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This prince was 'a coroneted sleaze machine' according to one top royal writer. Foreign Office mandarins called him His Buffoon Highness...
This prince was 'a coroneted sleaze machine' according to one top royal writer. Foreign Office mandarins called him His Buffoon Highness...
Pity the second son in any royal family.
As author Tina Brown puts it, ‘the only certainty is that, as the years go by, his importance will decline as he slides inexorably down in the line of succession.’
The ‘spare’ she had in mind was Prince Andrew, whose career seemed to have been in decline ever since he left the Royal Navy in 2001.
A spell as the United Kingdom’s special representative for international trade and investment did nothing to burnish his reputation.
The Duke of York stands on the balcony of Buckingham Palace during Trooping the Colour, 2016, the year marking the Queen's 90th birthday
Emir of the State of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, and his wife, Sheikha Mozah sit with Prince Andrew, Duke of York at meeting of Industry leaders at Buckingham Palace in 2010
Prince Andrew using a private jet as he departs from Sardinia in 2010
President Bill Clinton gestures to his golf partner Prince Andrew after teeing off
It was a role ‘that allowed him to swan around the world at government expense playing golf,’ writes Brown in her best-selling book, The Palace Papers.
‘Andrew was the despair of the Foreign Office.
‘He insisted on flying private and travelled with an entourage of servants including a valet who lugged a preposterous six-foot-long ironing board through the lobbies of five-star hotels.’
According to Brown, ‘Prince Andrew’s contacts with reprehensible foreign riff-raff went far beyond what was explicable or acceptable.
‘A string of international lowlifes who had nothing to do with British diplomacy and everything to do unsavoury personal deals filled the Duke’s otherwise sparse calendar.’
These included Mohamed Sakhr El Materi, son in law to Tunisia’s strongman president, who was later sentenced to 16 years in jail for corruption and fraud.
Saif Gaddafi, son of dictator Muammar, was another of Andrew’s lunch partners, according to Brown. He was soon wanted for war crimes by the international criminal court .
Tarek Kaituni, a convicted Libyan gun smuggler, was one of Andrew’s guests at his daughter Beatrice’s 21st birthday party in Marbella. And was invited to an 18th birthday reception for sister Princess Eugenie at Windsor Castle.
There was no shortage of questions, either, when it came to the remarkable sale of the York’s Sunninghill Park home in Ascot.
In 2007, this was sold to the son in law of Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev for £15 million - £3 million more than the asking price, even though there were no other bids on the property, writes Brown.
Prince Harry listening to words of wisdom from his uncle Prince Andrew at the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II
The Duke of York takes part in a Prince's Trust Charity Golf Tournament in 1998
Sunninghill Park, the house that belonged to the Duke and Duchess of York was sold for £3 million over the asking price
Libyan Tarek Kaituni arrives at Princess Eugenie's Royal Wedding at Windsor Castle to Jack Brooksbank
Prince Andrew and Kazakhstan president Nursultan Nazarbayev
‘Simon Wilson, who hosted him regularly as Britain’s deputy head of mission in Bahrain recalled that much of what the Prince said was “absolute twaddle” and that he was derided by the British diplomatic community in the Gulf as HBH – His Buffoon Highness.
‘A senior Tory told The Guardian in 2011: “there appears to be no discernible mental activity upstairs as far as the Duke is concerned. I feel sorry for him. He has no friends and so is surrounded by these vile people.”'
In short, concludes Brown, our trade ambassador was ‘a coroneted sleaze machine’.