NEW YORK — A 10-year-old Ghislaine Maxwell told house guests her father beat her with objects of her choosing — and Jeffrey Epstein referred to Prince Andrew as his useful “idiot,” according to an explosive upcoming book about the British royal family.
Excerpts from author Tina Brown’s “The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor — the Truth and the Turmoil,” published Monday in the Daily Telegraph, tell how Epstein, a New York financier, used his relationship with the prince to open doors in international circles and further enrich himself.
The book, on shelves in two weeks, also explores how Maxwell’s unorthodox upbringing as the privileged daughter of media mogul and fraudster Robert Maxwell helped shape her twisted relationship with the convicted sex predator.
The child abuse claims in “The Palace Papers” are attributed to a British newspaper heiress who knew Maxwell as a girl.
“(Eleanor) Berry noticed an odd-shaped hairbrush, a strap, a slipper and other implements laid out on the child’s dressing room table. Ghislaine said, rather proudly, ‘(This) is what daddy uses to beat me with. But he always allows me to choose which one I want,’” reads the excerpt.
“In the sadistic offering of power to the powerless, asking her, in essence, to procure herself for her father, one can better understand how Ghislaine fell under the spell of a man like Epstein.”
Brown’s book describes Maxwell, who started dating the multimillionaire Epstein when she was 30 after moving to New York City, as “madly in love” with the late serial pedophile.
“Their relationship quickly turned transactional: Epstein made the money, and Ghislaine made the introductions,” an excerpt reads.
“Unable to hold his sexual attention, she found a way to keep him at her side by recruiting ‘nubiles’ (as she called them) to service his insatiable needs.”
A jury convicted Maxwell on Dec. 29 of aiding Epstein’s sex trafficking scheme from 1994 to 2002. She faces up to 65 years in prison when sentenced in June.
The former socialite’s lawyers argued at trial that she was a victim of Epstein’s manipulation and that prosecutors scapegoated her after his 2019 suicide.
The Queen’s second son was Maxwell’s “biggest catch” for Epstein, Brown writes, and his relationship with the royal was also transactional.
“Privately, Epstein told people that Andrew was an idiot, but — to him — a useful one. A senior royal, even if tainted, is always a potent magnet abroad. Epstein confided to a friend that he used to fly the Duke of York to obscure foreign markets, where governments were obliged to receive him, and Epstein went along as [his] investment adviser,” reads an excerpt.
“With Andrew as frontman, Epstein could negotiate deals with these (often) shady players.”
Andrew, who was accused in a civil case of having sex with one of Epstein’s alleged underage sex trafficking victims, visited the multimillionaire in New York with such regularity that Epstein gave him a “grandly decorated” Upper East Side guest suite nicknamed “the Britannica Suite,” according to Brown, founder of the Daily Beast and a former Vanity Fair editor in chief.
“Epstein made Andrew feel he had joined the big time — the deals, the girls, the plane, the glittering New York world, where he wasn’t seen as a full-grown man still dependent on his mother’s Privy Purse strings or on the harsh pecking order of the Palace,” Brown wrote. “The Duke was always as oversexed as a boob-ogling adolescent.”
A spokesperson for the Maxwell family did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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