A royal author has claimed that Sarah Fergusonused a five-word coded message to tell her friends that her marriage to Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, was nearly at an end.
In his new book ‘Entitled: The Rise And Fall Of The House Of York’, Andrew Lownie assesses the rise and fall of one of the most controversial members of the Royal Family.
Despite stepping back as a working royal in 2019, following his catastrophic Newsnight interview, in which he addressed his friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Andrew appears to have been embroiled in scandal after scandal.
There are now concerns that things could get worse following the release of Mr Lownie’s new book about the 65-year-old, one which has not been authorised by the Duke of York. In it, Mr Lownie discusses Andrew’s decade long marriage with Sarah and the phrase she started using with friends to quietly describe how things were going.
Sarah and Andrew married in 1986, but separated in 1992, before they officially divorced in 1996. Despite the divorce, they have remained on friendly terms since.
Mr Lownie claimed in the book: “By now Sarah was using a secret code with her closest friends to let them know that her relationship with Andrew was crumbling. Said one: ‘When things were getting very rough she’d say ‘The ranch is getting closer.’ A reference to her mother’s flit to Argentina.’”
The “flit” Mr Lownie is referring to is when Sarah’s mother Susan Barrantes (previously Ferguson and previously Wright) left the family to start a romance with Argentinian polo player Hector Barrantes. Hector died in 1990, eight years before Susan, who is reportedly buried alongside him.
The release of Mr Lownie’s book is said to have increased worries for the Royal Family about Andrew potentially becoming embroiled in further negative stories.
Journalist Richard Eden said in a new television documentary about Andrew: “Who knows what could come out? I think the Royal Family still lives in fear, frankly, of what could come out.”
In the build-up to the release of the book, Mr Lownie has been speaking about the attention it has received, and how it has taken him four years to write, after submitting hundreds of Freedom of Information requests to government deparments.
He claimed to Sky that his applications were knocked back, while addressing the widespread furore around his work before it became widely available.
Mr Lownie told the broadcaster: “Clearly there are details that people have picked up on and run with. And you know, that’s inevitable in these sort of books. If they’re to earn our trust and support, they have to show that they are not hiding things – that they are behaving well.”
Mr Lownie has also addressed whether he thinks Andrew will ever have a public role again after a YouGov report found that Andrew remains the most unpopular member of the Royal Family.
The data suggested that 87 percent of people have a negative view of him, while just five percent have a positive view, with the negative ratings rising amongst younger age groups.
Mr Lownie said: “I don’t think he has any public future. I would say his private future is pretty limited too. I mean, he lives in Royal Lodge [on the Windsor Estate], he plays golf, watches TV, and presumably sees his grandchildren … he’s living the life of a retired man.”