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Prince Andrew has been under a form of lockdown in the three years since his disastrous Newsnight interview, as insiders reveal the shamed Duke of York binge-watches TV box sets, barely leaves home anymore and has been left wondering how his reputation has been left in tatters by his friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Friends claim that Andrew privately admits his appearance on the BBC’s flagship news programme in 2019 – where he was grilled by Emily Maitlis over claims that he abused Epstein ‘sex-slave’ Virginia Roberts Giuffre while she was a minor under US law – was ‘by no means his finest hour’.
Though allies accuse King Charles III and the Prince of Wales of ‘throwing him under the bus’ and helping to cast him as the ‘archetypal pantomime villain’ in the fallout from Newsnight, they insist that the duke is ‘philosophical’ about his exile from public life.
Instead, the three years since the interview has been a period of ‘intense self-reflection’ for the duke once dubbed the ‘Playboy Prince’, who has spent time poring over ‘every aspect of his life’ to understand how ‘everything went so wrong, and why’.
Friends say Andrew, who was stripped of his HRH title, military affiliations and royal patronages in the fallout from Newsnight, has finally resigned himself to playing a ‘backseat’ role and is committed to acting ‘absolutely in the background’ as a ‘supportive figure’ for ‘The Firm’.
Now living with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York at Royal Lodge, their 30-room home in Windsor Great Park, the duke is a ‘virtual recluse’ who only ventures out to go horse-riding on the estate twice a week, for the occasional swim, or to walk the royal corgis Muick and Sandy and his and Fergie’s five Norfolk terriers, insiders have revealed. His forays outside have also diminished sharply since the death of his mother the Queen, who he visited almost daily before she passed away at Balmoral last month.
However, Andrew is regularly visited by his daughters Princess Beatrice – who it has emerged was the only person in his inner circle to warn him against the Newsnight interview – and Princess Eugenie, and their husbands Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi and Jack Brooksbank. The father-of-two is also focusing on spending more time with his grandchildren, Beatrice’s daughter Sienna and Eugenie’s son August, both one.
It is reported that ‘jobless’ Andrew – who receives no taxpayer funding, may be paid just £20,000 a year from his Royal Navy pension yet recently splashed out on a new £220,000 Bentley Flying Spur – likely lives on the proceeds of the £15million purchase of Sunninghill by a Kazakh billionaire in 2007. It is also claimed that he is being financially supported by Fergie’s business interests, including her lucrative book deal with Mills & Boon, which the Telegraph claims could be ‘in the low millions’.
There is also speculation that the Queen might have ‘added to their coffers’ in order to keep the duke financially secure and thereby ‘protect the monarchy’.
Yet allies have indicated that Andrew is wary that Ms Giuffre could speak up again, having only been tied into what the paper claims is a one-year gagging clause after the duke reportedly paid around £8million out of court to settle her bombshell sex abuse lawsuit in the US.
Prince Andrew driving near Windsor Castle. Friends say he has been ‘on lockdown’ since his Newsnight interview
The Duke of York is a ‘virtual recluse’ who only goes out horse-riding twice a week, allies say
The Duke of York speaking about his links to Jeffrey Epstein in his car-crash Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis in 2019
Andrew with Virginia Roberts and Ghislaine Maxwell at Maxwell’s home in Belgravia, central London, in March 2001
A friend told the Telegraph: ‘He has a much better understanding of the challenges he faces than at any other point in his life. He has a better sense of perspective – partly because he’s had these three years to reflect – to do the work, and to focus on his immediate family. The Duke of York of today is much more thoughtful and more mindful than he has ever been.’
They added: ‘He acknowledges privately that Newsnight was by no means his finest hour.
‘The feeling that he has been treated abysmally is held by his nearest and dearest, but the duke’s attitude is more along the lines of: It is what it is.’
Representatives for the duke declined to comment when approached by MailOnline.
Andrew, 62, was stripped of his military titles and royal patronages in January as he fought allegations that he abused Ms Giuffre as a teenager in London, Manhattan, and the US Virgin Islands. He has repeatedly and vehemently denied the claims.
He settled out of court with Ms Roberts, who now uses her married name Giuffre, for an undisclosed sum but made no admission of guilt.
A legal document submitted to a US court in January by the duke’s lawyers contained 41 separate denials of allegations made by Ms Roberts, including her claim that ‘Prince Andrew was a close friend of Ghislaine Maxwell’.
But in her interview with the Mail on Sunday, disgraced socialite Maxwell spoke in glowing terms of her friendship with the duke.
‘I feel so bad for him,’ said the convicted trafficker, who has known Andrew since she was a student at Oxford University in the 1980s.’Yes, I follow what is happening to him. He is paying such a price for the association [with Jeffrey Epstein]. I consider him a dear friend… I care about him.’
Quizzed on the denial by Andrew’s lawyers that they were close friends, Maxwell said: ‘I accept that this friendship could not survive my conviction.’
She dismissed a photograph, first revealed by this newspaper, of the Prince with his arm around Ms Roberts at Maxwell’s home in Belgravia, central London, in March 2001, saying: ‘I don’t recognise that picture and I don’t believe it is a real picture. There’s so many things wrong with it. There is no original and there isn’t a true picture and there are that many other things besides that I cannot hardly get into… I don’t know how many points there are, but there are over 50 problems with the picture.’
Andrew with Sarah Ferguson in their car just hours after Ghislaine Maxwell gave her interview to the MoS
Andrew and Maxwell at Ascot in 2000. A legal document submitted to a US court in January by the duke’s lawyers contained 41 separate denials of allegations made by Virginia Roberts that he sexually abused her when she was a minor under US law, including her claim that ‘Prince Andrew was a close friend of Ghislaine Maxwell’
Andrew has always denied claims that he abused Ms Roberts
Earlier this year, Euan Rellie, a former friend of Maxwell’s, told ITV he believed she and Andrew ‘had probably been girlfriend and boyfriend in the past’.
Asked about press reports that they were ‘like a couple, an item’, Maxwell said she would not address such speculation until after the appeal against her conviction. ‘I have read and seen and heard and had reported to me so many monstrous inaccuracies that I can’t start to pick apart all of them. If I pick apart one and then don’t address all the others, it’s going to say, ‘Well, she said no to this, what about all those others?’ I’m not going to discuss anything of that nature until after the appeal.’
She has been in jail since July 2020 when more than 20 armed FBI agents raided her 156-acre, £800,000 New Hampshire home.
The MoS interviewed her on June 22 this year at the MDC, six days before she was sentenced, and then weeks later after she was moved to the Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, a low-security jail in Florida.
She was prepared to discuss her friendships with some of the rich and powerful men connected to her and Epstein, including former President Clinton.
‘It was a special friendship, which continued over the years,’ she said of Clinton. ‘We had lots in common. I feel bad that he is another victim, only because of his association [with Epstein].’
She also spoke of her gratitude to former President Trump, who bestowed his good wishes on her after her arrest.
‘I was very grateful when he wished me well. He got bad media for it, but he dared while others didn’t. It gave me a big boost.’
Maxwell said the food at the MDC was ‘truly terrible’ and she was once so hungry she ate Vaseline. She is now in a cell measuring 10ft by 8ft that is too small for her and her three cellmates to all stand up in. ‘It’s very far from a cushy country club,’ she said.
After Epstein killed himself as he awaited trial, prison bosses put her on suicide watch prior to her sentencing. Maxwell, who said she had never contemplated taking her own life, described wearing an anti-suicide smock – a long tunic made of thick nylon – adding: ‘They strip you of any remaining shred of dignity that you have. They have you with no clothes, and they put you in a suicide smock, which has Velcro straps on it. So there’s nothing to protect your modesty.’
The MoS revealed in June that a fellow inmate at the MDC had bragged she was going to murder Maxwell, claiming that there was a $1 million bounty on her head. Maxwell this weekend confirmed that a woman had threatened to murder her as she slept.
Maxwell now works in the prison’s legal library, where she helps other inmates with their cases.
The duke declined to comment when the MoS contacted him.
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