A new book by Andrew Lownie has reinforced the case against monarchy by examining the life of Andrew Wilson.
Mr Wilson is known to monarchists as Prince Andrew or the Duke of York.
Windsor is the brother of Britain’s hereditary head of state and a son of the preceding one.
In a review of Lownie’s The Rise and Fall of the House of York the British Broadcasting Corporation, a staunchly monarchist institution, writes that this member of the family is “arrogant, self-seeking and in denial about his links to the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein”.
Although the Windsor family are thought by monarchists to be uniquely able to provide the country’s head of state Lownie reports that while benefiting from a very expensive education Windsor had to retake his two O levels exams before being allowed to go on to A levels.
The book tells of a man who is rude, lacks self-awareness, and who has had many “quick-fire affairs”.
He is reported to have angrily reprimanded someone who failed to use his mother’s full feudal title and to have sent his tax-payer funded bodyguards to pick up stray golf balls.
The book accuses Windsor of removing staff from their jobs for wearing a nylon tie or having a facial mole.
The BBC reviewer reports that one of the author’s sources accuses Mr Windsor of poor judgement that has got him into “highly compromising situations”. His efforts to make more money for himself have involved him with “Libyan gun runners”, the relations of dictators and a Chinese spy.
The so called “prince” is said to be obsessed with sex but “much weaker at relationships”. His connection to Jeffrey Epstein is claimed to date from the early 1990s.
The author notes that Windsor on one occasion had dinner with Epstein at the sex offender’s house in Manhattan.
According to one of Windsor’s friends the unequal relationship was “like putting a rattlesnake in an aquarium with a mouse”.
This is one of the gifts that the monarchists give to Britain: representatives anointed in a feudal system, not chosen democratically, as they should be, by the people.
The Rise and Fall of the House of York
Andrew Lownie
Published by William Collins