Exposed: Fergie's Epstein ties lasted longer than she said, says Andrew Lownie

A royal biographer contends that Sarah Ferguson's ties to Jeffrey Epstein outlived her public repudiation of the disgraced financier, with new assertions that she remained at least nominally connected to him until 2013 and that Epstein provided a far larger loan than previously disclosed. Andrew Lownie, author of Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, writes that the deal was brokered by Prince Andrew and used to cover pressing debts and restructure Ferguson's finances, reframing the relationship as a transactional arrangement rather than a friendship.

On March 7, 2011, the Duchess of York issued a grovelling public apology in which she said she abhorred paedophilia and that the relationship with Epstein had been a serious error in judgment. A little over a month later, The Mail on Sunday revealed a privately written email in which Ferguson urged Epstein not to disown her and described him as a steadfast and generous friend. The backlash followed, as seven charities severed ties with the duchess in the days that followed. Lownie's reporting pulls these strands together to suggest that the apology masked an ongoing association rather than a clean break.

Lownie says the correspondence and testimony collected for his book show Ferguson's public contrition in 2011 did not mark the end of her dealings with Epstein. He cites accounts from Epstein associates and former royal aides suggesting that she continued to visit an apartment tied to Epstein's circle, including a New York Upper East Side building connected to Epstein's brother, as late as 2013. In Claudine Pabst's testimony, residents described Ferguson as a semi-regular guest escorted by a doorman to and from the elevator on visits lasting only a few days. The author notes that Epstein's money was not a charitable loan but a calculated exchange, and he writes that Epstein's generosity to Ferguson amounted to closer to £2 million on a December 2010 occasion, far exceeding the £15,000 figure widely reported at the time. He adds that the arrangement likely involved Prince Andrew as broker and that Ferguson described Epstein as a steadfast, generous and supreme friend in one of the uncovered emails.

The broader portrait in Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York is of a duchess whose life since separating from Prince Andrew in 1992 has been defined by luxury and high public visibility. The book recounts episodes of extravagant spending and property leases in the 1990s, along with staff and security costs that sustained a lifestyle many viewed as incongruent with royal life. A former staff member turned whistleblower described dinners and household demands that, by some accounts, reflected a medieval standard of abundance. Critics have long cited a Queen Elizabeth II-era dismissive remark about Ferguson, and her later Oprah Winfrey appearances and public interviews have been framed by observers as part of a broader pattern of leveraging attention and connections for financial and social gain.

Lownie, whose book is published by HarperCollins, argues that the Epstein chapter — if corroborated — would complicate the narrative of Ferguson's contrition in 2011 and prompt a reevaluation of the extent to which financial pressures shaped her public behavior. The disclosures add to a long-running public conversation about how members of the royal circle navigated wealth, media scrutiny and personal relationships in the years following the couple's separation.