Patrick Sawer, Janet Eastham and Victoria Ward
Former prince Andrew took Ghislaine Maxwell to the inner sanctum of the Royal family’s Sandringham retreat, the Epstein files have revealed.
A photograph of Andrew shows him sprawled across the laps of five women as Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend Maxwell looks on.
Taken in the saloon room of the King and Queen’s country retreat in Norfolk, it is one of a series of images exposing the unparalleled access to British high society and power that the former prince granted the paedophile.
The Royal family traditionally meet in Sandringham’s saloon room for afternoon tea on Christmas Eve, before gathering there again the next day to watch the monarch’s pre-recorded Christmas message.
The photograph shows Maxwell smiling at Mountbatten-Windsor, who is wearing a black suit and bow tie and smiling with his face close to the bare legs of one of the women, whose identities have all been obscured.
Mountbatten-Windsor was photographed on Saturday morning riding at Royal Lodge at Windsor. He is set to move to Sandringham permanently next year after being forced out by the King over his friendship with Epstein.
Sandringham was the scene of what Mountbatten-Windsor described as a “straightforward shooting weekend” during his catastrophic Newsnight interview with Emily Maitlis in 2019.
A friend of the former prince tried to play down the reaction to the photograph, saying: “We don’t see what the problem is. It’s just hi-jinks at a party. He’s fully clothed.”
Another photograph from the Epstein files shows Maxwell, who is now serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking, standing outside 10 Downing Street.
One picture captures the pair with Mr Mountbatten-Windsor in the Royal Box at Ascot, probably on a well-documented visit to Ladies’ Day in June 2000, when both Elizabeth II and the late Queen Mother were in attendance.
Andrew has since described Epstein as his “plus one”, and in no way a guest of the royal family.
The released files also include a photograph of Andrew with Epstein and Maxwell shooting on the heath lands of Balmoral.
Maxwell and actor Kevin Spacey were previously photographed sitting on the thrones in Buckingham Palace during a separate visit organised by Andrew.
Andrew Lownie, the royal historian, said the ex-prince had allowed Epstein and Maxwell to treat royal residences as “their private playground, mixing public and private with no sense of decorum”.
He said: “These photographs will not look at all good in the eyes of the public. Epstein and Maxwell were given the opportunity to go anywhere and Andrew appears to have been too stupid to notice he was being taken advantage of in this way.”
The latest release of photographs suggests Maxwell and Epstein enjoyed numerous visits to the UK to meet the late Queen’s son.
Other photos released from the Epstein files also show Sarah Ferguson, Andrew’s ex-wife, sitting with a woman on a sofa and standing with another in the street. Both women’s identities have been redacted.
In September 2025, it emerged Ferguson “humbly” apologised to Epstein in April 2011, calling him her “dear friend”, after publicly disowning him in March 2011.
She said she had never called him a paedophile after he reacted furiously to comments she had made about him in an interview, according to emails obtained by the Mail on Sunday.
Fresh revelations over the extent of Andrew and Epstein’s friendship could prove a further embarrassment for the royal family.
Details of the former duke’s friendship with the paedophile, which continued after Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting a child for prostitution, had threatened to plunge the monarchy into crisis earlier in 2025, prompting the King to strip him of his remaining titles.
The scandal effectively made Andrew a palace outcast. Earlier this week, he was pictured riding alone in the rain on the Sandringham estate.
The former duke was ordered in October to leave Royal Lodge, his residence in Windsor, following weeks of scrutiny over his links to Epstein and Virginia Giuffre, his accuser.
In a posthumous memoir published earlier that month, Giuffre repeated allegations that she was made to have sex with Andrew on three occasions. He has always denied the claims and any other wrongdoing.
In an unprecedented statement stripping his brother of the Duke of York title in November, the King said that his “utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse”.
The move followed revelations in a drip-feed of documents, the latest tranche of which was published on Saturday AEDT that proved Andrew had lied to the public over claims that he had cut ties with Epstein.
The former prince claimed in the 2019 Newsnight interview that he ended his friendship with the financier in 2010 following Epstein’s conviction for procuring a child for prostitution.
A recently surfaced email showed the former duke continued to pursue their friendship beyond this, writing to Epstein in 2011: “We are in this together.”
Epstein died by suicide in a federal jail in Manhattan, New York, as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. He had previously pleaded guilty to child sex offences in 2008. Maxwell was convicted of child sex trafficking and sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2021.
Maxwell found Epstein’s friendship ‘immediately rewarding’
The first account of how he met Maxwell has resurfaced in the documents released by the US department of justice.
A biography of the financier contained within the disclosures claims that he saved Maxwell from falling into a “deep depression” after her father’s death.
The British socialite had moved to New York in 1991, months before Robert Maxwell fell to his death from his yacht, Lady Ghislaine, in an apparent suicide aged 68. She met Epstein shortly after her father’s death.
The typed account (below), which is written in the third person, describes how Epstein and Maxwell met through “mutual friends”, and claims she found the friendship “immediately rewarding”.
The account, which is recorded as being Epstein’s “personal history”, appears to have been drafted as part of his defence after he was charged in Florida in 2006 with solicitation of a minor.
The profile claims that Epstein knew there were “few bright spots for [Maxwell] during that period” and that he took her regularly to comedy clubs, which she “found enormously palliative in relieving her depression”.
It is claimed that he sought to lift her spirits by giving her “books to read – good novels, scientific studies – containing issues to challenge her mind”.
The account states that Epstein arranged for Maxwell “to secure a loan that would help her get a foothold in the business world” , and that, “[o]ver time, their relationship became intimate”.
According to the account, Epstein and Maxwell’s relationship ended “amicably” in 2000 as “the nature of the demands of his work, i.e, the long hours and the frequent travel to maintain contacts around the world, precluded a good married life with children”. Maxwell was reported to have wanted to start a family with Epstein.
The text also excerpts passages of what appear to be a character witness of Epstein written by Maxwell. In it she said: “My experience of Jeffrey, is of a thoughtful, kind, generous loving man, with a keen sense of humour and a ready smile – a man of principles and values and a man of his word.
“If he made a promise, he would always follow through. In fact, I never saw him break a promise. He is disciplined in business and conscientious. A man always quick to help someone who is down, or to offer an opportunity to someone to pursue a dream or a goal.”
Buckingham Palace declined to comment.
The Telegraph, London
