LODGE LIFE
Inside shamed Prince Andrew’s secret ‘swanky’ life at Royal Lodge – with golf club membership & walks with his ex
Watch our video to see Andrew's Royal Lodge life
PRINCE Andrew’s fall from grace has been so dramatic that on the face of it there is nothing left in his life beyond his family and occasional exercise.
There are spells when it seems he can go days without emerging from Royal Lodge, his 30-room mansion in 98 acres of secluded grounds near Windsor where he has lived since 2004.
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For successive days during The Open Championship at Troon the other week, for example, there was no sign of him. It was tempting to think he was holed up inside, watching wall-to-wall golf alone.
The real story is very different, according to his friends, but locals who see him out and about occasionally in the Windsor area think Andrew is becoming ever more reclusive and lonely.
One source suggested the late Queen’s second son and third child looked desperate for company.
“You used to see him going up to the stables to go riding and he’d be talking non-stop to the grooms and they’d rarely be saying anything back. You wondered what they got out of it,” he said.
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The Duke of York does not go to the castle and its stables so much these days.
DUKE'S PURSUITS
Instead he has taken to having the horses delivered to a remote part of Windsor Great Park, where he can ride without being watched by photographers or bumping into the public.
There are other discreet outings that locals and others see.
Andrew, who was forced to stand down from royal duties in 2019 amid an angry public backlash to a car-crash television interview in which he tried to counter claims he slept with a 17-year-old victim of sex trafficking, remains an ardent golfer.
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He plays regularly at Swinley Forest Golf Club at Winkfield Row near Ascot, popular with diplomats and often described as one of the most exclusive and private golf clubs in Britain.
His most regular companions in public are his ex-wife Sarah, Duchess of York, who shares Royal Lodge with him despite their 1996 divorce, their two daughters and their families, and his bodyguard - understood to be funded privately by his brother the King.
Desperate Andrew's last public outing was a catastrophic mistake - he needs to disappear, says expert Tom Bower
Andrew and Sarah, both 64, are regularly spotted heading out for dog walks. They pick remote and inaccessible places to exercise their dogs, who include two of the late Queen’s corgis.
“I have seven dogs and two of them are corgis…five of them are Norfolk terriers,” Fergie told American celebrity magazine Us Weekly in May. “They’re all very lovely and very, very loved.”
That then is the view from outside, the one the press and public see: a disgraced, reclusive royal getting out occasionally but essentially confined to his home for much of the week.
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SOCIAL CIRCLE
But inside the royal circle, the couple’s friends laugh at the suggestion that Andrew is isolated and lonely.
They paint instead a picture of a man who, like many people in their sixties, is enjoying spending more time on leisure and his family.
“He is very family-focused,” said one, while others describe Royal Lodge as a happy family home with a constant stream of visitors.
If the Duke is ever downcast, it is the Duchess first and foremost who picks him up, according to friends.
Inside Prince Andrew's 'crumbling' Royal Lodge
THE disgraced Duke of York resides at the £30million Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park, Berkshire - at least for now.
King Charles has redoubled his efforts to evict the Duke - with insiders branding the stand-off the "siege of Royal Lodge".
Despite his divorce from Sarah Ferguson in 1996, Prince Andrew lives with his ex-wife at the countryside estate.
Prince Andrew's royal residence, with its eye-catching white exterior, boasts 30 rooms with plenty of space for entertaining, plus seven bedrooms spread across the two topmost floors.
The Duke of York is said to spend all day "watching TV in a dark room" like a prisoner at his "crumbling" home.
Royal Lodge is said to "need extensive repairs", thought to be about £400,000 a year.
The monarch is said to be becoming increasingly frustrated at Andrew’s refusal to care for the colossal mansion.
Andrew is said to have promised he would take care of its expensive repairs - despite having no apparent source of income.
“She’s always been able to cheer him up,” says one, of the effervescent, irrepressible Fergie, who has had her own turmoil to go through this year after battles with skin cancer and breast cancer.
She and Andrew have previously described each other as Britain’s happiest divorced couple.
They have found comfort in each other, although their loyal friends insist there is no rekindled romance there in spite of occasional speculation that they might eventually rewed.
LIVES WITH EX-WIFE
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The Duke and Duchess have offices at opposite ends of the John Nash-designed house but share the main living areas, the one kitchen, dining room, and the mansion’s centrepiece, the drawing room or saloon.
What Fergie has done, friends say, is turn seven bedroom-Royal Lodge, which dates from 1662 although most of it was rebuilt in the 1830s and 1930s, into a real family home loved equally by the couple’s two daughters Princess Beatrice, 35, and Princess Eugenie, 34, and their husbands and children.
Regular visitors find the elegant, Gothic drawing room is usually buried in a mountain of plastic toys these days to entertain the grandchildren.
Beatrice and her husband Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, 40, have a daughter Sienna, two, and his son Wolfie, eight, while Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank, 38, have two sons, August, three, and Ernest, one.
In spite of the children’s chaos, visitors report that the house interiors are in immaculate condition. Outside it is a different story: scaffolding has been installed to deal with large patches of flaking paint on the exterior that clearly need money spent on them.
'CRUMBLING' ROYAL LODGE
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The work is required under the terms of Andrew’s lease.
He acquired the former home of the Queen Mother in 2003 on a 75-year lease from the independently-run Crown Estate and spent £7.5 million on refurbishing the property.
His brother the King, reluctant to subsidise Andrew, is worried that the Duke can no longer afford the upkeep and has suggested he downsizes to five-bedroom Frogmore Cottage, Harry and Meghan’s former home.
Andrew shows no sign of budging but it is not really a debate that comes up in conversation with guests at the house. He has a reputation for never complaining about his family.
A steady stream of friends arrive to visit.
Equally, Andrew will go out to meet some in London or at Coworth Park, a five-star hotel at nearby Sunningdale near Ascot.
DATING LIFE
There are romantic relationships with women, according to author Andrew Lownie, who is researching a biography of the Yorks.
“There certainly was a woman a while back,” he said. “I’m not sure it’s that lonely a life.”
Lownie maintains that Andrew’s relationships have been with adult and mainly middle aged women and there is no record of anyone else like Virginia Giuffre, the woman who ended his royal career and forced him to pay out a large but undisclosed sum in an out-of-court settlement after accusing him of sleeping with her when she was 17.
There was speculation that Andrew was considering returning to court to try to clear his name in a fresh action against Ms Giuffre, now aged 40 and living in Australia.
'There is no way back for Prince Andrew', claims PR guru
PRINCE Andrew’s reputation is damaged beyond repair and he will never be able to engineer a return to public life, according to one of Britain’s top PR gurus.
Brand and culture expert Nick Ede, who runs East of Eden PR agency, called the shamed royal “deluded” for thinking he could ever return to royal duties and urged him to give up and ‘enjoy his life’ in exile.
It follows the release of Scoop - a Netflix movie based on the 2019 interview he gave to Newsnight.
Nick said: “There is no way back for him.
“I think you know this perpetual idea that he could still be back. Nobody cares. He hasn't got fans.
“There's nobody out there who's going ‘We want to see Prince Andrew’, not one single person. I think he has to realise that. But I think it's going to take a long, long time for him to actually understand. It's very deluded.
"In my opinion, the best thing that he could do is just enjoy his life. He's got gorgeous daughters. He has a great relationship with Fergie, he has a lovely house.
“Just live a quiet life.”
Reflecting on the interview five years ago - the fallout of which saw Andrew step back from royal duties "for the foreseeable future" - Nick compared the fallout to Frost vs Nixon and said he would have urged him not to do it.
He said: “If I had been advising him, I would say, go quiet, be quiet, just go to ground. You know you're a prince. Enjoy the life that you lead, but do not open this can of worms, because that's what it is.
“There was no admission that a relationship with somebody like Epstein was terribly toxic. There was no idea that there were loads of victims of trafficking whose lives were completely ruined by Epstein. He didn't seem to think that the association he had with that man was anything but positive.
“I think his worst gaffe was obviously being in that interview and agreeing to it in the first place, for not realising that he's actually going to be interviewed by a very, very good journalist who is going to ask him questions which he might not like.
“But I think what this has done is really shown how archaic Prince Andrew is in his opinions and thoughts.
"Read the room. He's never read a room at all.”
But friends see no prospect of that happening. His name, it seems, will forever be tarnished.
When he settled with his accuser without admitting any wrongdoing, he offered to help victims of sex trafficking and was advised to redeem himself by devoting his life to charity work, just as the former War Secretary John Profumo did after the sex scandal that brought him down in 1963.
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But any thoughts of charity work were ruled out after campaigners and others said Andrew was the last person who should be allowed near trafficking victims.
“The public made their views very clear on that,” said one royal insider.
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