Ex-Prince Andrew Told ‘It's Got to Stop' Over Scuffle With Aide
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was reprimanded after landing a “kinetic blow” on a senior member of the Royal Household, having been denied a room at the palace to host an event, royal author Robert Hardman said on Newsweek‘s The Royal Report podcast.
The incident, before Mountbatten-Windsor quit public life in 2019, was considered so serious that King Charles III stepped in to speak to his brother while Prince Philip, their father, wrote to the employee to apologize, according to Hardman.
New biography Elizabeth II details how the argument began after Mountbatten-Windsor, then still known as Prince Andrew, tried to book a room at the palace for an event and was told by the Master of the Household, Vice Admiral Tony Johnstone-Burt, that they were already fully booked.
Why It Matters
Mountbatten-Windsor was forced to step back from public life in November 2019 after a disastrous interview about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and allegations of sexual abuse leveled against the royal.
Virginia Giuffre said she was 17 when she was trafficked for sex to Mountbatten-Windsor by Epstein in 2011. Mountbatten-Windsor has always denied the allegations and settled a lawsuit she brought in New York without admitting liability.
He was then stripped of his “Prince” and “Duke of York” titles by the king in October and is currently under investigation by Thames Valley Police over his financial ties to financier Epstein. No decision on whether to charge him has been made. In that context, there has been significant public discussion about what the palace knew about Mountbatten-Windsor’s conduct and whether he should have been appointed as a U.K. trade envoy.
Andrew’s Physical Altercation With Master of the Royal Household
Hardman said that Johnstone-Burt was “a very, very popular figure around the household,” but that Andrew would not take no for an answer.
“Andrew went to him and said, ‘Right, I need a room for this,'” Hardman said. “And he [Johnstone-Burt] said, ‘Well, they’re all full. We’re busy.’ There was a banquet or something coming up. He said, ‘No, no, no. I need this.'”
Johnstone-Burt replied, according to Hardman, “Well, you’ll have to wait like everybody else,” but Mountbatten-Windsor insisted: “No, no, no. I need this.”
“It just sort of got more and more heated,” Hardman said, “and I don’t know the precise nature of the conversation, but it concluded with Prince Andrew, as he was then, landing an, as I said, ‘kinetic blow’ on the Master [of the Household].”
Repercussions From Andrew’s ‘Kinetic Blow’
Johnstone-Burt “backed off” and then reported the incident to his superior, the Lord Chamberlain, then Earl Peel, the most senior figure in the Royal Household, who in turn alerted Charles, Hardman said.
The king, then Prince of Wales, raised it “with the Duke of York, with Andrew, who then started going back down the chain and accusing the Lord Chamberlain of causing trouble,” Hardman said.
“So the Lord Chamberlain goes around and sees him and says, ‘You just can’t treat staff like this.’ At this point, everyone’s had enough of Andrew,” he said.
Mountbatten-Windsor then wrote what Hardman described as a “sorry, not sorry” letter of apology, but the incident was viewed as so serious that Prince Philip wrote to Johnstone-Burt to issue his own apology.
“Word did reach the queen,” Hardman said, “and people were terrified that she might be very upset. As ever, she knew exactly what was going on. She had a very keen ear to the ground. She knew the story and was not actually surprised. She effectively said that’s the sort of thing he does.”
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This story was originally published April 21, 2026 at 10:57 AM.