Prince Andrew was born in the Belgian Suite of Buckingham Palace on 19 February 1960, the third child and second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. He was baptised in the Palace’s Music Room on 8 April 1960 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher. He is the namesake of his paternal grandfather, Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, who died sixteen years before he was born.

The Royal Household announced in November 1978 that Prince Andrew would join the Royal Navy the following year. In December he underwent various sporting tests and examinations at the Aircrew Selection Centre, at RAF Biggin Hill, along with further tests and interviews at HMS Daedalus, and interviews at the Admiralty Interview Board, HMS Sultan. During March and April 1979, the prince was enrolled at the Royal Naval College Flight, undergoing pilot training, until he was accepted as a trainee helicopter pilot and signed on for 12 years from 11 May 1979. On 1 September of the same year, Prince Andrew was appointed as a midshipman, and entered Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. During 1979 he also completed the Royal Marines All Arms Commando Course for which he received his Green Beret. He was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant on 1 September 1981 and appointed to the Trained Strength on 22 October.

Prince Andrew met Koo Stark in February 1981, and they were close for some two years, before and after his active service in the Falklands War. Tina Brown has claimed that this was Andrew’s only serious love interest. In October 1982, they took a holiday together on the island of Mustique. According to Lady Colin Campbell, Andrew was in love, and the Queen was “much taken with the elegant, intelligent, and discreet Koo”. However, in 1983, they split up, under pressure from press, paparazzi, and palace. In 1997, Andrew became godfather to Stark’s daughter, and in 2015, when Andrew was facing accusations from Virginia Roberts Giuffre over his connection to Jeffrey Epstein (see below), Stark came to his defence, stating that he was a good man and she could help to rebut the claims.

Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory claimed by Argentina, on 2 April 1982, leading to the Falklands War. Invincible was one of the two operational aircraft carriers available at the time, and, as such, was to play a major role in the Royal Navy task force assembled to sail south to retake the islands.

At the end of the war, Invincible returned to Portsmouth, where the Queen and Prince Philip joined other families of the crew in welcoming the vessel home. The Argentine military government reportedly planned, but did not attempt, to assassinate the prince on Mustique in July 1982. Though he had brief assignments to HMS Illustrious, RNAS Culdrose, and the Joint Services School of Intelligence, Prince Andrew remained with Invincible until 1983. Commander Nigel Ward’s memoir, Sea Harrier Over the Falklands, described Prince Andrew as “an excellent pilot and a very promising officer.”

In late 1983, Prince Andrew transferred to RNAS Portland, and was trained to fly the Lynx helicopter. On 1 February 1984 he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant, whereupon the Queen appointed him as her personal aide-de-camp. Prince Andrew served aboard HMS Brazen as a flight pilot until 1986, including deployment to the Mediterranean Sea as part of Standing NRF Maritime Group 2. He undertook the Lieutenants’ Greenwich Staff course. On 23 October 1986, the Duke of York (as he was by then) transferred to the General List, enrolled in a four-month helicopter warfare instructor’s course at RNAS Yeovilton, and, upon graduation, served from February 1987 to April 1988 as a helicopter warfare officer in 702 Naval Air Squadron, RNAS Portland. He also served on HMS Edinburgh as an Officer of the Watch and Assistant Navigating Officer until 1989, including a six-month deployment to the Far East as part of exercise Outback 88.

Prince Andrew married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey on 23 July 1986. The same day, the Queen created him Duke of York, Earl of Inverness, and Baron Killyleagh. The first two of these titles were previously held by both his maternal grandfather and great-grandfather. Prince Andrew had known Ferguson since childhood; they had met occasionally at polo matches, and became re-acquainted with each other at Royal Ascot in 1985.

The Duke of York served as flight commander and pilot of the Lynx HAS3 on HMS Campbeltown from 1989 to 1991. He also acted as Force Aviation Officer to Standing NRF Maritime Group 1 while Campbeltown was flagship of the NATO force in the North Atlantic from 1990 to 1991. He passed the squadron command examination on 16 July 1991, attended the Staff College, Camberley the following year, and completed the Army Staff course. He was promoted to Lieutenant-Commander on 1 February and passed the ship command examination on 12 March 1992. From 1993 to 1994, Prince Andrew commanded the Hunt-class minehunter HMS Cottesmore.

The couple appeared to have a happy marriage and had two daughters together, presenting a united outward appearance during the late 1980s. His wife’s personal qualities were seen as refreshing in the context of the formal protocol surrounding the Royal Family. However, the Duke of York’s frequent travel due to his military career, as well as relentless, often critical, media attention focused on the Duchess of York, led to fractures in the marriage. On 19 March 1992, the couple announced plans to separate and did so in an amicable way. Some months later, pictures appeared in the tabloid media of the Duchess in intimate association with John Bryan, her financial advisor at the time, which effectively ended any hopes of a reconciliation between the Duke and Duchess. The marriage was ended in divorce on 30 May 1996. The Duke of York spoke fondly of his former wife: “We have managed to work together to bring our children up in a way that few others have been able to and I am extremely grateful to be able to do that.”

From 1995 to 1996, the Duke was posted as Senior Pilot of 815 Naval Air Squadron, then the largest flying unit in the Fleet Air Arm. His main responsibility was to supervise flying standards and to guarantee an effective operational capability. He was promoted to Commander on 27 April 1999, finishing his active naval career at the British Ministry of Defence in 2001, as an officer of the Diplomatic Directorate of the Naval Staff. In July of that year, the Duke of York was retired from the Active List of the Navy. Three years later, he was made an Honorary Captain, rather than the substantive rank of Captain, as would be customary. On 19 February 2010, his 50th birthday, he was promoted to Rear Admiral. Five years later, he was promoted to Vice Admiral.

Giuffre (then known by her maiden name Virginia Roberts) asserted that she had sex with Prince Andrew on three occasions, including a trip to London in 2001 when she was 17, and later in New York and on Little Saint James. She alleged Epstein paid her $15,000 to have sex with the Duke in London. Flight logs show the Duke and Giuffre were in the places she alleges the sex happened. Prince Andrew and Giuffre were also photographed together with his arm round her waist and included an Epstein associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, standing in the background, though Andrew’s supporters have repeatedly claimed the photo is fake and edited. Giuffre stated that she was pressured to have sex with the Duke and “wouldn’t have dared object” as Epstein, through contacts, could have her “killed or abducted”. The allegations have, as of early 2015, not been tested in any court.

In the interview, Prince Andrew denied having sex with Giuffre on 10 March 2001, as she had accused, because he had been at home with his daughters after attending a party at PizzaExpress in Woking with his elder daughter Beatrice. The Duke said that he had “no recollection of ever meeting” Giuffre and that he had “absolutely no memory” of a photograph taken of him with Giuffre at Maxwell’s residence in London. The Duke said he had investigations carried out to establish whether the photograph was faked, but they had been inconclusive. He also claimed that he had never been upstairs in Maxwell’s house and questioned his attire, saying that the clothes he wore in the photograph were his “travelling clothes” that he did not wear while in the country; however, the Daily Mail revealed photographic evidence that the Duke wore similar clothing on a 2000 night out in London.

From 2001 until July 2011, the Duke of York worked with UK Trade & Investment, part of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, as the United Kingdom’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment. The post, previously held by Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, involved representing and promoting the UK at various trade fairs and conferences around the world. His suitability for the role was challenged in the House of Commons by Shadow Justice Minister Chris Bryant in February 2011, at the time of the 2011 Libyan civil war, on the grounds that he was “not only a very close friend of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, but also … a close friend of the convicted Libyan gun smuggler Tarek Kaituni”.

The couple agreed to share custody of their two daughters, and the Duchess continued to live at the Duke’s home, Sunninghill Park, until 2004, when he moved to the Royal Lodge. In 2007, Sarah, Duchess of York, purchased Dolphin House, a mansion directly beside the Royal Lodge. In 2008, a fire at Dolphin House resulted in Sarah moving into the Royal Lodge, again sharing a house with the Duke of York. Prince Andrew’s lease of Royal Lodge is for 75 years, with the Crown Estate as landlord, and there is no annual tenancy charge.

Prince Andrew is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights, the senior maritime City livery company. In May 2008, he attended a goose-hunt in Kazakhstan with President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

The Duke of York receives a £249,000 annuity from the Queen. The Sunday Times reported in July 2008 that for “the Duke of York’s public role,… he last year received £436,000 to cover his expenses.” On 8 March 2011, The Daily Telegraph reported: “In 2010, the Prince spent £620,000 as a trade envoy, including £154,000 on hotels, food and hospitality and £465,000 on travel.”

In May 2010, Sarah, Duchess of York, was filmed by a News of the World reporter claiming that her former husband had agreed that if she were to receive £500,000, he would meet the donor and pass on useful top-level business contacts. She was filmed receiving, in cash, $40,000 as a down payment. The Duke’s entourage emphatically denied he knew of the situation. In July 2011, Sarah stated that her multi-million pound debts had been cleared due to the intervention of her former husband, whom she compared to a “knight on a white charger”.

Prince Andrew also admitted to staying in Epstein’s mansion for three days in 2010, after Epstein’s conviction for sex offences against a minor, describing the location as “a convenient place to stay”. However, he said, “I kick myself on a daily basis” for the decision “because it was not something that was becoming of a member of the royal family”, adding that he “let the side down”. The Duke said that he met Epstein for the sole purpose of breaking off any future relationship with him, saying that it was “the honourable and right thing to do”, adding that one of his flaws was that he was “too honourable” a person. He also said that, if “push came to shove” (and after consultation with his legal teams), he would be willing to testify under oath regarding his associations with Epstein.

Earlier in 2010, it was revealed that the Kazakhstan President’s billionaire son-in-law Timur Kulibayev paid the Duke of York’s representatives £15 million – £3 million over the asking price – via offshore companies, for the Duke’s Surrey mansion, Sunninghill Park. Kulibayev frequently appears in US dispatches as one of the men who have accumulated millions in gas-rich Kazakhstan.

BBC News reported that Prince Andrew’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, an American financier and convicted sex offender, was producing “a steady stream of criticism” in March 2011, with calls for him to step down from his role as trade envoy. The Duke was also criticized in the media after Sarah Ferguson disclosed that he helped arrange for Epstein to pay off £15,000 of her debts. Prince Andrew had been photographed in December 2010 strolling with Epstein in Central Park during a visit to New York City. In July 2011, the Duke’s role as trade envoy was terminated and he reportedly cut all ties with Epstein.

As of November 2014, the Duke had met Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, on 12 separate occasions. He had to stand down as a trade envoy for the UK in 2011 following controversy over his friendship with Aliyev, who has been criticised for corruption and for abuses of human rights by Amnesty International, but he has continued to visit him in Azerbaijan since standing down.

In March 2011, Kaye Stearman of the Campaign Against the Arms Trade told Channel 4 News CAAT sees Prince Andrew as part of a bigger problem, “He is the front man for UKTI. Our concerns are not just Prince Andrew, it’s the whole UKTI set up. They see arms as just another commodity but it has completely disproportionate resources. At the London office of UKTI the arms sector has more staff than all the others put together. We are concerned that Prince Andrew is used to sell arms, and where you sell arms it is likely to be to despotic regimes. He is the cheerleader in chief for the arms industry, shaking hands and paving the way for the salesmen.”

While touring India as a part of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, Andrew became interested in the work of Women’s Interlink Foundation (WIF), a charity which helps women acquire skills to earn income. He and his family later initiated Key to Freedom, a project which tries to “find a route to market for products made by WIF.” On 3 September 2012, the Duke of York was among a team of 40 people who abseiled down The Shard (tallest building in Europe) to raise money for educational charities the Outward Bound Trust and the Royal Marines Charitable Trust Fund.

In May 2012, it was reported that Swiss and Italian police investigating “a network of personal and business relationships” allegedly used for “international corruption” were looking at the activities of Enviro Pacific Investments which charges “multi-million pound fees” to energy companies wishing to deal with Kazakhstan. The trust is believed to have paid £6 million towards the purchase of Sunninghill which now appears derelict. In response, a Palace spokesman said “This was a private sale between two trusts. There was never any impropriety on the part of The Duke of York”.

Rohan Silva, a former Downing Street aide, claimed that, when they met in 2012, the Duke had commented, “Well, if you’ll pardon the expression, that really is the nigger in the woodpile.” Former home secretary Jacqui Smith also claims that the Duke made offensive comments about Arabs during a state dinner for the Saudi royal family in 2007. Buckingham Palace denied that the Duke had used racist language on either occasion.

In 2013, it was announced that the Duke was becoming the Patron of London Metropolitan University and the University of Huddersfield. In July 2015, he was installed as Chancellor of the University of Huddersfield. In recognition of the Duke’s promotion of entrepreneurship he was elected to an Honorary Fellowship at Hughes Hall in the University of Cambridge on 1 May 2018. He became the Patron of the charity Attend in 2003, and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Royal United Services Institute.

On 30 December 2014, a Florida court filing by lawyers Bradley J. Edwards and Paul G. Cassell alleged that Prince Andrew was one of several prominent figures, including “a former prime minister” and lawyer Alan Dershowitz, to have participated in sexual activities with a minor later identified as Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who was allegedly trafficked for sex by Epstein. An affidavit from Giuffre was included in an earlier lawsuit from 2008 accusing the U.S. Justice Department of violating the Crime Victims Rights Act during Epstein’s first criminal case by not allowing several of his victims to challenge his plea deal; the Duke was otherwise not a party to the lawsuit.

In 2014, the Duke of York founded the [email protected] initiative to support entrepreneurs with the amplification and acceleration of their business ideas. Entrepreneurs selected for [email protected] Bootcamp are officially invited by the Duke to attend St. James Palace in order to pitch their ideas and to be connected with potential investors, mentors and business contacts. The Duke has also founded The Prince Andrew Charitable Trust which aims to support young people in different areas such as education and training. He has also founded a number of awards including Inspiring Digital Enterprise Award (iDEA), a programme to develop the digital and enterprise skills, the Duke of York Award for Technical Education, given to talented young people in technical education, and the Duke of York Young Entrepreneur Award, which recognises talents of young people in entrepreneurship. The Duke of York has lent his support to organisations that focus on science and technology by becoming the patron of Catalyst Inc and TeenTech. In 2014, Andrew visited Geneva, Switzerland, to promote British science at CERN’s 60th anniversary celebrations. In May 2018, he visited China and opened the [email protected] China Bootcamp 2.0 at Peking University.

In January 2014, Prince Andrew took part in a delegation to Bahrain, a close ally of the United Kingdom. Spokesman for CAAT, Andrew Smith said, “We are calling on Prince Andrew and the UK government to stop selling arms to Bahrain. By endorsing the Bahraini dictatorship Prince Andrew is giving his implicit support to their oppressive practices. When our government sells arms it is giving moral and practical support to an illegitimate and authoritarian regime and directly supporting their systematic crackdown on opposition groups. (…) We shouldn’t allow our international image to be used as a PR tool for the violent and oppressive dictatorship in Bahrain.”

Since 2014, the Duke of York has a personal heraldic flag for use in Canada. It is the Royal Arms of Canada in banner form defaced with a blue roundel surrounded by a wreath of gold maple leaves, within which is a depiction of an “A” surmounted by a coronet. Above the roundel is a white label of three points, the centre one charged with an anchor.

In January 2015, there was renewed media and public pressure for Buckingham Palace to explain Prince Andrew’s connection with Epstein. Buckingham Palace stated that “any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue”, later repeating the denials. Requests from Giuffre’s lawyers for a statement from the Duke, under oath, about the allegations were returned unanswered.

Dershowitz vehemently denied the allegations in Giuffre’s statement and sought disbarment of the lawyers filing the suit. Edwards and Cassell sued Dershowitz for defamation in January 2015; he countersued. The two parties settled in 2016 for an undisclosed financial sum. Epstein sued Edwards for civil racketeering but later dropped his suit; Edwards countersued for malicious prosecution with the result that Epstein issued a public apology to the lawyer in December 2018.

On 7 April 2015, Judge Kenneth Marra ruled that the “sex allegations made against Prince Andrew in court papers filed in Florida must be struck from the public record”. Marra made no ruling as to whether claims by Giuffre are true or false, specifically stating that she may later give evidence when the case comes to court. Giuffre stated she would not “be bullied back into silence.”

In May 2016, a fresh controversy broke out when the Daily Mail alleged that the Duke had brokered a deal to assist a Greek and Swiss consortium in securing a £385 million contract to build water and sewerage networks in two of Kazakhstan’s largest cities, while working as British trade envoy, and had stood to gain a £4 million payment in commission. The newspaper published an email from the Duke to Kazakh oligarch Kenges Rakishev, (who had allegedly brokered sale of the Prince’s Berkshire mansion Sunninghill Park), and claimed that Rakishev had arranged meetings for the consortium. After initially claiming the email was a forgery, Buckingham Palace sought to block its publication as a privacy breach. The Palace strongly denied the allegation that the Duke had acted as a “fixer” calling the article “untrue, defamatory and a breach of the editor’s code of conduct.”

In August 2019, court documents associated with a defamation case between Giuffre and Maxwell revealed that a second girl, Johanna Sjoberg, gave evidence alleging that Prince Andrew had placed his hand on her breast while in Epstein’s mansion posing for a photo with his Spitting Image puppet. Later that month, the Duke released a statement, emphasizing that, “At no stage during the limited time I spent with [Epstein] did I see, witness or suspect any behaviour of the sort that subsequently led to his arrest and conviction,” though he expressed regret for meeting him in 2010 after Epstein had already pleaded guilty to sex crimes for the first time. By the end of August 2019, The New Republic also published an email exchange between John Brockman and Evgeny Morozov from September 2013 in which Brockman mentions seeing a British man nicknamed “Andy” receiving a foot massage from two Russian women at Epstein’s New York residence during his last visit to the mansion in 2010. He then added that he “realized that the recipient of Irina’s foot massage was His Royal Highness, Prince Andrew, the Duke of York”.

In November 2019, the BBC’s Newsnight recorded an interview between Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis in which he recounted his friendship with Epstein for the first time. The interview was recorded in Buckingham Palace on 14 November and was broadcast on 16 November. In the interview, Prince Andrew says he met Epstein in 1999 through Maxwell; this contradicts comments made by the Duke’s private secretary in 2011, who claims the two met in “the early 1990s”. The Duke also said he did not regret his friendship with Epstein, saying “the people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn either by him or because of him were actually very useful”.

On 19 November 2019, the Students’ Union of the University of Huddersfield passed a motion to lobby Prince Andrew to resign as its chancellor, as London Metropolitan University was considering the Duke’s role as its patron. On 18 November, accountancy firm KPMG announced it would not be renewing its sponsorship of Prince Andrew’s entrepreneurial scheme [email protected], and on 19 November Standard Chartered also withdrew its support.

On 20 November 2019, a statement from Buckingham Palace announced that Prince Andrew was suspending his public duties “for the foreseeable future”. The decision, made with the consent of the Queen, was accompanied by the insistence that the Duke sympathised with Epstein’s victims. Other working royals are expected to take his commitments over in the short term. On 21 November, the Duke relinquished his role as chancellor of the University of Huddersfield. Three days later, the palace confirmed that Andrew was to step down from all 230 of his patronages, although he expressed a wish to have some sort of public role at some future time.

In March 2019, the Duke of York took over the patronage of the Outward Bound Trust from his father, the Duke of Edinburgh, serving up until his own resignation in November 2019. Prince Andrew had held the position of chairman of the board of trustees of the organisation since 1999. The charity tries to instil leadership qualities among young people. In May 2019, it was announced that the Duke had succeeded Lord Carrington as patron of the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust.

Andrew is currently the eighth in the line of succession to the throne. He is known by his secondary titles of Earl of Inverness in Inverness and Baron Killyleagh in Killyleagh. In 2019 Inverness residents started a campaign to strip him of that title, stating that “it is inappropriate that Prince Andrew is associated with our beautiful city.”

On 16 January 2020, it was reported that the Home Office was recommending “a major downgrade of security” for Prince Andrew, which would put an end to “his round-the-clock armed police protection”. The recommendation will be reviewed by the Metropolitan Police before being sent to the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister, who will make the final decision. On 28 January 2020, US Attorney Geoffrey Berman stated that Prince Andrew had provided “zero co-operation” with federal prosecutors and the FBI regarding the ongoing investigations, despite his initial promise in the Newsnight interview when he said he was willing to help the authorities. Buckingham Palace did not comment on the issue, though sources close to the Duke claimed that he “hasn’t been approached” by US authorities and investigators, and his legal team announced that he had offered to be a witness “on at least three occasions” but had been refused by the Department of Justice.

In March 2020, Prince Andrew hired crisis-management expert Mark Gallagher, who had helped high-profile clients falsely accused in Operation Midland. In April 2020, it was reported that the Duke of York Young Champions Trophy would not be played anymore, after all activities carried out by the Prince Andrew Charitable Trust were stopped. In May 2020, it was reported that Andrew and his former wife were in a legal dispute over a Swiss ski chalet as they were unable to pay their £5m debt. Despite claims that the Queen would help with paying the debt, a spokesperson for the Duke confirmed that she “will not be stepping in to settle the debt”. It was revealed in the same month that the Prince Andrew Charitable Trust was under investigation by the Charity Commission regarding some regulatory issues about £350,000 of payments to his former private secretary Amanda Thirsk. According to The Times, senior personnel in the navy and army consider Andrew to be an embarrassment for the military and believe he should be stripped of his military roles. There have been calls to remove Andrew’s name from various institutions; for instance a high school called Prince Andrew High School in Canada is considering a name change because the name “no longer reflects the values of the community.”

In May 2020 it was announced that Andrew will permanently resign from all public roles over his Epstein ties.

In June 2020 it became known that Andrew is a person of interest in a criminal investigation in the United States, and that the United States had filed a mutual legal assistance request to British authorities in order to question Andrew. Newsweek reported that a majority of British citizens believe Andrew should be stripped of his titles and extradited to the United States.

Following the arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell in July 2020 Andrew cancelled a planned trip to Spain, reportedly due to fears that he might be arrested and extradited to the United States.

In September 2020, anti-child trafficking protesters chanting “Paedophile! Paedophile!” referencing Prince Andrew gathered outside Buckingham Palace, and videos of the protest went viral.

It was reported in September 2020 that Andrew will not be invited to the major celebrations of his father Prince Philip’s 100th birthday, and included “as little as possible.”