Dickie Arbiter was the ultimate royal insider – handling Queen Elizabeth II’s public affairs for 12 years – and has now spoken out on Andrew Mountbatten Windsor’s nature behind closed doors
For over a decade, Dickie Arbiter was the trusted press spokesman for Queen Elizabeth II. Over the years, he met more than once with the late monarch’s “favourite” son, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, and has given a brutal verdict on the disgraced royal.
Characterising the former prince as a “bully,” Dickie said that his duties didn’t involve a great deal of contact with Andrew. He explained: “On the odd occasion that I did have dealings with him. He was arrogant, he was rude, and he was bumptious.”
Dickie claims he was one of the few royal staff that pushed back over the often-reported allegations of bullying.
He recalled that was given a warning by another Palace official, saying: “I was once told by a colleague ‘Speaking to him like that, you’ll get fired’ and I said, “No, he won’t. He won’t tell anyone. Bullies don’t tell anybody’.”
The former press secretary added that he wasn’t at all surprised that King Charles had moved to strip his younger brother of his various titles and honours. “It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “This has been going on since 2019, since that disastrous Newsnight interview.”
The publication first of Andrew Lownie’s scathing exposé of the House of York, followed by the late Virgina Guiffre’s heartbreaking memoir Nobody’s Girl, have placed more and more allegations about Andrew’s conduct into the public domain.
The former Duke of York has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
It was important, Dickie believes, to prevent that whiff of scandal from being attacked to the institution of monarchy. “It really was a duty that the King had to push forward,” he said.
Andrew voluntarily gave up many of his titles, such as Duke of York, in mid-October, saying he would stop using the titles because the “continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the Royal Family”.
But last week the King went further, “initiating a formal process” to remove all of those titles, and even the title of prince, which had been Andrew’s since birth.
“His Majesty has today initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement late on Thursday.
“Prince Andrew will now be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.”
In the same statement, it was made clear that “formal notice’ had been given to remove the 65-year-old former prince – henceforth to be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor – from his beloved Royal Lodge on the Windsor estate.
Royal historian Kelly Swaby told the BBC that the specific language used in Buckingham Palace’s statement was “very brutal”.
Those words had been carefully chosen, she said: ”Ordinary people don’t care about the semantics, they want to see punishment, and public opinion is very much against Andrew, the Palace knows that, and the language very much reflects that.”
In a final twist of the knife, the former Duke of York lost his honorary rank of vice-admiral a week after having the royal title of prince removed
In exchange for the Royal Lodge, the King is understood to have provided a smaller property on the Sandringham estate for his brother, and is understood to be giving him a regular £1,000,000 annual allowance.
While the loss of his titles comes into effect immediately, Mr Mountbatten Windsor is not expected to move to the new property until after Christmas, meaning he will not be at Sandringham for the traditional Royal Family gathering.
Andrew’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, 66, had been living in another part of the huge Royal Lodge but is now expected make her own living arrangements.
