When Russian dissidents were bundled off into exile under the tsars, they were sent to Siberia, the ‘prison without a roof’, and disappeared from society, never to be seen again. Many residents of Norfolk, where the King has exiled his brother, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, will be hoping he follows the same route.
‘There may be a certain thrill about having him, like presenting Liz Truss in your sitting room’
Norfolk likes to call itself a ‘royal county’, as the Visit Norfolk website proudly proclaims. Sandringham, the family’s private home, is well known. But the royal connection pre-dates Queen Victoria’s purchase of the country retreat for her son Albert in 1862 by almost 800 years. William the Conqueror ordered the construction of Norwich Castle as a royal palace in the aftermath of the Norman conquest, and his son William II began work on the stone keep in 1094. Then there’s Little Walsingham, ‘England’s Nazareth’, which was visited by most English kings from Henry III, who came on 12 pilgrimages from circa 1226, to Henry VIII, who popped up twice as a pilgrim and then destroyed it in 1538, during his dissolution of the monasteries.
What does the county think of its latest is-he-or-isn’t-he-still-royal arrival? Will he be shunned in Sheringham, heckled in Holt or mobbed in Mundesley? Time to take the temperature. Names have been changed to avoid royal displeasure, although in this case it is less lèse-majesté than lèse-ligger.
‘Frankly, I suspect the reaction will be one of total indifference,’ predicts Marcus, one of Norfolk society’s leading lights. ‘Most people think he’s a very unpleasant individual and a loser.’ And what might Andrew make of Norfolk life? ‘I think he’ll hate it. There’ll be no bowing, no scraping and no pomp. It’s been a slow death for him for a number of years, and it’s only going to get quicker now.’
There’s another reason people won’t be rushing to the outcast with open arms. ‘People will be rather nervous of jeopardising their relationship with William and Kate, who really dislike Andrew, and the King. Some say Andrew was vile to Camilla before she married Charles. Well, he is having his own medicine now.’
Norfolk has a reputation for being insular and reserved. When my wife and I moved here a quarter of a century ago, a grandee said to me: ‘I don’t recall you having asked my permission to move up here.’ Admittedly I wasn’t a prince, but in my defence I wasn’t the grifting pal of a sex offender, either. So Norfolk may not think much of Andrew, and chances are he may not think very much of Norfolk. ‘I think he’ll find it very dreary, there’s no bling and Norfolk’s not on the way to anywhere,’ says Lucy, a distinguished writer. ‘He might have preferred the Tower. The most fashionable charity is the Norfolk Churches Trust (patron: His Majesty The King) and our social highlight is the stately car boot sale in aid of it. It will be a nightmare for Andrew.’
Will there be invitations to drinks, grand dinners, kitchen suppers? ‘That’s the big question,’ chuckles Sophie, one of the county’s most high-spirited hostesses. ‘It’s hilarious. There may be a certain thrill about having him, like presenting Liz Truss in your sitting room, the sheer disgrace of it, the shame. I think there’s some real consternation among the Turnip Taliban, who know him. Do you show friendship at Christmas and slip him an invitation, or just keep your head down and hope the smell goes away?’
‘Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience,’ wrote the Palestinian-American polymath Edward Said. Andrew will have plenty of time on his hands to contemplate his downfall.
So what are his options? Let’s begin with golf. In 2023, in an earlier chapter of disgrace, he was stripped of his role as patron of Royal County Down, Royal Belfast and Royal Portrush golf clubs. As of now, he remains an honorary member of the Royal West Norfolk Golf Club at Brancaster (motto: ‘If you don’t like this place then you don’t like golf’), perhaps the county’s toniest. Will he be welcome on the first tee? ‘We only play foursomes at Brancaster, but that might suit him rather nicely,’ says my mischievous man on the fairways. However, if Brancaster shows him the door, all is not lost. The nearest pitch and putt is Fakenham Fairways (‘Everyone is welcome’), 20 minutes down the A148.
What about a bang at the birds? Andrew has always been keen on his shooting. Again, it could be tricky. ‘These days the King runs the farm at Sandringham and William runs the shoot,’ says Hugo, a field sports supremo. ‘So there’s just no way he’s going to get his own days. And where else is he going to shoot? I just can’t see who’s going to invite him.’
Instead, Andrew could always reflect on life’s slings and arrows on the Merchants’ and Pilgrims’ Way, a new 70-mile route from King’s Lynn to Ely cathedral. As Egeus tells his bereaved son Theseus in Chaucer’s ‘The Knight’s Tale’: ‘This world is but a thoroughfare of woe, And we are pilgrims passing to and fro.’ Tramping across the haunting landscape of the Fens – ‘the low and liquid world’ of Graham Swift’s novel Waterland – on a bleak winter’s day might help him shed a few pounds on his path to atonement, too.
Amid this mêlée, military men sound a rare note of restraint and decency. ‘He’s obviously a self-important shit, but this witch-hunt is rather unedifying, and he should be left alone now,’ says a former officer in one of the country’s smartest regiments. ‘We might remember he was a war hero,’ adds another. ‘If he’s got any sense, he’ll retire from the fray, lick his wounds and keep quiet.’
Ultimately, as history teaches us, the road to redemption in cases such as these runs through good works, as best demonstrated by John Profumo after his fall from grace. ‘If Andrew is serious about becoming an active member of the community, he could join any one of Norfolk’s many excellent charities,’ says Emma, a gimlet-eyed volunteer. ‘People will give him a second chance if he rolls up his sleeves and does something useful for those in need. It’s time to serve and not be served.’
The choice is his. If Andrew proves unable or unwilling to pay his penance, he is likely to share, in one respect at least, the fate suffered by the many millions of Siberian exiles. There’s no way back.
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