I have pre-ordered Andrew Lownie's Book (out I think 14th August) A thread for those interested in "Entitled"

[BasiliskStare]

So for those interested in this book about the Yorks. I will read it and interested to hear from others who have or to give an opinion.

No spitting , no gouging 😂

I hope he takes all his evidence to the authorities

I’m just listening to this podcast. They talk about neurodivergency and sexual abuse..https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/heretics/id1515932214?i=1000722265692

I only know what I have read and watched so far and it’s truly horrific.

AL has clearly stated in several interviews that what happened to Prince Andrew aged eleven was unequivocally child abuse, which continued after the prostitute incident at Heatherdown school.

He also said he hesitated about putting it in the book but felt that it was relevant to the later material and went some way to explaining PA’s behaviour, while not excusing it, and that it provided balance; the same as in his book about Mountbatten.

To my knowledge he hasn’t called for an enquiry but I think that might be because the person implicated is dead, I’m not sure, and Heatherdown School, where abuse took place, closed in 1982.

As you may know, there was an enquiry in to child abuse in boarding schools which formed part of the overall IICSA enquiry set up in the wake of the Jimmy Saville scandal. It makes very depressing reading:

https://www.iicsa.org.uk/about-us.html

https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/investigation/residential-schools/part-c-boarding-schools/c1-introduction.html

I hope someone will correct me if I’m
wrong but Heatherdown doesn’t appear to be on the list of schools investigated.

And I don’t think that there has been much legal retribution for the paedophiles involved in the schools which were named and investigated either. It’s all a very sorry and sordid state of affairs.

Victims are still fighting for justice and compensation.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3e8dwk8zdvo.amp

As you may have read the enquiry was fraught with difficulties:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Inquiry_into_Child_Sexual_Abuse

AL has clearly stated in several interviews that what happened to Prince Andrew aged eleven was unequivocally child abuse, which continued after the prostitute incident at Heatherdown

To repeat, it’s not Lownie's place to put it in his book in the first place and certainly not his place to use it to plug his book in PR interviews and podcasts. Also, I feel very uncomfortable that this thread is now going to go down the same road so, I’m out now.

As I said-there is an obvious reason why the incident with the escort was not stopped at the time or investigated now…….

I sort of got that impression from the interview. Damn, I think it was the Andrew Gold one…will need to go back and look. AL definitely mentioned a name which seems to have been redacted…intriguing.

Btw…why is EVERYONE called Andrew??🧐

Forgive me for going slightly off piste with this post but on the subject of CSA I thought the following was relevant.

I don’t claim to have any special knowledge on this subject but have just come across an article saying that Boris Johnson, while PM, criticised the £60 million being spent on the child sex abuse enquiry as funds “being spaffed up the wall”

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47560192

And yet he attended one of the schools that was being investigated by the enquiry:

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/boris-johnsons-school-regime-of-sexual-abuse-hearing-told-143912922.html

I obviously don’t know what Johnson’s experience was of the school and it’s not my business to speculate but the point I wanted to make was that while these posh boarding school boys are running the UK, and inhabit powerful and influential positions embedded in the establishment, CSA will never be eradicated and treated seriously, because many of them attended institutions where this crime was trivialised and normalised.

Well yes @Puzzledandpissedoff exactly. I'm just answering why AL is pushing for that and not investigations into the child sex abuse allegations

I expect many of us would appreciate that, SoNotaRealHousewife, but what does anyone imagine would happen if he did?

Even if Andrew was doing something downright illegal there's no way he'll ever be allowed to enter a witness box, so while the Giuffre-type payouts to shut people up might cost them (us?) a fair bit I don't see it going any further than that

I completely agree, while the perpetrators of crimes deserve to be named and Andrews crimes should be investigated and laid bare for all to see, this is not that !
the victims of abuse are never named or revealed against their will, if it was anyone else but Andrew or a woman people would see this for the gross invasion of privacy that it is.
here we have a complete reversal of investigation of SA crimes, the VICTIM named and the PERPETRATOR hidden, it’s disgusting and shameful that this was allowed to be used for entertainment, it shouldn’t matter who it is, inexcusable!

Presumably it was redacted because of who it was.

The cover-up and the fact that royals are untouchable makes me really angry. Andrew's behaviour is in line with what many would expect so I'm not angry about that. What must it feel like to be William, knowing it falls to you to deal with the fallout? Quite a burden.

Agree, but it’s a sad feature of closed institutions and organisations. The BBC similarly covered up all kinds of things, and we’re still seeing the tail-end (I hope it is!) of that with the Masterchef scandal. People feel so special and unassailable and begin to believe they can and should get away with anything.

Take the lid off any institution and you find dark stuff.

While I am not unaware of historic child sex abuse in public schools after reading Earle Spencer's book and hearing horrific details from Nicky Campbell and his peers. It is up to PA and others affected to go to the police or for the police force in question to start their own enquiries.

@Luddite26 that would be the normal procedure, yes. In this case someone else has put the information in the public domain (in my opinion, wrongly). Does that person not have a responsibility to take the next step?

@CurlewKate that podcast is the Youtube video I linked upthread

if it was anyone else but Andrew or a woman people would see this for the gross invasion of privacy that it is.

I agree.

Yes - inconsistency and sensationalism, minimising and trivialising. Those revelations (or partial revelations) hit me hardest.

This has already been discussed at length way, way down the thread.

I agree there is an ethical issue about whether to include it in the book or not and it makes me uneasy too.

Andrew Lownie said he considered whether to include it or not very carefully and has explained his reasons why.

He didn’t include the information for salacious reasons, He included it (in short non-sensational brief lines) because it was relevant to the rest of the information in the book;

PA turned out to be an alleged abuser, with what appears to be a sex addiction, so it is highly relevant that he suffered SA as a child. It gives some insight in to his behaviour without excusing it.

Biographers, if properly objective, once committted to a subject, have to report what they find. Historians have a duty to leave behind a properly accurate historical record because the truth has a way of emerging sooner or later. Eg Mountbatten.

Imagine if this information came to light later on, through a different source?

Many people would be accusing Lownie of being biased against PA if he had not included the information in the book.

They would be protesting that he only reported Andrew’s nefarious sexual activities and left out the fact that he was a victim too! They would accuse AL of bias against PA.

It’s not pleasant but I can understand why AL included this information, because by understanding the great harm that was done to PA as a child, the reader is offered a rounder, more nuanced picture of the man. He was a victim as well as an alleged perpetrator.

The whole thing is horrific but I disagree with the view that Lownie has offered up this information up for entertainment purposes. Of course he is earning money from the book because he is a writer. But his books all serve the purpose of shedding light on public figures who live dual lives by investigating the hard questions that our representatives in Parliament have failed to ask. And by uncovering information that has been deliberately hidden from public view.

Also, as was also discussed earlier, the book needs to be judged in its entirety. It’s not fair to judge it on one paragraph.

Unfortunately, owing to our news culture, anything sexual is picked up by journalists and highlighted first when the advance extracts are published. This isn’t AL’s fault.

He has provided a measured, nuanced picture of Andrew and the book, read in full, is primarily about financial corruption carried out at the tax payer’s expense and covered up by the monarchy.

That is a rubbish non excuse!
there is no excuse for what Andrew has apparently done and what happened to him as a child is not relevant.
if this was you or your child and you had kept it secret ( possibly from misplaced shame) and not told anyone including family and friends how would you feel if it was broadcast worldwide without your consent?
and this was not just Andrews secret ! What about the other boy involved? , just like Harry outing the poor girl he lost his virginity to, there will be people who will did up the names, what about his privacy?
he’s innocent of any crimes as far as we know , does he deserve to be outed too?
there is no excuse for what he has done , he knows full well he was attacking someone who is unlikely to fight back .

It’s not pleasant but I can understand why AL included this information, because by understanding the great harm that was done to PA as a child, the reader is offered a rounder, more nuanced picture of the man. He was a victim as well as an alleged perpetrator.

I've been giving this a lot of thought and while I don't think A's privacy should have been breached without his permission, I just can't buy the hackneyed child victim inevitably goes on to abuse excuse.

Andrew as an adult had agency. He was a well educated man, very expensively taught to think and analyse and yet demonstrably failed both in unrelated areas over and over.

Nature won.

I really hope so.

I don’t think the abuse, while appalling in itself, is an excuse at all, but it does suggest the amorality and exploitative nature of these sexual encounters must have affected and informed his character.

I have read a couple of AL's other books - the Edward VIii one and the Mountbatten's.
Hopefully PA's is the last generation of Royals to suffer child abuse and then go on to be perpetrators.
My stepdad as a very young boy in the 1930s was sent out by his mother in London to carry luggage for the very rich. He despised the aristocracy because of how he had been treated in this period and also later as he worked as a porter for most of his life ending up latterly in the hotel next to Jimmy Savile's Scarborough home.
When Mountbatten was murdered my step-father celebrated. Sexual abuse wasn't really hidden in those circles it was acceptable; little boys like my stepdad were fair game to the many perverts who preyed on them and in the same way PA will have been. A sick rite of passage in private schools (I am not condoning it whatsoever)which may explain why Boris Johnson shut down any enquiry. It was how the upper classes worked. Deprivation and power.

This reminds me of Margaret Powell’s book Life Below Stairs, a really frank account of her experiences as a young (teenage) housemaid between the wars. It was shocking when it came out, not because of her working conditions and treatment so much as her brutally honest and cynical dislike of her employers. You were meant to be deferential!

It’s one reason why I’ve never been able to enjoy things like Downton Abbey because they present a completely false picture of what life was like for servants in that period - and probably until the 60s too.