Prince Andrew’s woes continued into 2025 after a challenging 2024. The start of the new year brought another blow for the embattled royal.
Andrew has been embroiled in controversy over recent years, and following his ill-fated Newsnight interview in November 2019, he was compelled to withdraw from public duties. He was subsequently stripped of his military titles and patronages by the late Queen in January 2022.
More recently, King Charles discontinued Prince Andrew’s allowance, urged him to relocate from Royal Lodge to a smaller residence, and he was obliged to avoid the Royal Family’s Christmas at Sandringham in December due to his connections with an alleged Chinese spy.
Now it has emerged that Andrew was excluded from a dinner honouring his alma mater at Windsor Castle – despite residing just a few miles away on the Royal estate.
His elder sister, Princess Anne, hosted the dinner at Windsor last Thursday in her capacity as Warden for Gordonstoun school – which Andrew attended alongside his brothers, King Charles and Prince Edward. However, he was not invited to the recent celebration.
“I’m sure the duke would have loved to have attended the dinner if he had been invited,” a friend of Andrew’s told the Daily Mail’s Richard Eden, reports the Mirror.
Gordonstoun boasts a list of notable alumni, including two generations of British royalty – Prince Philip and his son, King Charles. The school also educated Duncan Jones, the son of musician David Bowie, and Jason Connery, the son of actor Sir Sean Connery.
Princess Anne serves as a warden for the school but did not attend alongside her brothers as it only became co-educational in 1972. However, she and her first husband, Captain Mark Phillips, sent their children, Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall, to the esteemed Scottish institution, located in Moray.
On his first day at Gordonstoun, on 1 May 1962, then-Prince Charles was flown to RAF Lossiemouth by his father, Prince Philip, one of Gordonstoun’s first pupils. He was then driven about half a mile to the school.
Over the next five years, he studied a broad curriculum and participated in various activities outside the classroom, such as sailing, being part of HM’s Coastguard unit, taking lead roles in drama productions, singing in the school choir, and playing the trumpet and cello.
His performance as the king in a school production of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth in 1965 received critical acclaim, with newspapers featuring a striking image of him on their front pages.
The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh proudly joined other parents to watch the final performance.
King Charles left Gordonstoun in 1967 with an impressive set of qualifications, bagging five O-levels and two A-levels, which paved his way to Cambridge University.
Despite widespread chatter that the monarch found his time at Gordonstoun challenging, he has often downplayed such claims.
In a 1975 speech to the House of Lords, he remarked: “I am always astonished by the amount of rot talked about Gordonstoun and the careless use of ancient clichés used to describe it.”
He further added: “It was only tough in the sense that it demanded more of you as an individual than most other schools did – mentally or physically. I am lucky in that I believe it taught me a great deal about myself and my own abilities and disabilities. It taught me to accept challenges and take the initiative.”
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