Royal notebook / How Andrew could save the royal family |
The tsunami of Jeffrey Epstein material released this month has been both horrifying and gratifying. It makes clear the extent of Epstein’s penetration of world elites – potentially even at the direction of various foreign intelligence agencies – and that this is a story as much about national security as financial and sexual irregularities. The lack of any proper oversight of the royal family may have given both the Russian and Chinese intelligence services their entry point into the British Establishment. The depositions also confirm the accuracy of what I had discovered researching Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, which was published last August. Some of that material was cut for legal reasons or because the publisher did not trust one of my sources, and I look forward to reinstating all the Peter Mandelson information for the paperback in May.
The worry of being sued weighed heavily with the publishers and we went through several drafts for the lawyers – a fetish for women’s underwear allowed; other private interests disallowed. In the end, we plaited together what we could and only two people have threatened to sue (apart from Sarah Ferguson, who did so before I had even written the book). Prince Harry objected to a reference to a fight with the former Prince Andrew, where he defended the honour of his then fiancée Meghan Markle, which I thought was one of the few positive bits of coverage Harry had received recently. His useful intervention........