With explosive claims about Prince Andrew – his friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and compromising material about him passed to hostile states – Andrew Lownie’s book on the Duke of York has rocked the monarchy.
Now I hear the launch party – following its exclusive serialisation in the Daily Mail – is causing ructions of its own.
Tonight, Lownie is due to celebrate the publication of Entitled: The Rise And Fall Of The House Of York with a party at The London Library in St James’s Square. The author has, however, felt the need to ban one of the capital’s most prominent socialites, Lady Victoria Hervey.
Veteran public-relations man Brian Basham is invited to the bash and wanted to bring his friend Lady Victoria, 48, sister of the Marquess of Bristol, as his plus-one.
But when he politely asked Lownie if this would be acceptable, the author made it clear that she would be turned away at the door of the library, the former haunt of Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Charles Darwin and Ian Fleming.
‘Look forward to seeing you, but she’s barred,’ Lownie told Basham. He is understood to have taken exception to unflattering comments she made on GB News about his book.
Lady Victoria has been an outspoken defender of Prince Andrew and his friend Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving 20 years in a US jail for enticement of minors and sex-trafficking under-age girls.
She claims she had to flee the US as a result.
Lady Victoria, pictured, has been an outspoken defender of Prince Andrew and his friend Ghislaine Maxwell
Prince Andrew (left) and Lady Victoria (right) are seen together in January 2002 at a New Year’s party inside the Reform Club in London
‘It all started getting scary when I got involved with a documentary about Ghislaine,’ she told me in 2023. ‘I pretended to be on a whistleblower’s side
to get evidence to support Ghislaine. I have been working undercover and it’s dangerous.
‘The powers that be over there know all about me, I even thought I was being followed. I was glad to get back to the UK. I just want this to be over and stop looking over my shoulder.
‘I am in touch with Prince Andrew, but I can’t discuss him.’
Cool Anita! Single, sexy Rani rules the Proms
Woman’s Hour host Anita Rani painted the Royal Albert Hall red with the ‘dress of her dreams’ this week as she presented a BBC Proms concert.
The Countryfile star, 47, turned up at the London landmark wearing this striking red couture dress designed by Asar.
Rani, who presented the return to the Proms of sitar virtuoso Anoushka Shankar, has been enjoying life since the end of her 14-year marriage to tech executive Bhupi Rehal in 2023. She says: ‘I’m single. I’m child-free, I’m in my mid-40s, and I have never felt better, sexier, more powerful.’
Romance was anything but elementary for Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch. The Harrow-educated actor, 49, is married to theatre director and playwright Sophie Hunter, 47, but admits she might have given up hope that he would ever make the first move. Describing his lack of confidence around women, he says:‘I took 17½ years to get round to doing something. I was a tongue-tied public schoolboy. But I figured it out and put it to her that we could be more than friends.’ They now have three children.
Famed for her opulent lifestyle, Mariah Carey has developed a taste for a simple British classic – fish and chips. The singer, who was in Brighton recently showing off her five-octave range as the headline act at the Pride festival, reveals: ‘I just didn’t know what to eat. I was like, OK, let’s just do fish and chips. And it was actually really good.’ There are limits, however. ‘I don’t like vinegar with it,’ the 56-year-old says. As for mushy peas? ‘I hadn’t noticed that…’ Curry sauce? ‘I don’t like curry.’
Synth-pop pioneer Thomas Dolby, 66, who invented the Nokia ringtone, admits his mother tried to rig the Top 40 for him. After he told her the top-selling singles were determined by a survey of record shops, she took matters into her own hands. He adds: ‘At her store in Cambridge, when I had a single, she’d buy 20.’ Let’s hope this won’t invalidate the Top 20 spot of Dolby’s 1984 hit Hyperactive!
BUCKINGHAM Palace may be undergoing a ten-year, £369million renovation – but will that be enough for Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen? The foppish former Changing Rooms presenter says the monarch’s home is ‘like a rather downat-heel golf resort’. Llewelyn-Bowen, 60, adds: ‘Buckingham Palace has that dowdy feel to it. It should be a bit more splendiferous than it actually is. ‘I did some flooring there, years ago, before I was famous, and Prince Philip hated it. I told him when I met him, “You probably don’t know this, but years ago I designed these floors.” ‘And he looked down and went, “Hmm, never liked them.”’
How self-conscious Ore scooped Strictly by a hair
BBC star Ore Oduba has revealed the desperate efforts he made to cover up the fact that he was going bald while competing on Strictly Come Dancing.
‘Hiding my hair loss during Strictly was hard but absolutely necessary,’ declares Ore, 39, who treated himself with a hair-loss spray before resorting to tablets, which, worryingly, have potential side-effects including infertility and impotence. ‘I’d visit my trusted barber every Friday so my hairline was tight and tidy.’
Recalling the moment his 2016 Strictly victory was announced, the presenter, who has two children with ex-wife Portia, pictured, says: ‘My mind fully emptied from the shock. But I had the wherewithal to know not to touch my hair when I had my head in my hands!’
