I must speak out on innuendo about Queen and Andrew's 'real' father

Andrew Lownie was widely praised for carrying out a public service when he wrote Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, which laid bare the moral corruption, greed and excesses of the Duke and Duchess of York.

In his book, serialised in The Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday, the author provided jaw-dropping details of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson’s appalling choice of friends such as the convicted late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The timing of its publication, just before the release of the Epstein files last year, contributed to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor being banished to King Charles’s private Sandringham estate in Norfolk and Fergie disappearing to who-knows-where?

Lownie, who is also a literary agent, is rightly proud of the best-selling book, and now the author, 64, who claims to be a monarchist, has been giving interviews around the world involving some sensational claims – and not just about the beleaguered Andrew and Fergie.

During an appearance on stage at the Oxford Literary Festival, Lownie turned his fire on Andrew’s beloved late mother, who would have celebrated her 100th birthday this month. He claimed that the late Queen had ‘crossed the line’ legally ‘a lot’ when she made allowances for Andrew, who was often described as her favourite child.

Lownie then chose to make the provocative claim that our late monarch was senile in her later years.

‘By the end of her life, what people don’t realise, is that she was completely gaga,’ the author claimed. ‘He [Andrew] would go up there and he would bully her into doing things. So for the last few years of her life Charles actually was running the show, rather than the Queen.’

Lownie went on to discuss unsubstantiated claims that both MI6 and the Foreign Office complained about the former Prince Andrew.

He continued: ‘He was made a vice-admiral in the Navy, and that was after these allegations. She [the Queen] entertained a lot of [his associates]. President Aliyev of Azerbaijan gave her a horse and she was thrilled. She, I’m afraid, abetted this [his misbehaviour]. The whole family abetted this – they knew about it.’

Having met the Queen at a party near Buckingham Palace in her later years, I can affirm that she was certainly not ‘completely gaga’ or, indeed, even a little gaga. In fact, she spent so long making intelligent small talk with guests at the party that she rather showed me up. I wanted to leave and go home but felt I could hardly depart before our elderly monarch.

Right to the end of her magnificent life, the Queen was undertaking her duties despite being increasingly frail. As my esteemed colleague Robert Hardman recalls in his new book, Elizabeth II, she met not one but two prime ministers, Boris Johnson and his successor Liz Truss, during the final week of her life. 

Truss told Hardman: ‘She stood up to greet me. She was clearly physically not very well but we talked for about 20 minutes. She was alert.’

Lownie also discussed the late monarch’s friendship with her racing manager, the 7th Earl of Carnarvon, who was known as ‘Porchie’, thanks to his previous courtesy title of Lord Porchester.

Discussing Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s character with an interviewer Down Under, Lownie said: ‘He was the favourite, he was spoiled, he has a very different character to Edward and indeed to Charles, and that’s because, I think, he has a different father.

‘I think he’s the child of Lord Porchester, and Lord Porchester was like that, and so I think that it’s a genetic thing.’

Viewers of Netflix’s popular, but wildly inaccurate, drama series The Crown will already be familiar with innuendo about the Queen’s friendship with Porchie, but it’s controversial, to say the least, that Lownie should spread such rumours.

Perhaps he should stick to writing about the living rather than those who are in no position to answer back.

After her record-breaking reign and a life devoted to duty, I would say the Queen deserves far better.