The enthusiastic young usher at the entrance to York Minster had been the epitome of good grace until I mentioned He Who Must Not Be Named.
“Is the plaque unveiled by Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor still up?” I said, referring to the Jeffrey Epstein-linked former British prince who was arrested last week on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
The usher’s perma-smile vanished faster than the succession prospects of an errant royal. “What plaque?” he replied, all innocent-like, swishing his blue cape.
In 1998, when the British still knew him as Prince Andrew, Duke of York, the royal had unveiled a plaque at the Great West Door of the city’s gargantuan gothic cathedral, the largest in Britain. It was to commemorate a three-year restoration job on the door.
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I peered over the usher’s shoulder at the ornate entrance, then at the blank spot on the wall beside it, before my weary gaze returned to him, standing in front of me. Our eyes bored deep into each other’s skulls.
“I’ve seen the photos myself. Prince Andrew had a plaque put up in his name, somewhere just over there,” I said, pointing towards the door.
Indefatigable in his insistence that he knew nothing of this fact, the usher’s head jerked to the side, as if a ghost had brushed his neck. An ersatz version of his smile returned, but it was colder now, forced, and possibly as genuine as a sweatless prince’s excuses.
“Well, I wasn’t aware that there had ever been any plaque. There’s certainly none there now. Are you coming in? It’s £20. Scan the QR Code, book online. Thank you. Next.”
With a flick of his cape, he glided across the steps to deal with other prospective visitors. Truth be told, I admired his stubbornness. If I was working in tourism in this glorious northern city, I might have denied all knowledge of the former Duke of York too.
Throughout history, York title has traditionally been bestowed upon the second son of a British monarch. The disgraced former prince, who denies any wrongdoing in relation to his Epstein links, was stripped of the use of the title last year, but the dukedom is still technically his unless the UK parliament passes an act to return it to the British crown.
I had been in northern England last week anyway on another story in the days after Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest. It was just a short hop across the Pennines to York. I was curious to hear how the city felt about its former duke now.
The general attitude I encountered reminded me of the Smokie song, Living Next Door to Alice. “Andrew? Who the f**k is Andrew?”
The former prince’s name has been scrubbed off countless street names and building plaques all over Britain in the past few years, as the extent of his links to the child sex offender Epstein emerged. A Duke of York pub in Fitzrovia in London persisted with his picture over the door until a few months ago, but new owners tore it down as soon as the old landlord retired.
But few places have shown such zeal in the cancellation of the former duke as the grand Yorkshire city whose name he bore. Rachael Maskell, the local Labour MP, first asked the UK government to erase his association with the city four years ago, when the former prince settled a civil suit brought by Epstein’s victim, Virginia Giuffre, who said she had been trafficked by the US financier as a teenager to have sex with the former duke.
The royal has always denied this, but he still paid her £12 million in a settlement funded in 2022 by his mother, the previous British Queen Elizabeth II. Days later, York councillors voted to strip him of his freedom of the city.
[ Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor: Could Epstein links bring down the British monarchy?Opens in new window ]
The former prince once had plaques all over York, of which evidence is now difficult to find, such as at the York Army Museum (he was previously colonel-in-chief of the Yorkshire Regiment) and the Goodricke buildings of York College.
There is still a Duke of York pub on King’s Square in the city’s historic core, but staff this weekend said there is no longer any memorabilia of him there either, although they did point to photos of older dukes from the 18th and 19th centuries.
The pub is just around the corner from the Shambles, York’s famous, impeccably preserved medieval street whose name might chime with a future museum on the most recent duke, if public attitudes towards him in Britain are anything to go by.
The only people in York last weekend who seemed enthusiastic to talk about the former prince were young students opposite the Stonebow pub selling copies of The Communist, the recently launched newspaper of Britain’s Revolutionary Communist Party. “We want to get rid of the entire Epstein class,” one of them told me.
The next day, the former UK politician Peter Mandelson was arrested over his Epstein links, four days after a similar fate befell the former prince.
The wild-eyed young communists of the grand old dukeless city of York might get their way yet.
