Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell’s emails showed them working together on a dossier to “leak to the media” about Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, according to a new book.
Andrew Lownie’s biography of the prince, Entitled, is due out on Thursday, August 14, in the U.K. and has already generated headlines with its account of Andrew’s relationship with Epstein and Maxwell.
It also gives detail on some of the work done behind the scenes by the BBC to land an interview with the prince in 2019 that ultimately led to him stepping back from public life.
And it reveals BBC producer Laura Burns and assistant producer Olivia Davies had gathered emails between Andrew and Maxwell shedding light on how they responded to the allegations.
Why It Matters
In a series of lawsuits and media interviews, Giuffre said she was trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell aged 17 to London, New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands in order to have sex with Prince Andrew.
Eventually, she would sue Andrew in 2021, a case the prince settled out of court in 2022 for an undisclosed sum without admitting liability. He has always denied her allegations.
Maxwell was jailed for 20 years in 2022 on sex trafficking charges for her role in grooming girls for Epstein to abuse.
The case has returned to the limelight with the re-election of President Donald Trump, whose MAGA base has long pushed the narrative that the deep state hid the names of rich powerful co-conspirators to Epstein’s crimes.
The Trump Administration ordered a review of the Epstein files while senior figures, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, appeared to encourage the belief bombshell new details would emerge.
The Department of Justice and FBI released a memo in July stating Epstein did not blackmail prominent individuals and there would be no new cases, sparking a major MAGA backlash.
What To Know
Andrew gave the car crash interview that ended his royal career to the BBC’s Newsnight but another BBC show, Panorama, had also been investigating him.
And Burns and Davies had traveled around America “checking police reports, interviewing Epstein staff, tracing victims of both him and Prince Andrew, and persuading Virginia Giuffre and her legal team to be interviewed on camera,” according to Entitled.
Burns told Lownie they “found personal email discussions between Ghislaine and Andrew discussing Virginia.
“The emails between Ghislaine and Andrew didn’t exclaim ‘it’s a fake,’ ‘I’ve never met her’ or any other questions, instead they worked together to build a dossier about Virginia to leak to the media.”
Newsweek approached representatives of Andrew and Maxwell for comment.
Prince Andrew’s Newsnight Interview
Andrew’s palace team had originally been in talks with Panorama about giving an interview to them but pivoted to Newsnight at the last moment, the book said.
“How the interview moved from Panorama to Newsnight is debatable but the suspicion remains that the Palace preferred a straight interview to a right of reply after a hard-hitting investigation,” Lownie wrote.
“Contrary to the narrative that has been presented, Newsnight, which had only previously discussed an interview to promote [Andrew’s royal project] Pitch@Palace, had just seventy-two hours’ notice of what would prove a seminal television event.
“It was Burns who was required to prepare them. She factchecked their video insert, shared Panorama’s script, research, contacts, legal documents and detailed timelines, fact-checked their questions and wrote some of the most significant questions of her own.”
Andrew’s interview with Newsnight‘s Emily Maitlis proved to be the end of his royal career after he was ridiculed for his answers to questions.
Among them, he said Giuffre’s account of him sweating while they danced at a London nightclub could not have happened “because I have a peculiar medical condition which is that I don’t sweat or I didn’t sweat at the time and that was…was it…yes, I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenalin in the Falkland’s War when I was shot at and I simply…it was almost impossible for me to sweat.”
Another statement that went viral was his alibi, that he was at a Pizza Express restaurant for a birthday party attended by his then teenage daughter, Princess Beatrice.
“On that particular day that we now understand is the date which is the 10th of March, I was at home, I was with the children and I’d taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking for a party at I suppose sort of 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon.”
He was also asked if he regretted his relationship with Epstein.
“Now, still not and the reason being is that the people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn either by him or because of him were actually very useful,” he said.
What People Are Saying
Lownie described in the book’s introduction the research that went into it: “Some three thousand people were approached researching this book. Fewer than a tenth replied. It is understandable that from loyalty or deference to the Crown many should do so and so I am grateful to those who did talk to me, many of whom had never spoken before.
“Those almost three hundred people included childhood friends, schoolmates, work colleagues, former staff (in spite of the NDAs), diplomats, charity workers, business associates, journalists who investigated the Yorks but were not allowed to publish their findings, friends and people who had encountered them in daily life.
“My information came not only from a long list of interviews—some on the record but many not—identified using social media, electoral rolls, LinkedIn and Who’s Who, as well as over sixty years of media coverage, comments to newspapers and closed royal and navy forums.
“I was also able, having gone to court, to secure closed files from the National Archives as well as consult private diaries and letters.”
He did though get on the wrong side of Prince Harry over passages suggesting there was a fist fight between Andrew and Harry in 2013, which were serialized in the Daily Mail on Saturday.
Harry’s spokesperson told Newsweek: “Such are the gross inaccuracies, damaging and defamatory remarks made in the Daily Mail‘s story, I can confirm a legal letter from Prince Harry’s counsel has been sent to the Mail.”
What Happens Next
Lownie’s book will be published on Wednesday, August 14, by William Collins, an imprint of Harper Collins.
Jack Royston is chief royal correspondent for Newsweek, based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
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