in him. I haven't began to think, well, maybe she knows something we don't know. Maybe he's innocent. Maybe this is all being cooked up. And so he was protected. And he was protected by her. He was protected by his brother, the king now. They've known about Andrew for 25 years. They were fed information about Epstein and his activities years ago. And instead of basically taking it, I mean, forcing him out of his job as a trade envoy, disciplining him, doing internal reports. They did absolutely nothing. Peter Express took more trouble over the stuff that Andrew was doing than the royal family. Who did? Well, Peter Express, you may remember was when Andrew did his interview with with Newsnight in November 2019. He's the one. Yeah, exactly. Well, he's the one who had a litany of lies. And one of the lies was I couldn't possibly be in a nightclub late one night, because I was at a party in 30 miles outside London, at this Peter Express and working, which is a town to say just outside London. Now, it's very easy to get up from working to London, you know, in a matter of an hour, particularly if you're a police escort, and you're just zooming through the traffic. But of course, no one could remember anyone who worked. I mean, this is what Peter Express were investigating. They talked to members of staff. What was he here? Is this something we've missed? And no one could remember him being at the being a birthday party there. The children at the birthday party couldn't remember the staff at his home in Windsor couldn't remember him coming home. Whether he came home that night or not. And the police protection officer who knew that night, he'd gone back to Buckingham Palace. This night was course when he slept with Virginia Jiffrey. And all the evidence appointed to him going back to Buckingham Palace that night. Buckingham Palace said that this material is closed, the logs of him going into the palace, a part of national security. And then when the police protection officer persisted saying this is something that needs to be released under my date of protection, they say, well, actually these logs are being destroyed. And of course, it's very easy. A lot of the stuff is being destroyed. Just getting rid of the records so no one will ever know. Exactly. And that's what they've done for a long time. So, I mean, Prince Philip, who I'm doing a book on at the moment, he so-called arranged his papers for the last few years of his life. Huge Bonfires went on to Princess Victoria's door. Huge Bonfires went on. The Queen's papers were sorted out, not by historians, but by her valid, Queen Princess Margaret's papers were, sorry, Queen Mother's papers were destroyed by Princess Margaret again, big Bonfires. And that's the way we deal with it in Britain. In Ireland, they throw it into the harbor and often it bobs up against. But in Britain, we put them into incinerators. Listen up, fellas. Fall is here. Football is back. And that means game day meals, Sunday hosting, and a lot more time in the kitchen. Whether you're making burgers before kickoff, cooking crack for the neighborhood, or firing up breakfast before a full day of games, your cookware matters. 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But, you know, you talk about like the Queen Mother's Files being deleted. I know we later found out that she had a couple siblings. I think it was that were very mentally challenged cousins. Right. Cousins that were hidden. Neces. Neces, actually, sort of nieces. That's right. So they were hidden because they were afraid that that was going to be a bloodline problem if they were shown out. So did someone like write that down at some point? She has a niece at whatever, and that's the kind of thing they burned. Absolutely. And also, with the nieces, they told all the reference books that they had died in 1941, when actually they lived on until the 1980s. That's right. So not only did they put them into mental homes, they did the same with George V's son, Prince John. George V was in power during like World War I. Yes. So he was 1910 to 1935. And his eldest son had epilepsy, and basically, and died at age of 13. In fact, he was put in the house where Prince Andrew is now living in Moche Farm. Yeah. He had that upper hand. Wood farm and wood farm. Well, this was the first one. I'm sorry. He was put into wood farm. Got it. Where he was first of all sent. So this is this was royal lodge right here. This is the lodge is the one on the right, which you can see is a pretty big house for. Yeah, not missing any wheels on there in his own. And then his wife had a little wing in the corner. Oh, she had her own little wing. Yeah, she loved it because of course she could. She had all the royal chefs who were producing food for her. She had a laundry done for her. And people still thought she was part of the royal family, even though they'd been divorced for about 40 years. Oh, they were living in there together when they were divorced. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, and she kept her title. In fact, she's meant to have lost her title, but she kept using a title. So everyone in America thought she was part of the royal family. And she kind of yo-yoed. So they'd they'd invited to to Christmas at Sandringham. She sat in the royal box. She was invited to ask it. So one moment she was kind of cast a drift. And then as soon as Prince Philip, who had got the measure of her, died, Charles kind of brought her back within the fold. Prince Philip couldn't stand her. And I mean, he would literally in his 80s, he would kind of vault over sofas in the woods to get out of a room before she appeared. In his 80s, he was jumping over something. He was pretty fit. He was a fit old man. Good for him. A bunch of there's something now with his unseen backstory as well. There are a lot of mistresses. Yeah. There are a lot of women. Those are all bad papers. That's almost our use. And we burnt the papers. That's good. But you were talking about, you mentioned something like 10 minutes ago about how in your estimation, King Charles is even protecting Andrew. And some of the, I could imagine some of it is for familial, you know, I guess, reputation. But some of that is surprising to me because what a lot of reports have been is that he can't stand Andrew and he can't stand the embarrassment he's brought on the family. So at this point, even after all we now know that's been exposed, you still say he is taking active measures to protect him. Absolutely. And I mean, you would think that I think this is William's argument. You know, clean out the stables. We want to clean slate. And in fact, you know, there will be more embarrassing revelations. I mean, there's still 3 million pages of Epstein stuff that could be released apart from depositions from victims. But, you know, basically own up to the fact that you guys have, you know, we turned a blind eye to him. We paid off Virginia, Jeffrey, etc. But, you know, we're now really are helping the police for their inquiries. But, you know, I talked to police protection officers and they've been reminded of the obligations of confidentiality. Civil servants have been reminded about their pensions. So on one hand, the king is saying, yeah, the law must take its course and we'll do everything possible to help them. And on the other, I'm hearing that people, they're saying, look, don't talk to anyone. You know, we can keep the lid on this. And, you know, they should have been dealing with this years ago. I mean, stories about Andrew's bad behavior have been in the press for 40 years. When Fergie was caught on film selling access to Andrew in 2010, as time as the trade envoy, he should have been sacked. He continued to be a trade envoy for another year and actually to do trips on behalf of the government for years afterwards. There was a famous case in the high court in 2022 where Andrew, the York family, worked, it was revealed, had been paid 1.3 million pounds by, basically, a investment. By an embezzler? Yeah, there was a separate court of a guy embezzled money from a Turkish millionaire's. But in the course of this case, it was revealed that he had paid the U.S. 1.3 million pounds, 750 to Andrew, 250 to Sarah and the rest to one of the daughters, which they couldn't explain. And again, that would have been a red flag, you know, something should have been done. We know that 33,000 emails were sent to Charles six years ago, detailing some of Andrew's criminal activity. 33,000? Yeah. And that material is still not being passed. They sat in them, did nothing about them. And that material is not being passed to law enforcement. So yeah, and I mean, we know that, for example, with ABC, they went to the Royal family. They said, we want to do a program on Andrew and Virginia Giffrey. We found out all sorts of things about him. The Royal family said, if you run this program, you'll never again get access to the Royal family. Maybe see bird out. I know from my research that the Royal family would deny stories that were true. They would threaten legal action with stories that were true. They would use a mixture of patronage and pressure to stop people reporting on stories. They're brief against people. They would reward people for supporting them. So I talked in the book about how a lot of journalists basically shied away from writing about Andrew and Giffrey because they realized they would be penalized if they did so. And they basically did their bidding. And that's how the system works. No one wants to be outside the magic circle. And so when people like me come along and say, hey, this is actually what's really happened, they do everything to, I mean, whether it's using bots on Twitter, briefing against you. Wait, the Royal family is using bots on Twitter? Yeah. I was told that a Saudi billionaire had given Virgi an Andrew money to try and discredit me. That's who does it? That's the Saudi's got a hell of a bot farm over there. Yeah. So it's, you know, there are ways of doing it. But you asked your question, why does Charles stand by him when he doesn't like him? It's exactly why the Duke of Windsor. So this was Edward VIII, you know, one of my previous books I showed that he was a Nazi supporter. And Churchill and the British establishment prevented the release of German documents which revealed this after the war, not because they didn't think he was of Adam, but because this would be too embarrassing if the stuff came out. And that's the problem with Andrew. Instead of accepting that look, we need to distance ourselves, it's, you know, we don't, if we cover for him, it's going to look worse for us, they just do the cover-up. And all my books, in effect, are about cover-ups. And the one with Andrew is they thought they'd get away with it. Even when my book came out last August, and there was plenty of material there, you know, to bring charges against him for leaking confidential information, for fraud, for breaking the official secrets out, and nothing happened. But where they got caught out was the transparency act, and when Epstein revelations began to be released last December, the game was up for them. They suddenly realized that here it wasn't black and white. They can no longer say where Andrew Loney makes his stuff up, his, you know, sources are unverified. He's a closet Marxist Republican. You're a closet Marxist? Well, actually, nope. I mean, they claim. You struck me as a real Stalin. Yeah, well, you should see that, you know, I'm out there on the barricades. That's right. Every Saturday afternoon. That's right. He had a hammer and sickle. You just put it away. So, and that's what they don't, of course, that's what they don't like about me, because, you know, I'm not a Marxist. I'm a former Conservative Party candidate. I'm got a doctorate, you know, I was an academic, you know, they can dismiss the tabloid journalists. It's much more difficult to dismiss someone who footnotes everything, everything's verified, double sourcing. I only use 10% of my material. I have nine times, ten times as much material I could use, which just couldn't, couldn't stood up. So, for example. For Andrew or just in general? Just in general. Just in general. So, and one of the great things when the Epstein files came out, everyone was saying, you know, how can we trust this guy, you know, and then the Epstein stuff came out and it just backed up everything I said. So that was really gratifying. And that kind of has led to the snowballing, it led to the fact that the Royal Family had to distance themselves, led to the heckling of Charles. Now, when he goes out, everyone's saying, what did you know? When did you know it? What did you do about it? And those are questions he's not answering and people's saying, why aren't you answering them? Doesn't he still have cancer, too, is that? Yes. I mean, you know, it is a tragedy. You are absolutely right, you know, he's basically being Prince of Wales since 1952, 70 years. So, there's never going to be a Prince of Wales who's had such a long apprenticeship. And just at the time when most people were retiring, he's suddenly having to take on the job. He takes on the job at a time when, you know, his mum's died, he never quite knows when it's going to happen. It was quite sudden. You didn't put the pillow over? Well, they did kill George V, they hastened his death so that he made the headlines one morning. Oh, they did? Yep. Can you enlighten me on that? So, yeah, well, I mean, the queen, the royal doctor, a man called Dawson, went to the royal family and said, he's basically, he's going to die and he can die a bit later on and he's going to make the afternoon papers. But we think it'll look better if he's in the morning papers. So, they gave him a little lethal con. So we had, we had assisted dying in Britain long before we would evaded it. That's crazy. So, so they, they're not beyond knocking off their relations and maybe that's what they should have done with Andrew. That would have solved a few problems. Well, that is not to stick our tinful hat on too much here, but that is the thing I keep thinking about because ever since he did the aforementioned interview in 2019 that where he said, I put the side down, I also don't sweat. And it was just a disaster class for however long that was. I kept watching this and I'm like, you know, how does this guy not die in his sleep? You know what I mean? And I don't think that should happen, obviously, like I'd rather see him brought the justice in everything, but he's such a PR liability that he threatened such a large historical establishment that you would just think they'd be like, all right, Jim, you know, get, get Dawson, get Dawson. So yeah, well with Edward VIII, they did want to get rid of him. So they encouraged him to take up any dangerous sport he wanted. He was very keen on steeple chasing a little. That was a great idea. But they did. When the book came out, they were putting up the line that Andrew was suicidal and your book came out. Yeah, and that was quite clever because the publishers said, look, you know, if we have blood in our hands, we got to be careful, we got to rein back the publicity. Actually, they didn't say he was suicidal, they said he was on suicide watch. Now you can be on suicide watch without being suicidal. Now, I then talked to my source and he said, look, the guy is as arrogant and unrepentant as ever. This guy is not on suicide watch. So but that would mean a very convenient way of him, you know, sorting him out. And I think, you know, that he must be worried, I mean, in the way that Galena is worried, a lot of people involved in this story have died in mysterious circumstances. I mean, it's big debate about Epstein's death, Daniel C out, who was one of the people who was involved in this case has gained his died in certain mysterious circumstances. Jean Brunel, who was the supplier of the girls, the French model owner, died in prison on suicide, just like Epstein, no evidence of any suicidal tendencies before. Virginia Jiffrey died of suicide. Again, we have no coroner's report, we don't even know how she died. They're conflicting reports, whether she shot herself or hung herself. And I think there's a list of about 20 people who's deaths are slightly unexplained, who are involved in this case. And Andrew must worry that it's not the royal family who are going to knock him off. It's someone connected with the Epstein story, because he knows where all the bodies are buried. You think so? Absolutely. As does Furgey. I mean, you know, Furgey was the more numbers for Furgey in the Epstein little black book than for Andrew. I think that in fact, it was Furgey who introduced Epstein to Andrew. That relationship with Epstein goes back much earlier than people realized. I mean, one of the lies in the newsnight interview was that they only met the late 90s. Alistair Watson Andrew's private secretary wrote to the Times and said it was the early 1990s. And I've got evidence that takes them back to the 1980s. But Furgey must be worried. I mean, there she is. She's refusing to give evidence to the Senate. She's worried about coming back to Britain in case she's arrested as a person of material interest. And yet, there she is trying to do a deal with Netflix. But yeah, I mean, there must be a worry that, you know, it would be very convenient of a lot of these people. I mean, she saw all those pictures of the naked teenagers, you know, everything was around. I'm sorry. What Epstein's houses were filled with big pictures of some of the girls who were abused. There's no way you could go to this house and not see the very sexualized nature of these houses. That's right. That's that's the thing that really strikes me. I had a guy sitting in that seat three years ago who I knew he I got connected to him and I knew he had known Epstein and I did ask him about it too in that episode. But we later found out that when the files were released he was on like 7,500 emails with him and in a court all just saying you're on 7,500 emails with someone is not enough to convict you of something if you know what I mean. However, when you're on that many emails with someone over that many years and you're around them that much and visiting with them that much and going to places is you just laid out that much and Prince Andrew is obviously no different when it comes to his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and Fergie as well. There's no way you don't know. There's no way you didn't see something and go. Well also when you're lying about it and then you're shown to have lying about it. So in that news 9 TV he said he only met Epstein a few times in the cutoff contact December 2010 and yet I mean when you interview the butler in Palm Beach at the Epstein home he says that Andrew would come stay for weeks. I talked to someone who said that Andrew and Fergie stayed so often at the house on the first street that they had their own suite of rooms called the Britannia suite. We know now from the email correspondence that Andrew was in touch with him. I think almost to the death and always to the 19 Fergie claim that she cut off links in the spring of 2011 and yet I have a woman I quote in the book called Claudine Pratt's who lived by the East 66 block of flats or owned by Mark Epstein but which Andrew which Jeffrey used to house some of the girls and the pilots and stuff and Fergie used to stay there on a regular basis way after this 2014. Claudine Pratt says that she would see Fergie coming out of the building. She knew Fergie was there because the dormant was in their full regalia. She'd go and chat to the to the dormant and they'd say yeah Fergie's just the Duchess of York is staying here. So really obvious lies and when you're telling lies you know like that what are you covering up but yeah I mean I think and but the problem is so much of the stuff has been destroyed you know there were deals done with some of the co-conspirators for material not to be released. A lot of the stuff is just not appeared. I mean I mentioned the fact that we've got millions of pages that have been released. Six million pages we know could have been released and they kind of hide behind it and say we're protecting victims but actually they release the names of the victims and they blotted out the names of some of the people involved. That's right it's the same. And you know there's very obviously been a cover up here and I think the really worrying thing is if this material is being destroyed. You know we've got people like Pam Bondi talking about what was there we just need to wait for some whistle blow FBI agents because these people are on overtime hundreds of them taking stuff out. Yeah the FBI unfortunately you know in recent American history and talking to guys I know who have left the FBI over the past decade there's just elements of it where there's some real rot. Yeah. And so not to be cynical but I really wonder if you're ever going to get any sort of real whistle blowing out of there from the people that would have handled that stuff. Well I mean I was involved with with John Boomer who was an FBI agent who won a great name. Well I recommend his sub stack and he's now he was trying to get a book out but he had all sorts of stuff for example about Rudy Giuliano and what he was up to links with the Russians, the corruption that was going on in New York City, Trump of course and they really came after him and made life very difficult and but he is now I mean the great thing with things like sub stack is it's you know much much harder to come after people and clearly Trump has tried to do that with Michael Wolfe and others but I noticed that there's been an FBI agent who was a whistle blower or intelligence writer who has a sub stack called Spy Talk and sub stack actually have a fund and they have lawyers who work pro bono to reject what we call these slats. Oh that's cool. Sub stack's doing that. Sub stack is doing that and we suddenly have Britain I'm a trustee of a charity and we give money to an organization which works with lawyers to work pro bono to support writers who are basically us have this what we call law fair. So these are strategic law lawsuits from what they call anyway it's a way that basically very powerful people and law of Russian oligarchs have used them to try and suppress free speech and particularly from journalists and reporting on things by tying them up in expensive litigation and the only way sometimes to deal with this is by having good pro bono lawyers to respond. Yeah shout out to those people who do that too because you're absolutely right that is you know I'll speak from America's perspective here I know more about the the system here like I think we have a lot of great things in our system but it's not without its flaws for sure and one glaring flaw that has existed forever is the ability of being able to buy people silenced through as you said law fair where you just put them into hearing after hearing I've had to happen to friends over like bullshit stuff that's not public you know of public interest as a story where they just getting some sorted disagreement with someone and the other person has a lot more mula and then they just keep keep pushing it to where they got to say all right I have to settle this I can't afford it anymore. Well that's exactly what Hopper Collins my publishers did when that I'd take out two two one lines from from the book. What were those? One line was about Melania being introduced to a Trump through Epstein and I said it was the claim that Epstein had made didn't say it was true but they just turned over immediately and said you know we just need to just take this line out and and funnily enough I mean that's clearly I wasn't the only person who said that Michael Wolfe has said it I want to Biden has said it appears in the Epstein revelations but funnily enough I was and the Hamptons literally a few days ago and sat beside a diplomat and I've read I mentioned this and the diplomat said well when I was in Milan it's very well known that Melania was a high-class hooker so you know that's trying to shut the thing down when was that when was she in Milan I don't know I mean whenever the sky was there I mean but clearly before she when she came to out of Slovenia I think yeah we like to say lady of the night here in America. Right lady of the night. We're more responsible on that right. I said nobody ever. I mean it was very well known I mean and you know lots and lots of those stories were there I can't wait till we get a cease and desist on this one. Well the other one the other one they just took out voluntarily and this was this came from a diplomat in the consulate in New York and he said he went to a meeting between Trump and Andrew and all they were talking about was the temporary and the the golf course because of in Scotland but the other thing he said was they were swapping lists of mass hours which were the best lists of mass hours and talking I mean for my language about pussy and of course this is exactly the sort of language that Trump uses and for good measure they took that out but interestingly enough that diplomat said that for the payback he would go on the record but by that stage the dine had been taken out by by Harbour Collins and that no one had complained about that line but they just took it up for good measure but you know we've seen this we know with Trump with so many people I mean they tried one of the things I found when I was trying to find a publicist for my book in America they said well all the big morning shows are not going to report your book because you've been critical of Trump so forget about it and that may be in another reason why he's called Silenham exactly and so you know he has you know we've seen this with the judiciary who've been cowed with the law firms we've seen it with with with the media television services civil service and state department everyone has kind of fallen into line because they're scared my whole thing is you know this is like one of those catch 22 problems I've talked about it before but you would want the part of the reason people lost all trust in the mainstream media in America it was litany of things but when Trump came up it's like what I could never understand is there's already a lot of good material there if you want if you want to attack them if you're in the media and you want to find weaknesses and we can't say this on air because they read it as a racial slur but certain things in the armor if you will that said you know they would go far beyond that and they would make things up about him to the point that it actually developed a semblance of a lot of people feeling empathy for him going oh my god they'll just make up anything about this guy and his response now especially by his second term has been well I'm just going to sue all the press and I hear you it's not great to be lied about for sure and I think like sometimes there should be consequences of course if even people in the press lie about you but the optics and the symbolism of the sitting president of the United States who's you know at least supposed to be the highest man in power suing the fourth estate really bad luck I've said this before I don't I don't care how people take that it's a really bad look you have to fight it out verbally publicly and you know in that case he's won those things. Just above it and I mean they're all family don't tend I mean they do sometimes you know they have NDAs with staff and they do issue issue rits against them and if they prevent a publication of books and they've prevented people sending stories to the papers but generally speaking they kind of ignore the press and neither confirm nor die and and but they then work quietly behind the scenes to kind of undermine the credibility of those people but I mean of course you know Trump is Teflon and people don't seem to care about things I mean people of course tried you know to brought up cases Katie Johnson all these things I mean and and his supporters don't seem to to care about it but you're obviously right he should be setting example and but you know attack has always been his form of defense but you're absolutely right you've got to be careful that people you know he presents himself as a victim and you've got to be careful that you know everyone comes after him and we've seen it and I'm always careful about it that people feed you false information in order to undermine that you're obviously saying can we believe this because actually this has been proven not to be true that's right or this guy has an agenda but it doesn't mean that we know this is the role the press it's the role of writers you know to hold people in power to account and to tell the truth I mean I'm about a historian who our job is to tell the truth about the past and we shouldn't be carried by by bullies whatever happens and I think the more people who do it and there be no the power of social media the power now of sub stack and podcasts it's very difficult now for them to take to take action I mean this is something the royal family have had to respond to I mean they they control the mainstream media through what we call the royal rota so you were kind of you were in the tent they gave you access they get they gave you briefings but now there's so many people commentating outside that it's much more difficult from control and so what they're trying to do is to use the internet and and and just just have their own channels to present stuff and that's clearly what Trump doesn't mean with with you know with with Twitter I mean he puts out his own version of events but we are in this extraordinary position where you know if you talk about fake news enough people think every all news is fake don't you trust I mean even the responsible media I think it's I think it's a boy who cried wolf scenario unfortunately for if the media reports things now that they could be true because they lost a trust in the 2010s I'd say more than anything and then you kind of saw it culminate with covid to where people are like they don't want to hear it now and I understand that but I tried it I do my best to look at things on a case by case basis and look at what the evidence is that's why your podcast is so important I think it's why so so popular to so I mean people want that you know want to hear the truth and they want to hear people kind of being grilled I think it's also a matter of like you gotta always remind yourself and also remind everyone out there listening that like I'm and I'm sitting in this chair just like anyone else would be and I'm just doing my best with the information I have and that doesn't mean you're always going to get it right and when you get it wrong like at least in my experience like I try to be very honest about that with people and be like you know I used to think this this was the pieces of evidence why here's why I think that's not the case anymore and then people will do with that what they will the most important thing to me is like I don't think anyone I think it's human nature people don't want to be told what to think all new drinks are now at McDonald's with freshers like the strawberry water melon refresher and the mango pineapple refresher with popping boba to grafted sodas like the sprite berry blasts with berry flavors and cold foam who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire six all new drinks are here now at McDonald's refreshers contain caffeine I wanted to decide for themselves and I really that's what I got you don't listen to made on this and the people I talk to listen to what we say and then make your own call based on what people say well certainly when I try and do in the books I mean I try and present the evidence and clearly you collect the evidence to present your case but I always try and be as balanced as I can to put another point of view and I leave the the reader to draw on conclusions from the material and you know some of the books and I wrote about a spy called Guy Burgess who was involved in the Cambridge spy ring people you know I some people can still be in all that exactly some people said actually you know I can understand why he did it I think he came across a very sympathetic character I feel very sorry for him others perhaps because of their own I would say prejudices felt you know he was a traitor and stuff but you try and understand why people behave in certain ways but one of the challenges with Andrews is to find anything positive to say about him I mean there was some there were some positive things to say about Sarah Ferguson because she'd done some good work for charity she again presented herself as a victim and she's always been popular in the States because you know people could identify with and sense her struggles she was very open about her her problems with her weight her very low sense of self-esteem and that was I mean I think it was very manipulative but I mean people kind of warmed to her but Andrew funnily enough it doesn't kind of play that game he just he he's so so arrogant and unable to to present to see anyone else's point of view he just kind of just does what he wants to do yeah but yeah I think it's really important that the evidence is presented and then people control their own conclusions yeah there's some things I'm putting a pin in by the way in my head I would definitely if we can get to it today like talk about the Cambridge 5 and and the work you did on that's a really wild spy story from the Cold War and then you keep mentioning the Duke of Windsor I think whenever I bring that up to people a lot of people don't know that story and I think that's that's really fascinating but one quick thing when what we were talking about a few minutes ago you mentioned the the part that was removed about Melania Trump reportedly allegedly pierced back being a lady of the night in in Melan and so that was taken out of your book and maybe this will we'll get a season to assist and this won't be in the podcast anymore at some point but for now while we can put it up I did speak with Amanda Ungaro on the phone a few days ago and she is of course the ex of Palo Zampoly who was an Epstein friend and modeling executive and all that and then the whole thing like he got her arrested by ice using his connections and she has now been deported to Brazil and she was very I was telling you off camera but she was very like honest about some things that she would have been incentivized to lie about as an example she would be incentivized to tell me the Palo talked about Epstein all the time and they knew about him for years instead she said he never once discussed Epstein with me over 25 years and she talked about how she first flew to the United States on Epstein's jet with 30 other models big air quotes there she was 17 at the time but you know one of the things she did say that's fascinating is she said when Melania came to the United States she was very put together I'm like what do you mean and she goes you know it's not like when models or aspiring models come to the US they're you know destitute but they're not wealthy you know they're trying to make it and everything when Melania came she went like this and she's like I don't know where that came from I don't know but that was always interesting to her and I think maybe that's an explanation what you found and you said you were talking to a diplomat who mentioned that yeah senior diplomat I mean he just took it he just said it was it was well known in Milan I keep looking at this case and I've looked at this for years and with Donald Trump he knew Epstein for many years there were some things that were ignored prime example being Maria Farmer would often talk about how he would visit Epstein's office not his house but she went when she worked the front desk at Epstein's office Donald Trump would come in there and a lot of people would kind of in one ear out the other with that one but it was also fascinating that the media of all things that they wouldn't attack him on they would never attack him on the Epstein thing because there were a few things going for him on the record number one he did have a falling out with Epstein it was disputed as to why some people said it's because Epstein came on to a tall hand at 15-year-old girl at Mar-a-Lago in 2004 other people like I believe Brad Edwards the attorney for the victims have said it was actually over a real estate deal they were fighting over and they're both narcissists he and Epstein so they had a falling out but Donald Trump was also the only guy that when Brad Edwards was working the case for the victims in 060708 he was the only powerful figure that he reached out to who said hell yes I'll meet with you and told him everything he knows about Epstein he was also the guy who when he was on the campaign trail in 2015 was going out of his way to talk about Epstein say you need to look into that guy on the island so you would see all these things and you're like okay we always knew Donald Trump was a player he's not exactly a saint with women by any stretch but like you know maybe Maybe he's actually one of the ones who's not like a pedo here of all these people we're looking at. And then it gets to his second term. He makes a campaign promise that he's going to release the files. He only ends up releasing as you've laid out half of what we know about and redacts a lot of stuff as well. Goes out of his way to deflect and protect people and say it's a hoax and like basically do the opposite of what everyone wanted and take the opposite type of tone as to what he previously had been saying for years. And deep and I have looked at this so much and we're like, you know, we haven't seen a smoking gun or anything that he was like one of the pedals. But there has to be a reason he's doing that. Something that is so scandalous that like this can't see this delighted day because the whole argument that like Marjorie Taylor Greene's talked about him saying like a lot of my friends are going to get hurt respectfully. One is Donald Trump ever cared about a friend when, you know, they were on the Titanic together. No, it's all about self interest, absolutely. Like he's not, he's Billy Zane and the Titanic. He's not Jack. He's getting off that boat. But also, I mean, he's shameless. So I mean, any of the stuff shouldn't put him off. Again, one of the interesting things about the diplomat is he said he saw, he saw cables and stuff showing relationship between Epstein and Trump long after 2004. Ooh, that's interesting. So this sense. So it didn't stop in 2004. Are you allowed to say what country this diplomat was from? American diplomat. American diplomat. State diplomat. Very fascinating. Okay. So let's add that to the list. But what we have speculated here, emphasis on speculated, I have no proof for this. I'm just saying to the future judge watching this, how are you doing? Anyway. Allegedly. Allegedly. Well, we have speculated is that perhaps it has something to do with how he met Melania and what the context was there. We weren't even going to the Melan thing you just told me about. But let's say there was an innocent introduction, meaning like Melania was not trafficked here. She was not a part of anything and she just happened to know Epstein and he happened to introduce Donald Trump to her one night and then the rest is history. Even if that were the case, it wouldn't matter. It'd be the biggest scandal of all time, the biggest sex trafficker in modern history introduced the president to the future first lady, like you're done. And I kind of wonder if it is Melania that is like the, in all the wrong ways, like the ace in the hole here, that is the reason that Donald Trump is so averse to whatever is in there coming out. Yeah. Well, it's very interesting. I mean, I think she is, she is the vulnerability for Trump and I mean, she's a loose cannon in some ways. I mean, she's, you know, it's the one era where, you know, she could go off and sell the story. Who knows? She's attached from him and he thinks he can control things but the one person can't control his Melania. So, but, you know, you could argue, this is him just being very protective and a gentleman about his wife's honor. But I don't think he's worried about anyone except himself and maybe possibly barring his son. I mean, that may be the factor. He's not worried about Melania. He's worried about what is, what happens to his son. And that was always something. What about one of the arguments, you know, about the royal family and the way they protect Fergie is not because they care about Fergie, but they don't really want to attract the children. That's right. Can we take a little tangent real quick on your background, if you don't mind? Yes. Well, my background is born in Africa, brought up in Bermuda. You were brought up in Bermuda? Yeah. What's that like? You had the wrong skin tint. Well, I know that so I don't really like going in the sun too much. One of the people who hates going out with the beaches are very unhappy memories for me. So, and then I actually was at school, briefly in Asheville, North Carolina. And I went to Cambridge, did a PhD afterwards, worked in publishing, but I always had this kind of seconds career as a writer and academic and began to write books. And I originally started writing literary biography. I wrote a book about the man who wrote the 39 steps. John Bucken. Who did what? He wrote a book called The 39 Steps, a famous film by Alfred Hitchcock. So, and that was, she was a present the royal family gave to people. They liked it so much because it was connections between Bucken and the royal family. Now they burn it, probably. Oh no. Well, I think it used to give you clout, look what you did. This is the way you treat us now. And then I, my background was writing about spies. I helped set up the spy museum in Washington, for example. I was the part of the eight-man team who did that. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I used to write a lot about spies, and that's how I did the book on Guy Burgess. And then I kind of gravitated into royal books from that. I thought, is there anything that is less secretive than, or more secretive than writing about spies? And that was the royals. And again, I became much more interested about the curation of historical records, the way that we don't always get the full story about the past, the destruction of records. And the royals are a classic example of how the story is sanitized. So, and very few people, serious people were writing about the royals. Lots of tabloid journalists did it based on, basically, handouts from the royals. But no one actually did the digging, looked at the files, went and interviewed people on the periphery. And so this book entitled is part of a trilogy of books, which are kind of doing several things. One of them is ostensibly just looking at royal marriages, and that allows you, of course, to look at the private life as well as the public life, which I think is a perfectly legitimate thing for a biographer to do. I'm often criticized, you know, since it's all salacious gossip, but it's all part of telling the story about a human life. And so the first book was about Lord Louis McBatton, who was the last voice story of India, Prince Philip's uncle, but who had this dark secret at the centre of his life that he was a pedophile. Right. Well, he used the one the IRA blew up. He's one of the IRA blew up in 1979. So again, a very rich life had this open marriage, a very, very happy marriage. So that, I think, intrigued me. Then with the Duke of Windsor, the private side was, you know, was it the great love story through the century was, you know, did what did he give up the crown for the love of Wallace Simpson? Well, did was he maneuvered off the throne because he was totally unsuitable as a king. And that was that because of his personality and his sympathies for the Nazis. And by looking at documents, I, I, the book's called Traitor King, I came to pretty strong conclusion that he colluded with the Nazis, not just before the war, but during the war, certainly up to 1941 and the Americans come into the war, and even after the war. And this was covered up. And then, clearly Andrew, the story was about the happiest towards couple, but of course, it was about this endemic corruption with the royal family. And in all these stories as a cover up, there's a cover up about Guy Burgess, the spy, the attempt to kind of keep the story away from the Americans, to give it away from the British public with Matt Baton. The fact is all the files on Matt Baton and his activities as a pedophile are destroyed closed again with the Duke of Windsor, all the documents. They found documents that he joined the war showing the contact he had with the Germans during the war and those documents, they tried to destroy or prevent from being released. And they hear us the story, American historians, who said, look, we've got this material. This is part of the story about the Second World War and refused, even though it was pressure from Eisenhower and from Churchill and others to suppress this material. Some of it was destroyed. Some of it was delayed for publication until the 50s, but it did come out. And then, of course, with Andrew, the story, the cover up is his monetization of the times a trade envoy, but also the cover up by the royal family of the corruption within it. The fact that both the Queen and now the King knew about this, paid off a junior jiffry and have covered up criminal behavior to protect the institution. And you got to wonder how many times that's happened before? Exactly. All the way back. I mean, we don't know what we don't know. And absolutely, I think that's the really interesting thing. New stuff comes up the whole time. You know, I read about the other day. I mean, there's always been this great debate. Did Queen Victoria have an affair with her servant, John Brown? Did she marry him? Did she have a child with him? Fern Riddle, who's acquired a respected historian, got material from the Brown family, from stuff in the States, from the public library in Aberdeen, which is close to Balmoral, showing that there was certainly some relationship there, probably a sexual one. And so that's history, you know, suddenly being rewritten and revisionist. Now, a great believer historians are not there to repeat what happened. It's to find out, to shift the dial, not to make stuff up, but to take the story forward and to correct it. Correct. Correct. If there's been a cover up, if there's been things that have been hidden, our job is to show that where things weren't right, to be revisionist. I mean, no one wants to buy a book that says the same thing. A lot of people do continue to want to believe what they want to believe. People still believe Churchill was a great leader. And in many respects, of course, he was, but he had a lot of flaws, but you can't say a lot of these things. I mean, I've been reading a book recently about how the campaign for unconditional surrender at the end of the war prevented us doing a deal with the Germans, which would have allowed us to turn on the Russians to stop the subjugation of central Europe and to basically have saved the British empire. But because Roosevelt and Churchill were determined to remain loyal to the Russians because they were doing the fighting in the east and to really push for unconditional surrender and not to do a deal with Germans, which is what the Russians were always worried about. They just didn't want to have us ganging up against them. So, yeah, I mean, you know, there are so many great stories in history, but you're absolutely right. So many stories about the royals as we look at them again and we're picking up stories even going back to the 17th, 18th century, where we're discovering new documents. And I think that's what the exciting thing is, nothing is written in stone about the past. There are always new things for us to discover and to reassess in the light of new documentation and interpretation. It's a big responsibility to, because you want to discover new things, you want to understand where the truth was written, truth and air quotes written by the victors and where maybe some of that needs to be reconsidered. But like as a historian and particularly like as a biographer when you're looking at people, you just said it perfectly. You're like everyone's flawed. You know, there's no one that's perfect and we like to lionize all these figures and pretend that some people were gods and they were just mere mortals. And I think it's important to get that full picture. I think a great example of this is what Walter Isaacson did with Steve Jobs. You know, this is a brilliant man, had so many great things, did so many amazing things while he was here, but also had some horrible drawbacks as well. And I think it's, I think it actually makes him more human to see what that was, right? Absolutely. I mean, the whole tradition in the 19th century was basically to write hagiographies of people and hagiographies. hagiographies are basically where they stuck them on a pedestal and they can do no wrong. And we wouldn't go into the sexuality and all these things. But as you say, it represents a more rounded sympathetic picture in some ways. It shows humanizes them and that's, you know, certainly the role of the biographer. That's why I'm interested in biography, rather than write just history because it's about people. I'm a great believer that people shape events that, you know, a chance things can change the cause of history. Nothing is determinist and Marxist. It's not about grave movements. It's about individuals having the influence to change history. But yeah, absolutely. And, you know, my book on that baton, even though I exposed the pedophilia and they didn't like that, actually was very, I think, sympathetic and of him, sympathetic to the way he was treated by his wife and his marriage. And I think also what you have to do in a book is you have to slightly play with the reader's sympathies. You kind of give them the story and you kind of bring them along. And you want to keep changing their view of that person so that they're constantly surprised. And the way that we're constantly surprised by people who are friends, people we know because people are unpredictable and they're complex. And I always equate writing a biography to almost like a surah painting, a pointillism where you're kind of putting in the dots or you're doing the juxtapuzzle and adding bits. But the pointillism, the picture begins to emerge, but often it's often contradictory information. And people are contradictory. They will behave in one way to someone and in another way to someone else. You know, it's not black and white. And I think unless you understand it, everything is nuanced, then you don't really get the complete picture of someone. How difficult is that though? Like you mentioned the Mountbatten example, because by the way, you're full like run through your life there. I get a lot of questions on the steps here. There's a lot of interesting things you've gotten to do. But you know, you've very bravely also been someone who exposes a lot of people who are in power, who maybe did something as horrible as pedophilia. But you mentioned with Mountbatten in doing that exposing job to where you realize what a monster this guy was. And you got a report on this and everything. How do you still find it in you to have a level of human empathy for a person like that who would use their position to do those types of things and pray upon young people? Well, I think the condition, the thing that kind of influenced me with Mountbatten was discover that he himself was abused as a teenager by a teacher he had, who then later married him, was the ministry who married him. And I think once you kind of see it in that sort of perspective that I mean, he himself was a victim, and I don't understand enough about pedophilia, but they tend to be the pattern of behavior. And the same with Andrew. I mean, there's some suggestion that he may well have been, shall we say, sexualized very early on, taken off to a brothel when he was eight or ten. And if that story is true, and there's no reason for the person who told it to me to have made it up, then that kind of explains the transactional nature of a lot of his relationships, the inability to sustain relationships, the interests and sex workers. And there are moments in them where I talk about his loneliness, I talk about his inability to read the room, but loneliness is a really interesting thing. And I think there was a moment where he is betrayed as a young boy at school, people sell stories about him. He learns that maybe he needs to keep his distance, not become friends with them, not to trust people. And I think that's one of the problems of the raw family. Who do you trust? And then, of course, he's kept separate when he goes to school. He's not mixing with other children. His room where he sleeps is in a different building. He's in the Navy. He doesn't share rooms with the others. He has his own separate accommodation. And so the sense of separateness, I think, becomes, it does make him a more sympathetic character. He becomes a photographer, the thing that interests him. A bleak landscape, a sort of desolation. And he says, this is kind of a reflection of my state of mind. And then, you know, your heart does go out to him. So there's always some redeeming feature. And same with Sarah Ferguson. I mean, I think she rather cynically plays the victim, and she makes up, well, emphasises the fact she was a band and just a child by her mother who went off with another man, brought up by her father. The fact that she always was teased about her weight, etc. She was always getting involved with men who basically took advantage of her abuser. I mean, she took advantage of them. They're always rather rich, but they kind of teased her about her weight. They humiliated her publicly by taking on other lovers. And so you do. And in some ways, you're absolutely right. The biographer of the writer has to kind of engender sympathy for the person, for the reader, because otherwise they're not going to continue reading. And they have to kind of wonder what's coming next, how are they going to behave? What are they going to do in this situation? Will they do as we expect? Will they do something actually pretty extraordinary and different? And so there has to be that narrative tension all the way through that shouldn't always be predictable. And so again, with the with the biographer, you're always choosing your information. I mean, you can you can direct it any way you want, depending on information you collect. But and so under court, and behind it, of course, you have an under under running sort of theme. But you're constantly looking for that little salient detail. It kind of is revealing of the person and their state of mind. So if I'm understanding you correctly, it's the idea that you're not empathetic with what they become, you're empathetic with how they got there. Exactly. So that we can teach people about that and hopefully set an example to be like, "Hey, maybe let's not do this in the future." Yes, I think people read these books. I mean, I was certainly one of the reads I write for read biography is to get an insight into how people behave. I mean, it's one of the reasons we read fiction too, to understand, you know, to get we often identify with things or get an insight into it a while we don't know. But always when you're reading book and that's true writing book, you're looking for moments where you can self-identify with the situation. So for example, a lot of my people I write about, I reflect, could be perceived to be insiders, part of an establishment, but who actually see themselves as outsiders. And that's something that I'm increasingly aware of. The fact that I'm not English, I'm Scottish and French, I have never really sort of wanted to join the gang. I've always kind of done my own thing. I've never had mentors. You never had mentors? No, I've always, I've worked, for example, on my own. I worked, I think the only time I ever worked for anyone else for a year. So I've always kind of done my own thing and I identify with those people like that and I identify with people. So Guy Burgess, though he was an auditorium, he'd been to Cambridge, so a bit like me, you know, you would say well, very privileged background, but actually didn't always identify with the kind of people he had grown up with. And that was one of the reasons he had this loyalty to, to, to, to, what it was about a petty laboratory, it was about getting back at the establishment. He felt a resentment against them. And I'm aware that there is, there is an element of, of, of resentment against, against people behaving badly, I suppose. Nothing wrong with that, for sure. But also, you know, when you, you talk about how there was a theme in your books of like some sort of cover up and it's obviously a cover up at a level of high power. You know, you also mentioned though, it's your job to go look at all the evidence and then tell the story based on what it was and also based on the things that we weren't told that is in there on the record that you can find and prove. When you set out to write something though, you obviously discover what the story is or what the crux of it is and you're like, ooh, you know, maybe for example, with Mountbatten, you're like, there was a cover up as to who he was here. How hard is it to, I don't know, I want to say this, how hard is it to then go through that full process of however long it is to sit there and research everything and write the book and not come to a predetermined conclusion that you had at the beginning if your evidence leads you on a different trail of what you thought. Well, there's never an agenda in my book, but I mean, I do start with suspicions, so I started off with entitled suspicions that Andrew debuts his position, I hadn't realized how badly, but it was a thesis that I wanted to explore. Same with Trader King, I mean, I started off on the assumption that he had been a traitor or that I wanted to make that argument. But clearly, you're constantly adjusting what you say in the light of the evidence you find. And, you know, there were moments where, you know, I questioned Virginia Giffry's testimony, for example, people were feeding me stuff and they would say that the photograph is faked and here is the evidence and she's been inconsistent and so I would take that on board and I had just what I was saying or thinking. I mean, I always write the books right at the end, I don't write as I research, but so, I mean, it's not as if, so constantly, you're kind of adjusting everything and refocusing the camera in the light of what's happening. But generally, yes, you have to have some idea of where you're going. That was Leicester of Mount Batten. I mean, Mount Batten, again, there were issues I felt I needed to look at, so there was a big debate about whether he'd speed it up into independence and the result, he caused a lot of bloodshed, unnecessary bloodshed. Whether he had the de-ep raid in 1942 where a lot of Canadian troops died, had he done this because he was de-ep raid? De-ep raid was basically a test run for D-Day and it was an attempt to land troops on the coast of France just to test, for example, landing techniques, et cetera. In '42? In '42, and it was disaster. So the tanks landed and they were on a shingle and they couldn't move. The bombing had meant that the tanks couldn't get through to the town. And there's always been a big, there were inexperienced troops because, for political reasons, Canadian troops rather than experienced Marines were used. And it's been always been a big debate. Was this about Mount Batten's ego that he just kind of pushed through this thing without properly planning it? Or were there benefits to this? I mean, did we learn lessons for D-Day? It saved lives. And so there were issues. There were controversial moments in Mount Batten's life I wanted to look at. But, you know, the Peterfield, it was never part of the story. And again, the question there was, as I when I discovered some of the stuff. Oh, you discovered that along the way? People that I mean people hinted at it, but it was only when I got, for example, an FBI file that which talked about it. And then, of course, I wrote to the FBI and said, can I have more of these files? And they said, well, actually, they've been destroyed. And I said, when were they destroyed? They said, actually, after you asked for them. But there was other stuff I interviewed a driver from the 1940s who talked about being told to find the hell brothel or mortar. I interviewed his military secretary who began to tell me about the, the, the, the, the, certainly about the bisexuality. So the story kind of emerged. And then the question was, do I drop it in all the way through so that we kind of understand his behavior and the problems in his marriage? Or do I drop it as a bombshell at the end, kind of putting the whole thing together? And I took the decision to have a final chapter, which I call rumors. So I didn't say this is entirely true. But this is what people are saying. This is why I've discovered. And then people had to kind of rethink the book, because they'd read the book, thinking, why did this marriage? Why was this marriage? So why did the woman, his wife, kind of, run off? Why did they have this open marriage? What was the problem? And then, of course, suddenly you have this Eureka moment, when you think, actually, the guy was chasing young boys and other men, then there's maybe there was a reason why it wasn't success. Well, it wasn't conventional. And I think that, you know, and sometimes you are looking as a biographer to create a shot moment in the book. And, you know, people said, well, why didn't you tell us earlier? But, but in some ways, that's what you're doing. You can play around with the reader. You're in charge. You're like the theater director who can kind of stage it in the way you want. That's a hell of a way to do that one. You thought all of this, yeah, well, I wouldn't do 600 pages, no, 300 pages. Usual suspects. There's guys or shows, eh? Yeah. Well, I mean, flashbacks, I think are really good. And you've got a sense of irony and all sorts of things. But you can't do too many flashbacks. You can't play around with your narrative too much. Right. Now, you said you started off as a publisher. Is that? Yes, I mean, I've had a dual career. I've worked as a literary agent since 1985. So I've represented other people's works. And that's been a really good training. So I've probably sold about 2,000 books in 40 years. Wow. And probably a lot more than that. And so you read a lot of stuff. And yet there's a sort of osmosis that you pick up. You learn from the bad writers as well as the good writers. And so, you know, tricks that you learned, short sentences, short chapters, varying the cadence of a sentence, the importance of narrative, the importance of sticking to a story, not going off in too many red herrings, shaping the story, not in the light of the material you've collected, but in the story you want to tell all these things have come kind of from reading other people's work. Oh, that's so cool. So you, like as a kid though, did you write it all yourself? Was that something you were always into or did that develop later through the job? No, I think I wanted to write as a child. I always read a lot as a child. But I never thought that I could make living as a writer. So, so yeah, one of the interesting, you know, nice things is to have this Indian summer in my 60s to kind of do, to do the books that I wish I'd done sooner. So cool. Yeah, because like that, you know, you hear a lot of the stories where guys have to write four or five books that no one reads and then, you know, the six is when it takes off and then they get to do it. It's a long journey sometimes, but you also had, you had your own long journey, you just kind of got in through the back door there. Oh, I did do a lot. I mean, I have done a lot of books and my first book came out in 1992. What was that? So that was a literary guy to Edinburgh. So very different from from all this. He was in Edinburgh for 30 days, different on a play out there. Oh, right. But I'm just about to go up to the festival. So, so I grew up in Edinburgh and I went to University in Edinburgh. And so I wrote, and it's one of my favorite cities, it's from literary associations. Yes. So when were you in Edinburgh? You were born in Bermuda, spent some time there. Born in Africa, lived in Bermuda till 72. And then I lived in, it was school in Edinburgh from 72 to 79. Got it. Okay. But so I kind of meandered around. So, you know, people say this guy has an obsession about the Royal families had it in for a brand new, but actually the kind of I kind of fell into this. I wasn't interested in the roles until a few years ago. But yeah, so I mean, I've done, this is my fifth biography. And you know, the books have done well. They want prizes. They've been, you know, they've, they've sold well, but this was the breakout book, which is why it was so disappointing, not to get a breakout in America. Because, you know, this was a good American subject. People were interested in Epstein and, and, you know, it's a book also that I think has, has, has without being immortal, it's kind of changed history. It did lead to his, I mean, people said, you know, to the end of his titles, you know, it has people to force people to look at the monarchy in a new light. You know, and that is a great, you know, that is kind of what we'd do books for. I mean, and the other books never really had that impact. So, let's hope, I mean, I, you know, I'm aware that I could recede. I've got my Andy Warhol 10 minutes of fame, and that may be it. But, you know, I'm now encouraged to do bigger subjects and to, to be more braver, shall we say, about the stock books I to go out more on the limb. Yeah, I think you've had, I think you've had more in 10 minutes of fame. I mean, I've known your name for a long time. You've been out there writing books, but either way, you know, were you, when you went to write the Andrew one, especially as it was coming together, like we said earlier, this is someone that's living that is different than things you'd written in the past. Did you have any fear that you were knocking on some serious doors that people aren't supposed to knock on? Well, I got a pretty early indication. I mean, even before the book was published, I mean, while I was getting legal letters from Sarah Ferguson, and they was, you know, warning me about that they were watching me, they were monitoring my social media. So, there were attempts to intimidate me from a pretty early stage, but anyone who knows me knows that I don't encourages me more. That's well good for you. That's, I mean, it's, it's, you know, again, not to be conspiratorial about it, but you wonder with some of these really powerful people, if you go a little too far. Well, I mean, you know, you have to be responsible, and you know, you know, you put your reputation on the line with these books and you're going to be very careful. You're walking a tightrope and it's very useful for the tightrope by getting too confident about what you're doing or to get too full of yourself that you know more than you really know. Someone described it like riding a tiger and it is a bit like that. You kind of never know what's going to come from left field or right field. You're responding to a lot of people. You know, I'm not being trained to be in the public eye so, you know, on the day, for example, that Andrew was arrested, I think I had 1500 emails. I mean, my phone never stopped ringing. I have several phones, actually. And I was literally giving five minutes here, five minutes there to try and, you know, help people talk to people as much as possible. But, you know, you are suddenly thrown into the eye of the storm and you can understand how that happens, you know, to people who suddenly get caught in events. That's right. What's your, what's your writing process like for a book like that? How do you do it? How long did it take to write the Andrew book, for example, and what did you do along the way? Did you do all the research before writing? Are you writing while you're researching? How does it work? Yeah, all the books I basically create a cronut for this while I like biography. You have a strong structure to start with. So I create a cronology literally day by day and I let that from secondary material cuts, whatever it is. Newspaper cuttings. Okay. And of course, that gives you the broad outlines. It may not be true, but it gives you people you can contact. It gives you errors to explore, subjects to explore. And then I create a list of people to contact, names that have come up. I then trace them through social media, through reference books, through electoral roles, whatever it is. You had 3000 for Andrew, you said? 3000 people I have a list of, and I contacted. And then you, what do you do? Yeah, you just collect your material and you begin to get a picture. Some of it will be thematics. So you have little thematic sections, you know, it might be on the bisexual, stories you picked up on bisexuality, I picked up a lot of those on Andrew, but couldn't stand them up because a lot of it was just secondhand evidence. Drug use by members of the Royal family, again, couldn't find people to go on the record on that. I had activities from senior British politicians, Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair, again, we couldn't prove it legally. So a lot of that stuff couldn't go in. Is that because just as a question for semantics for me to understand, were you saying for those types of stories, you mentioned a lot of it was secondhand, but was it because people would only agree to be an anonymous source versus put their actual name behind it? There were two problems. Well, sometimes it was secondhand, you know, my girlfriend treated Andrew for HIV. Can I talk to your girlfriend? I've lost touch. So that's no good. But a lot of it was people who, you know, for example, like the diplomat I saw the other day, I haven't named him, but clearly I had a good first source on something, at the back top, something else I had. Again, front enough last night at Tothas Night in the Houtons. A woman came up to me, Peggy Siegel, who's quite a well-known publicist. Peggy Siegel came up to you in the Hampton's the other night. Yeah, last night. My cue that Dan had. Okay, yeah, please, do tell me about it. And said, I, you know, I've got some stuff I can tell you about. So she's, Peggy Siegel told you, she's got some stuff she can tell you about. Yep. So that would be a first hand source. Yeah, and I think she seems to have to go on the record. She's come forward and volunteer to self. So why do you think she did that? Peggy Siegel for people out there. She's the famous New York PR lady who was helping Jeffrey Epstein. Recraft dollars PR has a lot of cringy emails in the Epstein files, represented fucking everybody in New York. Why is she talking to you on this? Good question. Good question. I mean, you know, people come out of the woodwork. I had someone a few days ago, I worked, I worked at Buckingham Palace. I want to, can I talk to you? I get, I think I had about 60 people who came to me after the book got published. And whether, you know, they are on fishing expeditions out to, to give me false information, people who just have a reciprocal, a vehicle for, for getting a story out that they've wanted to get out, revenge, want to be on the right side of history. People have a whole series of motivations. But of course, you listen to them and it all adds to the picture. But fun enough, what Peggy Siegel did tell, tell me last night was about a relationship that Andrew had with a well-known American news personality, which I knew about, but I only had it from one source. And now she's given me the second source, the one called Felicia Taylor, who's now dead. So that was, sorry, is that the woman he had the affair with? The long affair with Felicia. Felicia Taylor, yeah, who worked for CNN. Felicia Taylor, I'm not familiar with her. So this is one you had heard before, but now Peggy Siegel, who knew and you heard, is telling you straight up that he had an affair with her. I guess while he was married to Fergie, is that the implication? Yeah, well, he divorced Fergie in 1992. So perfectly available. But there are a lot of famous woman he had affairs with that I just couldn't write about because I only had it from one source. And also, you know, Fergie denied a lot of her affairs. She denied an affair, for example, with an Austrian tennis player called Thomas Muster. She crossed, she flown to Australia to see him, having seen him perform, I think, in Miami. And she denied it. And then I actually talked to someone, this hasn't gone into the book. So you heard him for the first time. Here we go. Look at this. But I talked to a journalist who was there, a tennis correspondent who said, actually, I saw just appear into the room with Thomas Muster into the suite. So I mean, it's not just that, and she gave me a dozen pictures of the two of them kind of commutely. And we had the same thing with Fergie's relationship with P. Diddy, which, you know, she came out and P. Diddy came out and denied the relationship and said, this is just a false allegation. You can't believe it. And then 60 minutes in Australia came out with an interview with Roger Bones. P. Diddy's head of security saying, yeah, it's true. So time and time again, all this P. Diddy was, P. Diddy was slamming, slamming, working. You said that. I was trying to look out for a wife over here. P. Diddy and Fergie were, she loves black men, bad boys, rappers, he fucked everything that moved. Yeah, well, yeah, he did, he did. Wow. So he loved, he sucked up the royal family, he loved it and she loved, she loves rappers. She had a rapper perform at her daughter's 13th birthday party. And she would take 16-year-old Eugenie to the sex parties that P. Diddy had. You have, you have that on record that you did that? That's on record. Eugenie was going to the yacht parties. I mean, and where things began to happen. And I trace the relationship back to 2002 and then the papers subsequently had pictures of him of the two of them at his 1998 birthday party. So they were made. Oh, they were early, early. Much earlier than I even said. So constantly you have stories and then actually you get more information once the story comes up, other people come forward. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that Peggy Segal, he is showing her face in the Hamptons, but B is walking right up to you and giving you some. I mean, we've covered some of the emails that even popped up in the files with her, which are just like, you want to talk about a PR disaster. She's talking about like, what was it, Steve? Can we pull it up on jmail.world where she and Epstein are talking about getting him, finding him a woman to have a child with? You remember what I'm talking about? We covered that in an episode. It's like, you know, and she was, and she knew damn well everything was accused of, she was helping him. That's her number. You can't take it. I'm getting so, I'm getting so sued in this episode. God damn. But like in for Penny, you know, she's the one who's trying to resurrect his image who has to know all the details of what he did. And she's so flippant in talking it in like joking with him. In my opinion, the way they're talking about it is like, for lack of a better way putting it, finding him a piece of meat that he can inseminate in effect. You know, and if you are going to talk with her selfishly here, I'd love to hear her make any attempt to, yeah, deep has it right here. So Peggy Seagull, this is from, what date is that deep up there? Go to the top. These are from 2011, 2011. So August, almost, almost 15 years to the day to J.E vacation. Peggy Seagull says, a baby mama, if I wasn't 102, I would take that job in a nanos. Sorry, I forgot about that one. In a nanos second, can I be anti-mame redacted? I would be excellent at that job. Here is the problem. You have to find someone who will take it as a business deal and not get crazy emotional. A top girl will want a real relationship with the father. A girl who wants a certain life that still can't get it any other way as a candidate, but must be stable like a rock looking. Well, I would like to say it's my charm that's persuaded of, but she just turned up. But it could be the accent. That may go a long way. You do have it. It's a very disarming thing that British accent makes people very comfortable. So that maybe helps. It doesn't always help in Britain. But again, because I have written books based on very clear sources, I think a lot of people perhaps trusted me. And I mean, there's a lot of people to talk to me and I haven't said the stuff that they told me about in the way that you've preserved your sources. But I think one of the really interesting things is that I had for example Andrews, Commander in the Forklunds, his naval mentor, they went on the record for the book. And I think when other people see that and other people have kind of raised their heads, it encourages other people to come forward. And I hope I haven't betrayed any of the confidences of what people say. I always clear everything I've written with people. And I mean, I have had moments where people then actually decide that they don't want to or they wanted to be disguised, having said they'll talk on the record. And I always say, you know, this is all off the record. And then I think say, is there some stuff? Well, a bit like you, is there some stuff that we can put on the record? And sometimes they'll say, no, sometimes they'll, it's about, it's about, it's a seduction process. And as people begin to trust you and feel more comfortable, they are more prepared to talk. Yeah, I find in those conversations I've had, I really treat that with kid gloves in the sense that I'm going to always err on the safe side with things. Like when I was recounting that conversation the other day when we went on and did our episode, there were a few things that I was about to say that I now know would have been fine to say on there. But I was like, you know what? Well, it's a long, it's always about long term relationships. And I mean, when I did the Matt Batten book, I talked to one of the mistresses of Matt Batten. Now, one of the things that Royal Family do is they pass the mistresses on. So they kind of pass the mistresses on to the other members of the Royal Family. It's like a sort of game of parcel. But yeah, parcel parcel. And so one of these women also became Phillips and mistress. And wait, the father? So she was a lot younger. Actually, this happened with two different women. But I never thought I would be moving on to doing, for example, a book on Phillips. So now I can begin to talk to some of these people again because I kind of didn't blow it with them. I didn't or didn't say everything I could have said. But yeah, they were odd. I mean, there's one woman. I mean, this is now very much in the public domain. But Matt Batten had an affair with a woman who was 40 years younger than him, who was his goddaughter. And then she was then passed on to Philip, who was only 20 years older than her. Is that the one whose child died? No, that's not Penny, Matt Batten. No, it's a one called Sasha Abacorn. But another of those aristocrats. So they kind of keep it very much within a very tight little group. Yeah, tight little family. I was thinking this earlier too. It's a good time to ask you because I just thought of it again. But like, where does the royal family stop? Right? So eventually the kids of the kids of the kids of the kids of the kids are born that are not in the direct line of secession. And they become 35th, 65th, 105th, 150th. Well, it's a good question. And in fact, she it's been an issue in the newspapers today because I mean, we're all related to the worlds eventually. It's some, it's some remove. And I think the birth of Eugenie's third child, which has pushed, I think, Princess Anne to 19th in the line of secession and Edward to 17th, makes the whole thing ridiculous. So people are now calling for them. Basically, it only the first five to be in the line of secession to get rid of Andrew and his family out and Harry's and his family out. And that kind of would bump up Anne and Edward, who are working roles. That needs to be the distinction. Those who are working roles, doing public duties, I think should be in the line of secession, they should get all the perks. But if you're not doing anything, then you shouldn't like the York daughters have basically royal accommodation which is paid for by the taxpayer when you're not doing anything. But it is, it's a really interesting question where do you draw the line? And again, with titles, you know, traditionally the child of the second son would be the Duke of York. So, I mean, I think there'll ever be another Duke of York because it's now being tainted. There'll never be another Duke of Windsor. But we saw with the Duke of Edinburgh, for example, that that title was passed on to Edward. So, Princess, the fourth son. So, Andrew was made a Duke of York on his wedding day. Charles was, I think, already a Duke of Cornwall or something. But Edward was only the Earl of Wessex. So, he was kind of lower down the pecking order, but he was kind of waiting. And Charles made him wait a little time after the father, their father died before he made him Duke of Edinburgh. But Edward's son, who is now the Earl of Wessex, James, will not be Duke of Edinburgh, I'm told. So, these kind of titles get kind of shifted around a bit. What does that even mean to be the Duke of Edinburgh, like when they show up or they like the King or of that place? - Well, I think it's just, you know, you're a royal Duke. It gives you a certain status. And it is all about status. That's why Andrew was so, you know, he signed himself Duke of York and Knight of the Garter. I mean, these symbols mattered a lot to them. For most of us, it doesn't matter at all. But, yeah, it gives you a certain position in the pecking order. And I think it is all about the hierarchy and the status. And that's why I think you're pointing about, you know, basically being pushed down from number two to, I think, eight or nine now. It does kind of affect you. You become less and less relevant. But, you know, that's true of anything. I mean, if you're in the family business or lots of jobs, you become less and less important and move out. You know, we're seeing increasingly in professional life, you know, people rise to top of their careers, not the age of 65, but probably the age of 35. And then people become free-lancers, they become consultants to go. So, you know, the whole pattern of our life is different. And it's about adjusting. And Anne and Edward have done that. Andrew couldn't do that. He's kind of high bound with tradition because he doesn't have the imagination to see that there are other options. And there are many ways that you can create a life yourself. Philip did that really successfully. Prince Philip married the Queen. Probably would have risen to the top of the Navy if the Queen hadn't inherited in 1952. And if the Duke of Windsor, even if he hadn't had children, had actually come to the throne, the Queen wouldn't have become Queen till 1972. Philip would have been 50 then. And he probably would have been an admiral. And it'd be a very, very different story. But he had to give up his career. He had to kind of create a role for himself. He was always walking as this alpha male, three steps behind the Queen. The courtyards weren't giving him any obvious role. He wasn't actually made consort. I mean, normally when you're a king, your wife is a Queen. I mean, like Camelero, a Queen mother. But he was just a prince of the realm. And he created a job for himself. You know, he championed technology in the environment, created outward bounds in the Duke of Edinburgh scheme. So he found a role for himself quite separately and made the most of the job. And that's clearly what Andrew could have done with a bit of direction and with a bit of self-discipline. I mean, there was always a jealousy from Charles because Charles felt that Andrew had never had the pressure on him that Charles had the pressure to get married, for example. He was able to have a career in the Navy. People were actually less critical of him about girls and stuff. He had a pretty good life. And if you'd played it right, he was very popular. He was seen as the poster boy of the Royal Family. And so now he's this pariah. But we forget that at one point they were presenting him as the future of the Royal Family. Fergie, Charles would say to Diana, why can't you be more like Fergie? She's natural. She's lived life. She's had a career. People like she's down to earth and she was popular. And then I suppose character comes out. People realize that it was all about freebies. It was all about using the system. It was not about public service. It was about private pleasure. Yeah, I think that's a pattern we've seen a bunch. They also have, though. You've been mentioned in some real estate they have in different houses. Obviously, the different royals will live at. But they got as far as palaces go, they got Buckingham, they got Sanderingham, they have Balmoral. There's another one down outside. Well, you've got to make a distinction. So there are palaces like Buckingham Palace, which are basically not theirs. It's for their use. And again, one of the criticisms is the British public has just paid millions of pounds to refurbish Buckingham Palace on the basis that he was going to live there, Charles and Camilla. Did they have a say in that? Well, no, they had no say in it. We're very rarely have a say when it comes to the royal family and their money being spent. And that's part of the problem. And then why you defend this, do you? Come on. Maybe I persuaded you to be a reluctant royalist. It's I'm joking. He's a Scottish indifference. He's just a ra. So, but then, but he wants to live in Clarence House, which is also an effect owned by the public. So the royal family do own under their own in their own right and number of palaces. So they own-- Bell moral in Scotland, the own Birk Hall, which is another place nearby in Kragorn Lodge. The Queen Mother Board, a place called the Castle of May, right at the top of Scotland. Yes. Charles has a house in Transylvania, he's brought another house in Wales. He's owned a high grove. In fact, high grove is now owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, so he actually pays rent to William on that. So they have. It's the Duchy of Cornwall. The Duchy of Cornwall is basically a slush fund for the King. Sorry, but the Prince of Wales. And that goes back to the 13th century. They own a ton of real estate in London. And they own a lot of estate, either in London or Cornwall, and they own the seabed around Britain. So they have. Do we even know how much that's worth? Billions. I think it's 32 billion or something. A lot of money. Exactly. I think there's things in there we don't know about. Oh, absolutely. I mean, we have no idea the proper valuation. I mean, they do. They say they pay tax, but we don't know and how much they pay, but we don't know what they're paying tax on, and what they're setting off against tax. Like, didn't they rent out. Oh, I forget the name of it now. It's so bad. But like, when Muhammad al-Fayed owned those stores, what's that called? That historic center in London? Harrods, nice bridge. Harrods, yeah. Don't they like own that? And they rented that out to them? Am I misremembered? I don't know about Harrods, but they certainly own large parts of Central London. And I mean, certainly bits of Cornwall, they're not always the best landlords. They own the seabed, and of course, they've made a lot of money from wind farms on the seabed. But they charge lifeboat stations, they charge the prison service because they're for prisons that they own, they charge hospital prison, or they own the land that prisons are on and they have to pay rent for that. And they take commercial rent. They run it as a commercial enterprise, they charge people for hospital parking, for example. The royal families charge in people. They own the parking in hospitals, their own warehouses, ware ambulances are stored overnight. So that's one of the criticisms that they're making money off in effect, you know, public things. When they should be kind of on one hand, they're saying we're all in favor of dealing with homelessness. And yet they have all these palaces, most of which are empty. So they're going to have to rethink how these palaces are re-used. And one of the arguments that myself and others have said is Bucking Palace should be open to the public. People should be charged to go around it. You can only go around part of it at the moment. Bucking Palace gardens should be open. There's no security risk there. So the lot of things they could do to, in a sense, just win the public relations battle. I mean, the poor old taxpayers aren't going to pay a huge sum for a memorial to create the Queen, the Queen Elizabeth II. So why can't they, if they want to have a big memorial to their mother, why can't they pay for it? You know, at a time where there's an economic crisis in Britain, people are suffering. There are big debates about whether we can afford defense, for example. There's time when there's a huge threat. We have a huge problems with social care. We have a huge welfare bill. Taxes are being forced to be pushed up in order to pay for all the demands. And yet were the taxpayers paying large sums of money for a memorial for the Queen, which they haven't really had any sale on when the royal family could put up a memorial themselves? What do you, you had mentioned earlier as well, that this particular line that's in charge of the royal family, like the actual royal family now, and we've talked about this before, but like they have direct ties to actually being German by blood and they changed their name to Windsor from Moesda name again. The Saxo-Cobo Gotham. So what is the history there? Well, the royal family is not really British. It's a mixture of, I mean, Prince Philip was everyone thought he was Greek, his father was Prince Andrew Greece, but actually he came originally from Denmark, and a lot of his relations came from Germany. So, really until the Queen Mother married George, the future George VI, and I think 1923, they were all, basically, foreign princesses. They came from Denmark or Germany or Greece, and that of course created this huge network, for example, Victoria's children, all kind of intermarried. But the British royal family was actually Saxo-Coboac, and then there was a very strong and German feeling during the First World War. Matt Batton's father, in fact, was the first sealant. He liked around the Navy, but he was German. He was forced to step down, and henceforth they took on, basically, invented this name of Windsor from Windsor Castle. And then there was later a big debate about when Matt Batton married into the family. Matt Batton, again, was an invented name. They were actually princes of Hest, children of the Germans, and so Matt Batton, elder of brother, became the Earl of Medina, and he became Lord Louis Matt Batton. And so they all took on British titles, and he took on a new name Matt Batton just from Battonburg. It's kind of a hard name. It's a nice name. It's a nice name. Yeah. But then when the Prince Charles was born, Philip said, "Well, this is my child. I'm called Matt Batton. I've taken on this name." So he shouldn't be Christian to Windsor. He should be Christian to Matt Batton. And Matt Batton, Lord Matt Batton was thrilled and said, "Okay, the House of Matt Batton now reigns." And Churchill and others said, "Look, you've just taken on this new surname, Windsor. You can't kind of now call yourself Matt Batton." And so they came up again with a compromise. When Andrew was born in 1960, they said, henceforth, there'll be known as Matt Batton Windsor, which is why he's now known as Andrew Matt Batton Windsor. And if you look at other members of the royal family, when they sign the register, when they get married or the baptisms, the surname is Matt Batton Windsor. Now you've been mentioning today your next project you're working on is Prince Philip and writing about his life. It was quite unique. And you just laid out some of the familial history there with Greece, via Denmark and all that. But, you know, you also were talking about what an alpha male this guy was. And yet he did in marrying the queen, young, basically have to stop his rise in the military and come in and be the guy that I think you said walked three paces behind the queen. Was that something that he ever got used to or was that a lifelong struggle of like him being like, "Why? As the guy, why am I the second fiddle here?" No, I think he understood it. I mean, he was a highly intelligent man. I think he accepted that was the role here to play. And I think one of his great strengths was this strong sense of public service and duty and people I've drifted respect for that. I mean, he was working doing a pretty heavy schedule of events, I mean, into his 90s. But I do think there was a point where, you know, he got slightly bored with the whole thing and kind of went through the motions. So certainly I'm picking up stories that he would appear. He would do the public events, but he would kind of disappear up the back door. Things he didn't like doing, for example, the queen was very interested in horse racing. She used to bet on the horses. She was a trainer, so ask it for her. Each year was very important, where he was interested. He was interested in polo, but not in racing. So he would kind of accompany her, but he would kind of disappear at the back door once he kind of done his public duties there. So I think he came to the accommodation and he clearly had developed his own interests. And in championing science and technology and in the environment, he was very interested in a ton of religions, particularly things like Greek orthodoxy, which was the church he'd originally been brought up into. His mother was a nun, in fact, was a nun, exactly. So he, and he was one of wide intellectual curiosity. And he was interested in photographing UFOs, and very interesting in terms of-- He was based on UFOs, he liked that. He believed in UFOs. I mean, he kind of went out on a limb. I see the thumbnail. But he was a very brave man in some respects. He didn't care what people thought, and he was very much a man of the people. He mixed very easily with people from all sorts of backgrounds. So he-- A whole lot of one second. I got to go back to that. So he was like a big alien's guy. This is breaking news. Yes, and I think he claimed it, but like my back to have seen UFOs. No kidding. And he was very open about it. People would smile and laugh, but he didn't care. I mean, he was-- that was a good example. He was his own man. So he thought he had seen UFOs in aliens. He never looked in his own household to see if maybe they were the aliens. I got a laugh over there. Well, yeah, I mean, he didn't care what people thought. He was his own man. And I think that's one of the things I really like about him, that he was-- he could be very brusqu and temperamental and arrogant, but and rude and racist and all sorts of things. I mean, complex man, emotionally completely retarded. I mean, his mom was sent to a mental home. He was abandoned by his family. His father went off with the mistresses. He was brought up by older sisters and grandmothers and staff. His four sisters married Nazis. I mean, you know, I'm pretty, pretty. interesting background. But yeah, he did kind of go and do his own thing. So one of the things he used to do was he had, they had very separate lives, the Queen and Philip in terms of their love lives, you know, I think it's pretty well known that he had various mistresses, which the best known was Penny Mountbatten at the end of his life. They didn't sleep in the same bed either. Well, we know when Michael Fagan broke into the Buckingham Palace, you know, he found that they had separate beds, but that's true of a lot of them, Charles and Camilla have separate beds. Really? Or at some times have separate beds. A lot of them do. So it's often interconnecting doors, for example. And it was very interesting when I talked to some of the ambassadors about to fill up on some of the trips, you know, he would have interconnecting doors with one of the, there will be interconnecting doors with one of the woman accompanying him, who would be, who would be, I don't know, a lady typist or who would be just part of his lady in waiting wherever. They always had kind of descriptions, but lady in waiting might be a good one. A lady in waiting is pretty, yeah. That's a good little, it's a good euphemism. Absolutely. Absolutely. Real quick. And I just got to go to the bathroom real fast and we'll come right back. All right. We're back. So actually the very first thing that I can remember in my life, like when you go back and you can't really remember when you're like two years older, one years older, anything like that. But the first thing I ever remember was across from my bedroom, my childhood bedroom was like a smaller room. It was like kind of like a half bedroom. So my dad would use it early in the morning to like get ready in there and go to work and not wake up my mom. And I remember waking up and walking in the room. And he was sitting down in front of the TV. And the TV was playing Diana's funeral. And you saw it was the part where they were driving the the purse up the highway with the flowers. And they had to stop and pull all the flowers off the windshield. And I walked in and he didn't realize I walked in and I said something to him like, what's this dad? And he panicked because he realized, oh shit, I have to explain death to my son now. I've been caught walking watching a program about the royals. Right. Well, that's what my son got to think of me. Yeah. I'm a closet royalist. He's like, does this make me gay? No. But he. So he was like explaining, he was like, ah, they're driving the princess to heaven or something like it was actually like pretty good thinking on his feet to do. I was like, okay, that makes sense. But it because it was my first memory, it was something that like later in my life, I started to get really interested in her life and what she had done. And she was again, like everyone a flawed individual, but a really fascinating character, someone who was from the inside of society, but outside the royal family knew the world a little bit outside the royal family, but had to come in really young and then even like had her own voice. And it didn't like that. Yeah. Well, that's really interesting what you say because I mean, I think of almost the royal family. She's the most interesting. And that's a really good example about how a narrative was created. I mean, and people clearly have very strong views either way about her and more so even than Meghan Markle. But, you know, when she died, I kind of had bought into the narrative, which was presented very much by Charles's side. And we, this is now all come out that she was, you know, she was a very disaffected and a bit nuts. And now increasingly, I'm the more and more I read about her. I think she was wronged. I mean, you know, Charles was having this affair with Kamela all the way through, right? I mean, he never written. She was kind of just a rude mayor, I mean, for breeding purposes. And she was a sort of lamb to slaughter as a young girl. And though sometimes she overreacted and was a bit emotional, my sympathies are much more now with Diana than they are with Charles. And that was, you know, that was very much a campaign. I mean, he paid, he supported, for example, by Penny Junior, a British writer to basically discredit her to say she had psychiatric problems. And, you know, she was trying to do her defense by doing her interview on panorama and stuff. But my views are very much changed. And fun enough yesterday, I was reading a book that I've been sent where my agents had about Diana. Well, it's not being published yet, but it's a series of tapes that she did with people before she died in preparation for a book, but more than no, no, no, but with someone else, but a bit like the Morton, but actually going much further than the Morton in terms of some of the things that she was talking about. And in fact, some of the stuff was so sensational that a no publisher would touch it and no agent would touch it. And so they kind of come to me as one of the few people who has mad enough to perhaps do this sort of book. So, and I think clearly the timing for that is the 30th anniversary her death, which is next August. And the clear. Did you just read it or have you heard the tapes too? Well, half way through the book. And I haven't I've asked to see the I've seen transcripts, but I haven't heard the tapes. I've asked to see the tapes. And you say, because she famously obviously passed tapes through an intermediary to Andrew Morton that later came out and was the genesis of the biography he wrote, but you say that the claims and this and I won't make you go on the record with stuff that's off record, but you say the claims and this are way more salacious than things we've heard in the past. Yes, really shocking things. And I mean, again, you know, I've got to be careful about rotation. So you've got to I've got to check up where I can verify the information to some things that said, but it kind of rings true. I mean, she talks about a childhood being sexually abused as a child, for example. And really, really revealing stuff that go a lot further than what she said about Morton. And a lot of stuff clearly about, yeah, the way she was basically led like a lamb to the slaughter, by the very cynically, I think by the raw family, that they didn't want things to change. Charles had to basically was under pressure to get married and the feeling was that kind of she would do. I think looking at her life, the thing about her that's so unique is that even though she was in that royal family, and again, it's not like she came from a poor side of society before that people could really see themselves in her. Like she, you know, she was the one that would go hug the AIDS patient when that was something you just didn't do. You know, and yet she represented the royal family doing that. She was the one who cared about children. She was the one who saw her kids as something more than just a number in the line, you know. I think they saw her as a real threat and you're absolutely right. We now congratulate Catherine for kind of bringing up her children in a normal way, but actually Diana, it was doing that, she was taking off to fun parks and breaking away from this very stiff sort of way the royals were brought up, but you're absolutely right. She broke, you know, and they still do it. The royals think they've done their bit by turning up some or shaking hands and opening up, you know, pulling a string, and she kind of got down and dirty with people and kind of pushed the whole thing towards charity and a few key charities, which you can see William has kind of picked up on. But also, you see, and this is one of the tragedies of Harry, you see that charisma that Harry had, but before he got involved with Meghan, that, you know, he inherited from his mother in a way that William is much stiffer. I mean, clearly the older child could speak more careful. But yeah, she had this extraordinary quality, and for a woman, you know, who was not very bright, not at all well educated, was still very young, you know, she did become an extraordinary figure. And yeah, I think they really were worried. I mean, Charles was always, of course, very jealous of her because, of course, of her attention. And also the way she kind of flowered like a sort of butterfly, you know, that, you know, she was a pretty, I mean, a pretty girl, but I mean, by losing weight, she became this extraordinary sort of goddess like figure. Yes. And she, you know, she was like a fashion symbol around the world, most, maybe the most famous woman by math to ever live as far as like brand awareness around the world. So, you know, that's the other thing too. As far as I know, correct me from wrong here, that was in a ranged marriage in the sense that that's not something he ever wanted. And I, if I am correct about that, I do empathize with that a little bit because it's like he's forced to marry someone that he doesn't want to spend his life with. And then what do you expect to happen? Yes. Well, I think, you know, the assumption was that, that, you know, he had to get married. He couldn't get married to Kamala. She was, well, by that stage, she was already married herself. But, you know, they needed to find a young, virginal bride, and she would do, she comes from a good family, and she's young, and she won't, she'll be valuable. So, I feel sorry, I mean, I feel sorry for him because he thought he had to go through this. But I think he'd always thought he was going to be just able to carry on as normal once she produced two children. And she did produce a child very quickly. And I mean, there's a very interesting section in the book about how basically, you know, they would, you know, she was kind of kept at Bel moral, as a sort of, you know, timings. And things happened when, you know, she was at the right position, the position in her period to produce a child. It was all done very scientifically. But, you know, sad for her, because I think she did love him, feel that even if he didn't love her then, that he would grow to love her, and didn't realize, I mean, it was plotted by the two grandparents. two grandmothers, Ruth Lady for Moe and the Queen Mother. And that's the Queen and Prince Philip had an arrange marriage. I mean, Philip was basically penniless. He was seen as suitable. Again, the Queen was in love with him and she was very happy. But he kind of thought he was kind of pushed into it. And we know that from Dari entries going back to the 1940, we have a 41, 42, where Matt Baton and the King of Greece, for example, are talking about the marriage. And, you know, clearly, some of these marriages, like it worked for the King and, sorry, for the Queen and Prince Philip. And actually, if you go back, supposedly, it was the Queen Mother was in love with Edward VIII rather than with Bertie. And Bertie asked her several times and she turned Bertie down and eventually kind of, she kind of conceded. And I think that did become a happy marriage. So, you know, that's a long tradition. You know, have your ears and then you can go off and do your own thing. And the problem was in 1981, when they got married, you know, you still had to have a virginal bride. By the time '86 came along and Fergie was on the scene, I mean, okay, it was only the second son. That was less important to factor. And I don't think it would be a factor now. I mean, everyone is assumed that Catherine had boyfriends before she married William. Right, different time, I guess. Do you think Diana ever loved Charles or she loved the idea of him? No, I think she did love Charles. You know, I think she. I think Fergie loved the idea of the monarchy. I think there's certain people who suspect that Catherine loved the idea of getting involved with becoming queen. And Sophie Duchess of Edinburgh was prepared to do that. And I think in some ways, you know, that's not a bad thing. I mean, there are a lot of women who just don't want that. I mean, a lot of girlfriends for Charles didn't want that and turned them down. You can go crest a bonus and Chelsea. It was Chelsea Davis, who was the girlfriend of Harry. But they all didn't want to. I mean, they didn't want Harry, but they didn't want to go to become members of our family. And I think both Catherine and Sophie were prepared to put up with that. I mean, I'm sure they loved their husbands as well. But, you know, they were prepared to buy into it. I think Diana. No, I think it was a genuine belief. Because in some ways, you know, she never exploited a royal position. There are no stories of her monetizing a position even after she left. You know, she always. I mean, she devoted the time to charity. But I'd never come across any evidence of her being paid to do things. You know, she wanted to get involved with rich men because she wanted the security that came from that. And people were being able to pay for security. But I never felt that she embarrassed the royal family in the way that Fergie and Meghan Markle have. So I think she's, you know, a quite respectable figure in that respect. And I think her reputation will grow as people look back. Definitely a legendary figure already was a legend. The instant she died, I mean, it's like monumental event in world history. It's kind of crazy to think about. But when when Dief and I were in Paris in December, the last night there, he was like, yo, we should go to this bar Hemingway, which is a bar in the back of the Ritz hotel in Paris. Which is really cool because Ernst Hemingway, obviously a legend. He used to be at the Ritz for months at a time. And so they ended up opening up this bar maybe in like the 1980s. 1980s where it's a very small exclusive bar in the back of the Ritz where they have all of his pictures, letters that he wrote from on the Ritz letterhead and everything. It's just like if you're if you love Hemingway and history, go go there. Oh, yeah, you've never been. I know you got to go this place. So we're like, all right, let's go do it. And I'm saying to myself, I'm like, Dief, they don't let people like us in a place like the Ritz. I don't know if this is going to work. He's like, all right, we'll try it. So we walk up to the front and we just acted like, you know, yeah, we're going to bar Hemingway. And you see a couple of the Ritz guards. They're like, I'm like, yeah, in the back and they're like, yeah, I go the back. So we're like, oh, shit, we're in. And he goes through this place and it's like again, you're seeing like sultans on the side in the opening bar right there. Then you go through all these like Gucci stores with the people with white gloves on and everything. And it's it's really amazing. But you get to the back where the bar is. And, you know, the Ritz is basically like a whole city block. So all the way in the back, once you walk through those doors, you wouldn't, if you were on the other side looking in, you wouldn't even know, in my opinion, this is the Ritz. It's like kind of nondescript. And bar Hemingway is through these little curtains on the side. So Dief and I get there, we wait in the line. There's only like, how many seats are in there, Dief, maybe like 25, 20, 25. So it's like pretty exclusive, but we were like number 12 in line. So we got in and I'm sitting there and I'm looking at the curtains. And then it just hit me. I was like, oh, shit, Dief. This is where Diana went out. Like she left through that they snuck her through the back door to Rue Cambon right there. And then two minutes later, poof, you know, that unfortunately, obviously had the crash and she was dead. And I googled it really quick and I was like, yeah, that's right where it was. And that was like kind of trippy to be there. But you know, her death now almost 30 years later, I think we're at 29 almost exactly right now as we record this, is still something that people are very, very suspicious of. Because unlike other people in the car who were killed on impact, she was actually killed by I think like a small vessel in her heart that they couldn't see. Exactly. It was probably the internal bleeding. And there was the whole thing where they took a long route to a different hospital from there and everything. And again, she had transcended the royal family at that point. She was bigger. This is the mass media era. She was a brand problem in some ways for them. You know, have you ever looked at that one and said something's wrong there or something else happened? Yes, I have. I mean, there are some books which I read and that watch TV programs and then you're absolutely right. There are a lot of anomalies about what happened and mysteries and, you know, the delay. I mean, they stopped the ambulance literally at the gates to the hospital and to do the work on her. And certainly the tradition normally in Britain is what is they call scoop and run, which is to bring people to hospital as soon as possible was there they seem to be treating her in the ambulance. You're absolutely right. There are a lot of unexplained stories. And, funny enough, I did talk to a man who was involved in some of the the Paget Commission, which was one of the investigations. And he said that he was an expert witness. He was called because of his expertise and verse things. And in the end, they didn't use his evidence and he kind of felt the whole thing was a bit of a cover-up. And I'm sure for the anniversary there will be a lot of books coming out. I think the big problem with the story is who killed her and why did they kill her? And no one's ever really been able to put forward a satisfaction explanation. I mean, to say that it was fired that the Phillips behind it is ridiculous to say that British intelligence services were behind it doesn't really make sense. But, you know, there are a lot of there are lots of things about blood samples from Henri Paul, the driver that don't add up problems with the car. The fact that some people say her seat belt wasn't working, which is why she wasn't wearing it. The story's about actually she and Dodie were taking cocaine, which is why they weren't having wearing the seat belts. And that's what's being covered up. Some people say it's to do with drug dealers out to get Dodie and she was just collateral damage. But, you know, huge, huge mysteries. And of course, when people die suddenly and people find it very hard to believe that could have happened, then of course there will be speculation. And I think one of the problems is one of my arguments from the importance of transparency is if you don't provide, if you cover up things, then you create this vacuum for speculation and fantasy. So my mind is kind of open, but I'm certainly not dismissing that something doesn't add up there and I'm sure at this time next year we'll know a lot more than we do now. Why do you think it wouldn't make sense for say like British intelligence to offer if she was such a potential threat to the future of the longest held establishment in the country? Well, the argument was that, you know, she was there was upset about her support for landmines. That was very embarrassing and embarrassing. Well, it was kind of because we'd signed up to certain things and we weren't doing it and she was highlighting that. I don't think it's still a good enough reason to kill someone. And I mean, from what I, you know, intelligence story and what I know is the intelligence services are tasked by by government departments. They have a basically a department which is giving you I don't know the foreign office will say we want to know about I don't know the president of Syria. We want to know what's going on about this guy Epstein who seems to be doing this and so they will go off and investigate that, but they don't go and do their own thing. And so someone must have given the orders from within government to do to do that. wouldn't have a rogue operation. I mean, that's the argument that there were some, but there were a lot of MI6 people around there, a lot of people are not telling the truth about why they were there. So there certainly was a strong MI6 element. There was some Assad people there too. Well, and Mossad, of course, there was always the one to do the dirty work for everyone. I mean, that's one of the arguments with that state. The same as Harry Paul was a source for that. Just saying. Well, exactly. And I mean, but, you know, and Richard Thompson, of course, has talked about it and the mis-in the white fiat. I mean, if you're going to kill someone, there are easier ways to do it. You fiddle with the brakes. You fiddle with a helicopter. I mean, there are a lot of things there. You can, I mean, the Russians are experts at injections and the arm and stuff. I was told by a Russian spet to that guy that if they wanted to kill me, they would induce a heart attack in the street by just injecting me with someone. So, I mean, there are other ways to do it. And there are too many variables that could go wrong. I mean, even if you directed because there was talk about a police motorbike at the top that was directing people down the tunnel. And, you know, how did the white fiat with the concrete in it? How did it sort of get in the right lane at the right time? There are just so many things that could go wrong. You know, people say that Henri Paul was told to take a certain route. You know, that it wasn't accidental that he went that way. So, I mean, there are lots and lots of things. So, I mean, certainly, if I had time, I would be interested in looking at this and going right out to first principle with an open mind trying to get your next book. Thank you. Have a thank you. After Philip. Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of books come out for the anniversary, but it doesn't mean the story will go away. We're still looking at, you know, the death of Princess Grace. We're still looking at, you know, the death of John F. Kennedy. So, you're absolutely right. You know, and, you know, there's still clearly people around who do know something. One of the people who was involved in the case a diplomat I interviewed, in fact, from my Andrew book. He didn't always tell me the full story on the Andrew book. So, I suspect I'm not going to get the full story on the other book. But there will be someone who will emerge. And again, a lot of people who died in strange circumstances, you know, people who who committed suicide and locked cars and stuff with, locked from the outside. So, yeah, yes, well, it would be a great book. And if no one does a good book in a year's time, then that might add that to the list. Have you ever uncovered any evidence or things that could point to the possible existence of evidence that Princess Diana in any way was aware of the existence of Jeffrey Epstein and perhaps his relationship with people in the royal family? Well, I haven't. But I have come across the fact that Prince Edward was in touch with Epstein in 1996. So, before she died. Prince Edward? Yeah. So, if Epstein had targeted Edward, I mean, mighty have targeted Diana, there's no reason for him to target Diana. You know, he wanted the cute awesome being of all with the royal family. Diana really wasn't very useful to him in that way. Really? Well, you know, she didn't have the contacts that he else did. She didn't have, okay, I mean, maybe what could you do for him and what could you do for her? It doesn't sort of, I can't see why there might be a connection there. But, you know, who knows? You know, I think there are clearly stronger connections. We can move the royal family and Epstein. And those hopefully will emerge. And maybe she will come into the story. I mean, the other great mystery, which I've got hints of, and everyone's talked about Meghan, the York girl and Andrew, but I had an interesting story for all of my Thai sources who knew nothing about those rumors, who has a story of Meghan in Thailand in 2012. Meghan Markle. Meghan Markle, and her buying, not paying for some fabric that she wanted, I think, to make some a shirt or something. And if we can, you know, make that, I mean, you know, of course she can go to Thailand, doesn't connect her with Andrew, but it does, if we can connect the two of them in Thailand at the same time, then that begins to give some sort of substance to some of the rumors that have been circulating for years. And what are those rumors? Well, the rumors are that Andrew wasn't involved with Meghan Markle, and that's one of the great secrets. And there's a guy called HG2 Tudor, who's done a podcast, claiming to have an MI5 document proving this, but he hasn't shared that document. He doesn't explain how he's got hold of it, but, and also it's not something that MI5 would be investigating. It's something MI6 would be investigating. You do find intelligence. If you just got recruited by MI6, so you can get on this when you get in there. They've been on Dev's LinkedIn. Right, well, yes, gosh, well, yeah, I'd love to stay in touch. That's wild. So they may have a document that connects them. So if that's true, I mean, if, you know, that's that, that is one of the interesting things that people are looking at, the Meghan Markle and Andrew, and they, every so often you'll see things and they'll suggest that there's a picture on a boat of Meghan and there's a picture of Andrew at the same boat, but it's always someone else. I mean, he certainly hung around in Thailand quite a lot. He used to stay at the man called Yoann Eliasha's house. He had an affair in Thailand with Cornelia Guest, who's of course quite a well-known American figure. What about the some other stuff in Thailand? Well, I mean, you know, the story got picked up was about the 40 prostitutes in Thailand. Yeah, of what technical gender? Well, that was a really interesting thing that I dropped in. This was from my Thai source, actually, and my Thai source is a member of the Thai royal family and her driver was very friendly with Andrew's driver. And she, the driver said that he used to drive basically kind of T-boys to Andrew's parties. Now, that doesn't mean that Andrew got involved with them, but it does seem kind of weird. That's a little weird. But it does back up the stories that mean to cut into the numerous stories of the bisexuality. And bisexuality is something that is not, you should we say, unknown to members of royal family. God, that's so strange. That whole thing. What a man. You are going through some interesting. There are a lot of little red herrings that one could explore. And maybe as a result of this, people will come forward and they will have stories. And that's always one of the wonderful things. Yeah, they can give you their number, like Peggy Siegel apparently. You saw it there in a roadhouse. That was in her handwriting too. I didn't look like mail handwriting. But that's still wild. I got to ask you about that off camera some more. But the other thing is we just did like a lot of work on the forensics and investigation with some experts around like the Charlie Kirk investigation in America, which is certainly a mess and all that. And one of the main focuses there is like the procedure of the autopsy and the timeline and everything. I think I raised this point in a recent podcast and I'd never really actually pulled on this thread enough and looked it up. How much do we know about like the autopsy that was conducted on Diana and when that was conducted? Well, I think the interesting thing was the royal family stepped in very quickly to control it. I mean, she was embalmed very quickly, which of course were destroyed in the evidence of drugs and things. So none of the proper autopsy's were done. Where was she embalmed in in in Paris very, very quickly that night. So none of the procedures were followed. And that was course was always the argument about Edstein's death that again the proper procedures weren't followed and autopsy reports weren't released and you know, it looked like the death scene had kind of been mocked up. So I mean, of course, big story, you know, big questions about Edstein's death. So yeah, I mean, you know, I think I think the important thing is to be agnostic on these things. I mean, some people will will religiously say that's impossible. It's just made up, but they don't have any evidence is made up. That's right. You know, people more often, you know, of course, you've got to make your case that it might have happened. But you know, and all these stories, there are there are lots of unanswered questions and the question and what one has to do is try not to them. My friend Joseph Scott Morgan, who is the death investigator and forensics guy I've had in for years, who was just in here, putting on a masterclass, but the Charlie Kirk thing. One thing that he says very respectfully, but deliberately to drive it home to people, as he says, I don't mean this in an inhumane way at all, but the instant a homicide victim expires, their body becomes the prime piece of evidence. It is the it tells the most of the story that he needs to put together to determine what happened here. And one of the things I couldn't get out of my head is forget the enbalming that happened. I guess that night while her body was still in the hospital. But it's very famously understood that when Diana died, they just left her body in that hotel room and people were coming in and out, people from her life throughout the day and like paying their respects by the body for hours. So much so that they opened up the window right there to make sure that enough air could get in. So, you know, in the hospital, in the hospital. And it's like, you know, most famous woman in the world was just killed under interesting circumstances. Imagine all it took is one little second if someone needs to go do something to that body. maneuver it in any type of way to hide what needs to be hidden. That's wild to me. Well, I think one of the suggestions was that she was killed in the ambulance at the door of the of the San Pete hospital. And it was it was Mossad or whatever agents who were in the ambulance who who administered the final dose or whatever it was at Goddard. That's certainly something I've read. You ever read the book, Gideon Spies? Well, I used to represent Gordon Thomas. Oh, that's a yes. So yes, I know. New Gordon Thomas of one of the, I mean, did he die under well, he died much earlier than people expected. He had strong links that I wouldn't get too involved in my sex. He was, he was very close links with Mossad. Damn it. But I went and stayed with him. He was always, he was always short of money. And you know, he made a lot of money in his life from these books. And he was living as a tax, tax exile in, in Ireland. And I went out to see him outside Dublin. And he'd just done quite a lot of money. And he was saying to pleading poverty and said, I've only got this, this sack of rice to feed my family at the moment. And I said, well, what about the 50,000 you got the other day? He said, I bought a sports car with that. I will say this. That was a book that I had that when I was reading it for the first time and reading that first chapter, I had a verbal, like alone by myself reaction of like dropping it, like what the fuck did I just read where he's telling this story. I've talked about this before. But he's talking about this kacha with Mossad, who I think he called Peter or something like that. And he's going through how well, you know, all agency CIA, Mossad, MI6, they have safe houses throughout Europe. Paris is certainly a hot spot. So this case agent, Peter is rolling in Paris and his target is at Ritz Hotel, because that's where a lot of Middle Eastern power money meets for oil deals and stuff like that. And the way Gordon explained it is he goes to get a great source at a place like that. It's about splitting the difference. And by that, he meant you don't want a janitor, because they're too low. They don't know enough that's going on. But you also don't want the manager, the whole hotel, because he's too high and he's too present in front of these people and knows all the guests way too personally. You want someone in the middle who has access to them, but can kind of blend in, which is why he was sitting here on this night with a guy named Henri Paul. And I know he's writing about 1997 right now. And I'm just like, and then it describes that the guy was outside in the in the front, like, Hagel of press that night at the Ritz where they snuck her out the back. And then the rest is history. He was in that gaggle of press as well. And I'm just looking at this going, it doesn't mean anything, because there were a lot of intelligence agencies there at the time to be clear, but you wonder, because you're like, it's never just perfectly clean. There's always something that leaves the door open to like, something weird's going on here. And that book, like that went largely ignored to me as far as like, I never knew that until I read it 20 some years after it came out, but that was an insane piece of reporting right there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know we had very good sources in Mossad. Yeah. But I mean, you know, it's very clear that anyone in Henri Paul's position, any any security position in a hotel will be a source for intelligence agencies. And clearly there was a lot of money in Henri Paul's accounts, so he couldn't explain. Just in the way, there was a lot of money in the guards at the Manhattan directional center who found Epstein, which, you know, they couldn't explain. That's right. And so it's always about following the money. That often gives you a pretty good sense. Did you ever have any contact with Elon Max? Well, no. I mean, I started this book in 2021. So, no, I only asked that because like, you've been in London for a long time and everything and been like a well-known journalist writing book. So, you know, there were a lot of people that just bumped into her. Yeah. I know. A lot of people I know knew her. And in some ways, I mean, she was kind of part of my generation. She's a month younger than I am. And she was at Oxford at the same time, as at Cambridge, but I never came across her. I mean, she was, she was a little bit too smart for me. I mean, you know, a little bit too smart for you. We're moving in, let's show you say, smarter circles than I did. I'm not really sure what you mean by that. Well, more glittering. So, you know, she was much more socialite than me. Got it. Yeah. I think we weren't we playing tapes of like them making fun of Diana or something? Am I remembering that correctly? Yeah. Yeah. So she was like around the royal family years, even like before Epstein and stuff. And I think on these tapes, she was talking about how they used to like laugh and make fun of Diana behind her back because she was like the outsider, whatever. Yeah. She was very well connected, absolutely. Yeah. That whole thing, that picture of like Epstein and Gielin at the little hunting house on the royal estate. Yes. Yes. I mean, they, they, I mean, there must be more pictures like that. I mean, you know, and that was there, that was their sort of insurance policy showing that they were right within the inner circle of the royal family at these private places. Yeah. Absolutely. And that was seen as the, as the, as the hat trick, if you, if you could have pictures yourself taken, you know, on the throne of the, in Buckingham Palace, you know, at Balmoral, at the little cozy sort of hut, and then at Sandringham. So, the hat trick. That was the hat trick to get them all there. And, and of course, Epstein was, you know, he's snapping all these pictures. They didn't realize this was all collecting information that could be used against them. Now, one thing I kind of put a pin in my head that you've referenced a couple times today is this whole thing with, with Prince Andrew, former Prince Andrew, as the trade-on for me. So I want to make sure I understand this because he was trade-on for me in the 2000s. But he was involved somehow in the Al Yamama deal as well. Can you just explain his whole, like, role in anything related to arms deals and trade with, with the British government? Yeah. Well, he was the trade-on for between 2001 and 2011. So, I mean, this was after the deal. But he's, it's kind of, fairly things were going on. I mean, interestingly enough, he was involved with Mark Thatcher in Kazakhstan, the 1990s. And I've put in FOI requests about a lot of the, about the Al Yamama deal. And they've taken a year and a half to even respond to it. And they've just kind of kicked it into the long grass, normally they have to respond within a month. And what was the outlet for people out there? What was the Al Yamama deal? Well, basically, this was about greasing the palm of, by British BAE, basically, to get deals for British industry in the Middle East, arms deals. They were greasing people's palms and paying commission. And that was the way the business was done there. And then, of course, there was investigation by the serious fraud office about that this was corruption. Now, where Andrew comes into the story is he did go to the serious fraud office and he was having a visit there and he berated them for, for doing this, doing their job, basically. And, and said, this is, you know, you're affecting trade by, by, by putting kind of ethics ahead of business. But, you know, to be fair, Tony Blair basically said, look, we will, we will, I mean, the problem was I know this from from friend of mine who worked in intelligence. The Saudis were not going to cooperate with the British intelligence sharing about terrorism if they, they didn't allow this to go through. And so the whole investigation was shut down. So a lot, a lot of people trying to shut it down, but Andrew was certainly one of them. And time and time again, the stories of him, basically, trying to interfere with institutions, he shouldn't like the serious fraud office. He was involved also with the national crime agency. He was actually picking up information about money laundering. And we now know that he was heavily involved in money laundering. I mean, that was what happened with the sale of his house at Sunning Hill. There was a lot of the ways that the yorks were paid was through the use of art, for example. Oh, jewellery, jewellery was was melted. It was given to his gifts and melted down or passed on. What it would land or money through that. So that was yeah. And in the way that, you know, Epstein was laundering money for the Russians and and and and Trump. I mean, Trump's Trump was laundering money for the Russians with his casinos, for example. I mean, that's that's pretty well described by Craig Under, Unger and others. So I mean, the money and I think this is what's so shocking that any of us involved in transactions would have would have to explain my payments. But the sale of Sunning Hill was done through secretive trusts by by by royal advisors and Cootsbank, how far are the Queen's lawyers? And they did none of the money checks, none of the laundering checks they should have done. They turned a blind eye to all this. So it's a good case of one law for for them and one law for everyone else. Now, when Andrew was arrested and deep, I had you pulled this up earlier, but we didn't get to it. So we'll bring it back. But the picture you referenced of him after he was released, I guess, on bail or you say it from the arrest where he actually looked really scared. And he's currently under investigation for his time as trade on for my understanding is that this is related to him having improper relationships with with Jeffrey Epstein while he was in that role. And that's what they're specifically investigating him on or am I misremembering that? Well, there are about eight police forces are investigating him and And they're investigating him for a while. variety of charges. Some are looking at sex trafficking. We know that 61 were trafficked. And this is why it's ridiculous for the Met and others to say that none of these things happened to Britain. We know that Epstein was putting up girls in flats in Kensington. We know that Andrea, for example, was paying for a mistress in Mayfaira. So there was sex trafficking going on. We know that Gordon Brown has talked about flights coming into airports all over Britain-- Essex, Norfolk, Wiltshire, and elsewhere. So I think that it's the eight and nine police forces that are looking at sex trafficking allegations. We also have Thames Valley Police, which is the local police to where he was living or all large, who are looking at that and also what we call misconduct and public office, which is basically abusing a position in public office. Now, I'm a very cynical about that, because there's some debate about how easy it is to get a conviction on that. Some say it's difficult, some say it's easy. They're using the excuse that he wasn't a paid official, and therefore he wasn't-- it doesn't apply to him. But the very clear evidence from the Epstein revelations of basically sharing confidential information, both commercial information, diplomatic secrets, military secrets, we know that he shared information about the sale of the Royal Bank of Scotland when it was being broken off, two people who were interested in buying bits that were being broken off. We know that he shared information about during the Islamic banking crisis to David Rollins, who was actually buying one of the banks, which became the bank havelin. So this is very clear, breaking official secrets out and all sorts of other things. There are things under the company's act under fraud, fraud act that you could come after him for. So in some ways, it's the police kind of going off and a tangent saying, oh, we're doing something. Sadly, we can't see it to fruition, because we can't make it stick. There also-- one of the problems with the sex trafficking is that a lot of the women aren't prepared to come forward, because they don't want all the hassle. So there's a woman in 2010 who was trafficked to Andrew, given the tour of Royal Lodge state-- what went to Buckingham Palace, who's represented by Brad Edwards who you've been talking about. And she, first of all, threatened to civil action against him, which seems to have gone nowhere sadly. And now she seems to be backing off her case. A lot of these women feel intimidated. A lot of them have signed NDAs. A lot of them have been paid off. So there is a real danger that we will not get the evidence on the sex trafficking. I mean, we're very fortunate that Virginia Jaffrey was prepared to go through all the appropriateness that she had in order to go on the record. But I think there's plenty of evidence to charge Andrew. Also, what I think would be a very interesting error, when they arrested him and questioned him for, I think, about seven or eight hours. Did he have a lawyer with him? Yes, he would have had a lawyer with him. And of course, he was tipped off. He was ready for them when they came from that day. I mean, it wasn't a dawn raid. But there was a worry that he might be a flight risk in the way that Mandelson was a flight risk. And that's why he was arrested. But they only arrested him so that they could get search warrants. And they've used the search warrants to look at papers and computers and stuff. I think they even went and looked at, maybe, dug up bits of raw lodge. But the fact is, Andrew knew he was going to be arrested for months. I mean, he was burning papers. He was destroying hard drives. He was throwing at mobile phones into the river. He was destroying hard drives and throwing phones in the river. So he's been pervoting the course of justice. He knew they were coming. So I don't think they're going to find too much anyway. And that's-- but what they could be doing is they should be bringing in his associates. What they could do is to arrest people like Amanda Stern, his private sub-bander, Betherska's private secretary, David Stern, who was one of his business officials, frankly, even Sarah Ferguson. And basically, use them as leverage to give evidence against him in order to get their conviction, to promise them a lower sentence for basically doing a plea bargain. And that they don't seem to be doing. I mean, we've got no evidence that anyone else has been questioned. So this all seems to me completely performative. You know, look at us. Look at what we're doing. I mean, we had a ridiculous thing where they went to America to talk to Virginia Jifre's brother. Now, Virginia's brother, frankly, has only come on the scene the last few months. He wasn't there for Virginia Jifre when she was alive. The police were not there for Virginia Jifre when she put up all her allegations. They ignored them. And we have to remember, this is not just a story about Virginia Jifre. There are probably six to 70 victims, just around Andrew, possibly. But I mean, certainly connected with Epstein. And it's not just a story about sex trafficking. It's a story about, as I say, abuse of public office. And if you and I had shared confidential information, for example, development opportunities in Hellman Province during the war in Afghanistan, we would be in big trouble. And the really interesting question is if they're going to bring charges against Peter Mandelson, who is doing exactly the same as Andrew, why don't they bring charges against Andrew? What is the distinction between the two of them? And are they going to use that distinction of one was a paid official and one wasn't as a way of getting Andrew off the hook? But I'll bet my bottom dollar that Andrew will not be charged because the last thing the royal family want is their secrets aired in public. Yeah, you kind of answered a question. I was going to ask for me, which, as you said, it's performative in your opinion. And when I look at this and I just stack up the fact that women have already been blackmailed or paid off, he was tipped off about the raid happening. He was openly, obviously, to someone's knowledge, throwing phones and clearing hard drives for months ahead of time. Like, and then he gets arrested. It's like, here's your bread and circus people. Look, look, you got an embarrassing picture. There you go. Not exactly. No, the passport hasn't been confiscated. He's been able to travel. He's certainly the male Sunday of reported a visit to a stud farm in France. But my understanding is he's been going to Middle East. He's been going to Switzerland. He's traveling. I mean, nothing has changed. And actually, what's clever is the King has got him on a private estate. No one can actually knows what he's doing. We all assume he's in Sandringham looking at videos. But he could be-- Looking at video? Well, that's how he spends his time watching videos and playing video games and stuff like that. But actually, he may be in downtown New Jersey. I mean, who knows? You know, we may see him in the street. Stop through. You're well. You can let the side down in here. Yeah, we'll pull fit. I'd like to chat to you. Yeah, I'll cook them like the fucking Thanksgiving dinner of the food here in France. But yeah, it's just the double standard is what's really sickening. And obviously, we have no like to stand on here in America. We've seen-- we haven't even gotten a symbolic arrest here. Like, at least you guys got that low bar. But it's just, you know, I tried to go to 30,000 feet in the air and look at things how they are and look at ways we can fix stuff. I'm an optimist. I love living in this country. I think we got a lot of great stuff here. I think looking at it from the American perspective, like we have some rot in certain areas and some things that maybe we're now discovering about the true, I guess, like, grips of power that exists, not just here, but around the world. And I'd like to see some generational change happen. And maybe we can. But when you look at all this and you look at a story like Epstein and all the people he was tied to and the lengths it went, I mean, as sicken and widespread as it was, sex trafficking was just one of the things he did. We're talking about a guy that was involved in arms deals, espionage, diplomatic, whatever, you know, around the world was just connected in all these different places. Do you ever wonder about, you know, the world being run by a different group of people than we even know exists? If you understand what I'm asking there. - Well, I mean, I think most people don't believe in conspiracy theorists, but then you get the Epstein story and you do believe that there is a super elite who are operating in their own interests across nations, working with intelligence agencies. I mean, I think one of the interesting things about the stories is seen first of all as a sex story, then as a financial scandal. Actually, it's an espionage scandal. I mean, the fact is, you know, he had close links with Mossad, I mean, this certain stuff has come out now about him being a Russian asset. I certainly talked about an FBI document. I was given showing that Andrew was involved with Russian criminal gangs linked to Russian intelligence services. But this is before we even get to the Zoro ranch. And the woman who found themselves having been operated on to harvest their eggs, all the huge, I mean, we now know from the plans of Zoro ranch that the huge, not just medical facilities, but all sorts of other things that were built underneath the Zoro ranch. Other things built beneath it? Well, I mean, one of the interesting things about Zoro, I mean, we talk about UFOs, it's kind of equidistance between error 51 and various other things. I mean, there all sorts of other sort of stories going on here. And one of the interesting things is Zoro ranch is one error that wasn't investigated. It wasn't rated by the FBI. But the FBI picked up a lot of stuff in both Palm Beach and Manhattan. For example, pictures and stuff, and we'd never heard about that, but you're right. It was all about collecting Compromise, so the sex was really just a way in to compromising people. He was not just inflating the British royal family, but the Norwegians and others. He had links to Israel, to China, and to Russia. This is a huge story, and in some ways, Epstein may only be in a bit player in a bigger story, because Epstein's no longer here, and yet we kind of feel the whole thing is still going on. If there is a kill list, this kill is someone else who's organising that kill list. I mean, Epstein's not doing it from beyond the grave. The sort of waves of it seem to move out further and further, the story gets bigger and bigger. People seem to have been drawn in. To my first biography, John Bucken was a thriller writer born in 1875, died in 1940, but his great thing is that the veneer of civilization is very thin, and actually there are all these people walking around who we feel are respectable people who are actually out to subvert civilization. And this is sort of what we're seeing. We're now seeing people that we thought we could trust, turning out to actually be working against, or in the narrow self-interest of these elites, but against the interests of the wider community. And so he was actually quite far seeing and seeing what was going on. But I think I hope more stuff will release. The Epstein story gets bigger and bigger, I think, and I'm always been aware that Ivone touched the tip of the iceberg. Yeah. I think of Epstein sometimes, like if you've ever seen those videos, those nature videos on social media where someone's like pulling on a weed, and they're pulling on this weed in the side of like a in-bankment, and then they're going back and forth like this. It's one of those like satisfying videos that you watch, and you see a trickle of water coming out, the more they pull, and then it's a bigger trickle. And then suddenly they get the whole weed out, and you see like, and all the water comes out. And that's, I really think Epstein is like that weed. Like he's the figurehead, and we see him because we've had access to see what an evil man like this was and that he existed, but he's just like the surface level of some stuff that's below that. Absolutely. And it shows you how easily people can subvert other people, I mean how cheaply they can be bought. But I think the other thing is if Virginia Giffrey hadn't persevered with her case, and she would only have persevered with the civil case, only persevered with the civil case after she saw Andrew on Newsnight. So with Andrew, this is back to the point I made about individuals changing history. If Andrew had decided not to do the Newsnight interview, Virginia Giffrey wouldn't have been so emboldened and outraged that she brought a civil case. The story, you know, it was dead, it had been, you know, depositions had been closed, everyone have forgotten about it, she'd been dismissed. None of this stuff would have come. But I mean in terms of your unraveling, it's exactly the same with the royal family and this is what they're nervous about. You start picking it to, you know, the loose thread of the bit of clothing and start pulling, purpling it. And actually you then find the garment begins to disintegrate, you know, and that's what they're worried about. And this is why, of course, they never want to let light into the, into the institution. Because once you have the light and the transparency, suddenly people think, what are we doing here? What are we paying? Why are we paying these people? What do they actually do? And it's, you know, then wider questions. And this is what Andrew, of course, has done. He's, he's allowed people to begin to ask questions and shine some light, not enough. But, you know, they must curse him because in some ways it was all going very smoothly. We were able to keep the whole show in the road with this performative, smoke and mirrors operation. And now the whole thing is disintegrating, so everything is disintegrating. And I, I share your optimism that eventually, you know, good will, will, will come through this. People, enough people will feel emboldened to speak. There will be pressure. There will be, you know, we, we've, we've eventually had Andrew lose his position. And I think eventually there will be people. I mean, they may be low-hanging fruit from the states, but eventually some people I think will be brought to justice. I hope you're right about that. I, I, I don't know at this point if that's the case, it seems like they'll just distract from everything. But I, I hope you're right about that. And, you know, I got my little corner of the internet and I'll do whatever I can to shine a light on that stuff, just like you're shining light on it with your books. And I think there's enough people who are at least awake to that to try to make a point of this and improve it for the next generations. But it just, you know, sometimes it is hard not to be a little bit cynical when you see the worst crimes going on the answer for you, you know? Yes. And people, you know, behaving badly very openly and, and almost provocatively, I mean, like Trump and just giving two fingers. And I mean, that was when I think one of the frustrations with Andrew, people knew about Andrew's bad behavior. And that's why I think why they've come forward now, but they could do nothing about it. They would be penalized if they said anything. And the fact that they would go to the queen, or the queen's private secretary, and be sent away with a flee in their ear, you know? And that's a clear ear. Well, it's a British term, but basically, but basically away with, as we, as the major at my school would say, away with your capers. So they, you know, and that's very frustrating to feel the whole system, the whole international rights, you know, legal system, international relations, all these things are crumbling. All the structure is going. And who do you believe it's a, it's a free for all of the rich and powerful. And that's, and if one can kind of stop that, that there is a rules-based system. And we can get back to an ordered society in which we have a responsibility to the wider community, then that will be a good thing. Why, why do you think Andrew did do that interview in 2019? Because he thought he, he, he could get the better of a skilled journalist. Because he thought he, he, he could set the record straight and he could tell his lies and no one would challenge them. Because he's so stupid that he didn't prepare for it. His advisors were so stupid, they didn't prescribe the terms and the control, which of course even the be-less celebrity would have done. So it's a back to this hubris, it's a back to this arrogance and, and this sense of invincibility which he'd always had and he just thought it would continue. But you know, I think maybe in the hands of a less-scaled interview, I mean, he might have got away with it in a less deferential press. He might have got away with it. What's that lady's name again, chief? Emily Mateless. Yeah. Emily Mateless. She killed him. She was good. Yeah, no, no, she, she, I mean, she kind of led him into the trap and he walked into it. And I think, you know, clever, you know, clever by having a pretty female person, he thought he could kind of charm her and they'd be fine and, you know, well, the rest is history. The rest is history. It's interesting though, because I asked you towards being in this conversation like what you think and you're like, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you were saying like, yeah, I am someone who supports the idea of the royal family existing and the tradition of all that. What's interesting to me about that though is you've reported on so much of the underbelly of it and this whole conversation like you're running through all the crazy shit and the bad stuff that they do. And in a lot of ways, you're a guy, and I'm not faulting you at all, I think it's great reporting you do. Like you're a guy that's like, almost reporting on the things that would take it down. So how do you, right? It's a very fair accusation, you know, and if you write about rogue roles, then clearly you're going to, you know, it is going to be negative, you know, I see it as a corrective and it may be that the Prince Philip book, you know, actually is a very positive book about about a member of the royal family. I mean, I think I've said some pretty, pretty positive things about him. And as I say, I go with an open mind and there will be things there that's critical, but I think largely it will be pretty positive. And yeah, I mean, one of the accusations is be careful what you wish for, you know, but it doesn't mean that you shouldn't be raising these things. I mean, my argument is I'm in favor of monarchy, but not a corrupt monarchy. And it's not my job as a messenger, not to report things, it's their job to correct things. I'm not making this up. This is their behaviour and they need to correct it. You know, do I turn a blind eye to bad behaviour because I just are worried about the consequences or do I kind of report as fairly an honestly as I can about what I've found and leave them hopefully. And this is why I keep saying, you know, reform, modernize, it can be corrected. You can get wind back, you know, the support of the public and respect. But let's not, I don't think there's a justification for turning a blind eye because you're worried about the consequences, you know, there are a lot of people who will, who do take that position that basically the royals are above the law that they can do what they want because we want to protect the institution. But again, you know, you can behave, you can believe in parliamentary democracy, but not not necessarily support some of the Prime Minister's, for example, as part of it. It's not the system, but I tell you where there is a problem. If it was just about two bad apples, about Andrew and Fergie, then that would be one thing. But I think the worrying thing I discovered was it was about systematic and endemic corruption within the institution and others. But again, clean up the act of everyone. There are plenty of people who are perfectly above board in the way they operate. I mean, I don't think Prince Edward's getting up to stuff. I mean, print or print or print or sound or any of these other people. And they must feel that they're all their good works being undermined by all these people who are playing the system. Clean up the bad behavior. It doesn't mean that the institution itself isn't intrinsically bad. And that's a distinction that constantly needs to be made. But of course, if you're concentrating on the negative, but again, you know, people said my book on Mountbatten was critical. Actually, if you read it, and most people who make this for themselves haven't bothered to read the books, you'll find that actually it's much more pro and generous towards Mountbatten, particularly on issues like Indian independence and D.E.P. than most of the writers. So I think I can tell that last chapter. Until that last chapter. But that's chapter, of course, that kind of overshadows the book. You can see why though. Yeah, but just because you're a pitiful doesn't mean you're all bad. I just don't, you know, I don't know how something like that survives over the next 50 years. An institution like the monarchy because I think living in this technological era that we do and, you know, more like open global interconnectedness and stuff, some of that like for lack of a better way of putting it fishbowl symbolism. I don't think it's going to drive with the younger generations. I mean, that's what I feel. Well, I mean, the some of the European families of the Dutch and Swedish and others and Norwegians have kind of evolved. And I mean, they're very low-key. They still are there have a role. And so I think that, you know, it could survive under this much more low-key rule. I think it's when they all get dressed up in the uniforms and give themselves medals for attending memorial services. Right. And are making money on the side and being paid large sums of money to do duties. And they're not really doing those duties. Then of course, they're seeking to a irrelevance. And that's why I say there are crossroads. And they could become irrelevant if they just continue playing the same old game. But if they evolve and light into that European model, I think they can survive. And I think because people light the sense of tradition. They light the sense that there is something above politics. And there are very few public figures who command huge support. I mean, I can think of some of the, I mean, the President of Ireland, people like that, Kelly Nelson Mandela, you know, have kind of brought the nations together and have not, you know, been raw families. But then you see what's happened post-Nelson Mandela. And, you know, for, you know, for some of the, you know, there've been brilliant presence of Ireland. But there's some being some not so good ones. So that's the problem. And I, I'm a believer actually in their registry principle. I would like more, for example, hereditary peers in the House of Lords, because they are completely disinterested. They're not there because they gave money to political party or being kicked upstairs because they're discredited politicians. And they often have an expertise that isn't found from the very narrow cadre in which our politicians are drawn from. But of course, we don't have hereditary peers now. And if you don't believe in the hereditary principle in terms of your second chamber, then it becomes more difficult to justify the hereditary principle in terms of the monarchy. But, and we've been lucky, as you say, we generally the right signers has, has, has inherited in the past. But once you get a real baddened, and it could be that, I mean, it looks fine for the moment, but if you suddenly get some, some disaster, then, then the whole thing will crumble. Did you ever watch the Netflix show, The Crown? Yes, of course. Well, I thought it was great. It was a very well done show, unbelievable, but like historically speaking, how close were they to the target? Well, I think it's very interesting historically, because so much, it was absolutely, you know, accurate. And then they would go off in tangents. They would kind of, you know, some of the stuff, for example, about Philip and death of one of his sisters in an air crash was not historically accurate. Oh, it wasn't. That didn't happen. Well, there wasn't a crash, but it just didn't happen quite as they say. So the various episodes, which, for some strange reason, are not historically accurate. But there are some things, which I think are, and for example, the Queen chatting with Jacqueline Kennedy, for example, that episode is never happened. That never happened. But it could have happened. And I think that where their clever is, they say this is a drama. But because it's blockchain values are so good, you think it's true. And it's a bit about the like, you know, Stone on JFK. I mean, he said this is a drama, but everyone began to believe what he said. But there were sort of, in truth, there were some truths there. And I think there are truths in the crown and the depiction of various characters and the frustrations, for example, of Margaret and Philip, that I think are a good. And I mean, one of the best books, for example, on The Cambridge Spies is a novel by John Banville. And he just gets the characters of Blunt and Burgess, so much better than any of the biographers, including me. So I think fiction has a role to play here. And the crown, I think, was very clever. The trope is between public service and private pleasure. And that, of course, defines the raw family. And they saw everything through that prison. And that was a really clever way of doing it. Yeah. Also the cinematography, the acting and that show is amazing, but the cinematography was like next level. I mean, it's a brilliantly done show. But that's, that's interesting. And a lot of it, you found to be historically accurate for sure. So, you know, you're going to get pedantics, who will say, well, the medals aren't quite right. Right. And this couldn't have happened. And he went to Australia in March, not September. But those things don't matter. It's about the eternal truth. So the, the, you get a sixth sense of what you feel is right. So, yeah. And I think they got that right. That's good to hear. Everyone go check that one out. But Andrew, it's been awesome talk with you. We've done like three hours, 10 minutes or 15 minutes at this point. So we're going to have to do another one. Bring it on. Let's do another. We've already just started. We got to talk about the Cambridge five work you've done in the past. Sometime in the future, I would love to really dig into the Duke of Windsor as well. And that whole thing that happened there. And then of course, as this story continues to develop, that I'm sure there'll be a lot of updates there. So I really appreciate you. I just want you to look forward to it. Yep. Well, I'll be back soon. So, so you haven't seen us to be. All right. Good. And I want to hear about the Pegasegal stuff. But everyone, everyone check out. Because when we stop, that's when the lawyers are like, but everyone go check out the links below. I will have your Prince Andrew book linked down there as well as your bibliography so people can check out your work. But thank you so much, sir. Pleasure. All right. Everybody else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. They're both a huge, huge help. Thank you. At Cox, your internet and mobile price won't change for five years. That's five new year celebrations. Five Valentine's days. Five Fourth of July's Five Halloween's. Five Thanksgiving's. And five summers that go by too fast. Through it all, your price stays the same with our five-year price lock guarantee. Cox, a step ahead. Requires two gig speeds and gig unlimited mobile. Taxes and fees excluded from price lock, mobile data speeds reduced after 20 gigs. Five Fourth of July's. Five Halloween's. Five Thanksgiving's. Cox, a step ahead. Taxes and fees excluded from price lock, mobile data speeds reduced after 20 gigs.