This year has been especially challenging for the Royal Family, largely due to the controversies surrounding Prince Andrew’s association with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Recently, Virginia Giuffre’s memoir, published posthumously, has introduced a new wave of startling allegations. In response, Prince Andrew has decided to step down from his royal duties and relinquish his titles, including his dukedom.

This development comes on the heels of the 2025 biography by Andrew Lownie, focusing on Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. Titled “The Rise and Fall of the House of York,” the book delves into their financial dealings, ties to Epstein, and their lavish lifestyle.

Serialized by the Daily Mail, Lownie’s book has been called the “most damning royal biography ever written.” It is the result of four years of research and hundreds of interviews, portraying Andrew in a particularly negative light.

One section, titled “Foreign Antics,” details an episode from October 2000, when Andrew visited New York.

According to Lownie, Andrew was in the city to attend a dinner hosted by the consul-general, Thomas Harris. Following the dinner, Andrew attended Heidi Klum’s annual Halloween Party at the Hudson nightclub.

‘Theme that year “Hookers and Pimps”, led by Klum dressed in a black PVC catsuit, a spiked dog collar and wrist restraints and Ghislaine Maxwell as a prostitute in midriff-baring gold trousers and blonde wig.’

It certainly seems that when it comes to details of Andrew’s connections to Maxwell, who was convicted for sex trafficking underage girls in connection with Epstein, the Queen’s famous phrase, ‘recollections may vary’, applies.

Prince Andrew is pictured after allegedly having a ‘lunch date’ in New York with Ghislaine Maxwell on April 20, 2000

Prince Andrew is seen with supermodel Heidi Klum at a Hookers and Pimps-themed Halloween party held in New York in October 2000

After Epstein died in jail in 2019, fresh scrutiny was piled on Andrew regarding his connection to the convicted sex offender. 

Andrew claims that he first met Epstein in 1999 through Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s British girlfriend and a woman the prince said he had known since she was at university. 

That year was the first time the prince and the businessman were linked in press reports in the UK and US. But in August, Maxwell claimed she did not introduce Andrew to Epstein.

Instead, it was Andrew’s wife Sarah Ferguson who pushed for a friendship with the convicted paedophile, she said. She defended the Duke of York, saying he is innocent of the sex allegations against him and that the ‘bull****’ claims were fabricated to make money and to attack the Royal Family.

Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking. Her bombshell comments were revealed in audio tapes and a 380-page transcript, released by the US Department of Justice, of a two-day interview with US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.

She provided no incriminating information on high-profile individuals but spoke about her interactions with several well-known names. 

Disgraced socialite Maxwell defended Andrew against allegations made by the late Giuffre that she had been trafficked to the Duke of York when she was 17. 

Ms Giuffre, who took her own life earlier this year, claimed that paedophile Epstein trafficked her to London and forced her to have sex with the prince – allegations Andrew has repeatedly and vehemently denied. 

The publication of Andrew Lownie’s 2025 biography of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson , Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, has shone fresh light on the couple’s finances, links to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and luxurious lifestyle

Lownie wrote in his book, Entitled, that a few days after the Halloween party, the Duke headed to Los Angeles. 

‘At a dinner thrown for him in a local restaurant, he met a former Playboy model and actress, Denise Martell,’ he wrote. 

‘Discovering she had a sweet tooth, Andrew ordered the dessert trolley and fed her a chocolate-coated strawberry. 

‘”I took the entire strawberry in my mouth in one gulp”, she later remembered.

‘”It was very suggestive. He loved it. By this time he was holding hands with me under the table.”

‘Andrew invited her to his hotel, where they chatted in the bar until 2.15am before he walked her to her car and they kissed. He gave her his number on a piece of paper emblazoned with the motto “His Gloriousness” and they agreed to meet the next night at his £580-a-night suite at the Bel-Air Hotel. 

‘”I absolutely wanted to make love to him,” she remembered. “We stayed on the couch heavy petting. I was lying back in his arms.”‘

Lownie wrote that Martell joined him in his room for a third night, after he had presented an award to Steven Spielberg at a BAFTA gala, bringing with her some melon-flavoured candles because she thought it had been too bright the night before. 

‘He gave his mobile number to me on the first night after I’d only known him a few hours. There was never any security there. I was very surprised,’ Lownie wrote that Martell said.

In January 2001, Martell gave an exclusive interview to the Mail on Sunday where she claimed she and Andrew enjoyed three days together during his official visit to Los Angeles in November 2000, which was funded by the British taxpayer.

She reportedly went on to have a five-year relationship with the prince until 2005, and made him the godfather of her son, who was born in 2008.

Elsewhere in the book, Lownie claims that Andrew has slept with more than 1,000 women over the course of his life. Martell claimed she didn’t mind Andrew’s other women, and she and the Duke remain in touch to this day, according to Lownie. 

This comes as recently unearthed emails now suggest that Andrew remained in contact with Epstein five years longer than he claimed.

Pictured: The front Page of Mail on Sunday on January 14, 2001. Picture shows Denise Martell, who was said to have had a 72-hour romance with Prince Andrew

Correspondence in late 2015 between the American financier and former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, in which the Duke of York is namechecked, was published by The Sunday Times in August. 

In the exchange, Epstein suggests there is a potential business opportunity in China for a personal protection company.

When asked by Barak where the information had come from, Epstein responded: ‘Andrew’. Barak then says if that was ‘The Prince’, to which the convicted paedophile said: ‘Yes.’

It throws into doubt Andrew’s claim to Emily Maitlis in the disastrous 2019 Newsnight grilling that he had stopped seeing Epstein in early December 2010, when they were photographed walking through New York’s Central Park.

The Sunday Times said it had obtained a copy of the emails from file-sharing website Distributed Denial of Secrets, who had first published the document. The newspaper said it had independently verified dozens of email addresses, phone numbers, and addresses of the people named in the document.

It comes after an email was unearthed earlier this year from him to Epstein saying ‘we’ll play some more soon!!!!’ weeks after he said he had cut off contact with the paedophile financier.

The Duke of York sent a bombshell email in February 2011 pledging to ‘keep in close touch’.

In December 2010, Andrew was pictured in New York with Epstein. He claimed to Maitlis in the interview he had flown there ‘with the sole purpose’ of ending their relationship, and during their walk in Central Park they had agreed to part company, the Duke told the Newsnight interview, stating: ‘And to this day I never had any contact with him from that day forward.’

There is no suggestion that Andrew – who did fly on the financier’s private jet – was an accomplice of Epstein, who was facing trial for running a child-sex trafficking ring when he was found hanged in his cell in August 2019.

In 2022, Andrew paid Ms Giuffre an undisclosed sum, reported to be £12million, to settle her civil claim for sex assault without any admission of wrongdoing. She died in April this year by suicide.

Most recently, in a world-beating exclusive, The Mail on Sunday revealed that Andrew tried to involve the Metropolitan Police and one of Queen Elizabeth’s most senior aides in a campaign to smear Virginia Giuffre, who had accused him of assaulting her as a teenager. 

A bombshell email obtained exposed how Andrew asked his taxpayer-funded police bodyguard to investigate the ‘lying’ young woman. Shockingly, the prince passed on details of her date of birth and social security number, presumably given to him by Epstein. 

He also claimed Virginia, who took her own life earlier this year, had criminal convictions, which has been strongly denied by her family.

Several sources say that right until the end Andrew, who remains a prince by birthright, appeared to be in denial about the seriousness of his predicament and ‘clearly strongly believes in his own innocence’.

It came after the King threatened to have his brother officially stripped of his titles unless he saw sense and gave them up himself. The decision was backed by Prince William.

King Charles, 76, also made clear he would not hesitate to take decisive ‘further action’ if his brother refused to give up his dukedom and other honours after he lied about cutting ties with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, it can be revealed.

All references to the Duke of York have been axed from royal.uk and he is now referred to as Prince Andrew throughout. Meanwhile Sarah Ferguson no longer goes by the handle ‘SarahTheDuchess’ on her X account and is now ‘sarahMFergie15’.