Andrew Lownie sat across from me in shorts on Monday afternoon. The paperback of The Rise and Fall of the House of York drops Thursday in the States — the book Simon & Schuster pulled to delete a single line was published as a paperback in Britain and is tracking for number one. Next, American readers get the book on Thursday.
Lownie referenced an FBI intelligence document dated January 2026, headed RIS and the People’s Republic of China. The subject is Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. The links being mapped: Russian criminal gangs, Russian intelligence services, Chinese state intelligence. Andrew served at the Ministry of Defence. He was a trade envoy. He collected secrets in both roles. Lownie writes about that document in the new paperback.
“In some ways Epstein was a player in a bigger story,” he said. He thinks Epstein was a Russian asset recruited much earlier than people realized. That, he said, explains where the money came from.
I pushed him on the timeline. I told him what Stephen Hoffenberg told me before he died — that Epstein and Maxwell knew each other in the 1980s, that Epstein was working with Maxwell on his financial issues in the dying days of Maxwell’s life. I told him what Ari Ben-Menashe told me on the record — that he met Epstein in Robert Maxwell’s London offices during Iran-Contra. That Maxwell wanted to bring Epstein onto the operations team. That Tel Aviv — the Military Intelligence Directorate — had already approved. That Ghislaine and Epstein were an item at a very young age. That Robert Maxwell thought Epstein was going to marry his daughter.
Lownie did not flinch. He said it lines up with what he is hearing from a source on the periphery in the mid-1980s — Epstein, Ghislaine, and Andrew running around London, doing the same things they would do later.
If that’s true, the official story is wrong. The Concorde story — Ghislaine penniless, flying to New York after her father’s death, falling into Epstein’s arms — is a cover. They had already planned to take over Robert Maxwell’s business.
The Rothschilds keep showing up. Evelyn de Rothschild was close to the Queen. Lynn Forester de Rothschild was close to Epstein and close to Andrew. The witnesses at her wedding to Evelyn were Peter Mandelson and Prince Andrew. Lownie said the mainstream press will not touch her — she is rich and litigious. Australian television spiked his interviews on this subject.
I asked him about the Queen. Did she know.
“The Queen knew everything,” he said. Intelligence officers worked inside the palace. Letters were written to her for fifteen years. Intelligence officers came to her and were turned away by her private secretaries. The 2010 Ferguson access-selling story. The 2022 High Court case where the Yorks could not explain £1.3 million in their account. Nothing was done. The cover-up ran from the Queen to the King. It would still be running if the Epstein files had not dropped at Christmas.
I asked the question every Narativ reader wants answered. Does Andrew face real justice.
Lownie does not think so. He thinks Charles will not let his brother stand trial because Andrew might call the King as a witness. He thinks Mandelson is different. Mandelson, he said, goes to prison.
We ran out of time. The notes match from two angles. The story begins earlier. The network is bigger. The cover-up has been running for fifteen years and is breaking now because Substack reporters keep digging.
Andrew Lownie’s The Rise and Fall of the House of York is out Thursday. Buy it. Subscribe to his Substack. He has paid for every page.
Watch the full conversation on Narativ Live. Subscribe at narativ.org.
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