The Maxwell Factor
Ghislaine Maxwell's life was dominated by a bullying father and a manipulative paedophile
It was hard to believe that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s close friend, Ghislain Maxwell, had been given 20 years’ imprisonment for recruiting and trafficking teenage girls to be sexually abused by her boyfriend, the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. It was also hard to believe that such awful behaviour would come from a woman belonging to a wealthy family who mixed at the highest levels of British society.
Ghislaine had introduced Epstein to Prince Andrew, as he then was, in 1999. Andrew was arrogant, spoilt and a poor judge of people. He often invited Maxwell and Epstein to royal palaces and parties but proclaimed himself unable to remember if he had met vulnerable young girls.
Ghislaine knew even more. She was arrested in New Hampshire in July 2020 for sex trafficking and related crime and has now been in custody for nearly six years. Her projected release is estimated to take place in the late 2030s.
Ghislaine was the youngest of the nine children of the British media mogul and politician Robert Maxwell. She went to Oxford University, was an excellent helicopter pilot (like Andrew), and was always anxious to please her father. She was his favourite and when he bought a yacht he called it Lady Ghislaine.
In court, however, her lawyers said she had a dysfunctional upbringing and a “difficult, traumatic childhood.” Her mother, Elizabeth, was kind, but her father was not. He was a Czechoslovakian-born war orphan who was awarded the Military Cross in 1945 for his service in the British Army. After the war he made a fortune in scientific publishing, became a Labour Member of Parliament, and took over the Labour-supporting Mirror Group Newspapers in 1984.
He had a reputation as an overbearing bully, as I found out for myself when I interviewed him for the Observer magazine in the 1980s at his home, Headington Hill Hall, a large mansion in Oxford.
A member of his staff took me to an enormously long room with a table for more than thirty chairs. Maxwell was sitting at the furthest end of the table staring at me as I made my way down the room. He didn’t stand up to greet me, just gestured to the nearest seat close to him. Journalists need to quickly gather what type of person they are talking to and I felt Maxwell was hoping I would feel awkward.
“What job does your father do?”was his first question. I politely said I didn’t think it was relevant to the interview. He said loudly that if I didn’t answer, he wouldn’t speak to me at all and I “would get into trouble” at work. I said I wouldn’t and, taking a risk, got up to leave.
“OK,” he said, pointing at the wall. “I’ll talk if you tell me about that painting.” It was a Biblical scene, which I got right.
“I’ll tell you about myself but come nearer me at the table,” he began. After half an hour he stopped and said, “It’s your turn now.”
I replied, “I thought you wanted to show off your power and make me scared and embarrassed walking through this enormous room.”
He laughed and kept on trying to verbally trip me up. He was one of the most unpleasant men I’ve ever talked to.
He was a difficult father too, although he did suffer personal tragedy: one of his sons died in a car crash and another child from leukaemia.
The other seven were terrified of him and tried to stay clear. His son Ian told John Preston, who wrote Maxwell’s biography in 2021: “He would beat us with a belt — girls as well as boys.” If they also had poor school reports they would receive “physical punishment”.
He regularly bullied his children, often humiliating them in public. Although his favourite was Ghislaine as a child she was neglected as nearly all the parental attention went to her brother who was badly ill from a crash. Even when Ghislaine she was older she was banned from bringing boyfriends home and her father turned off the electricity at home during her twenty-first birthday party because he disliked the music.
In November 1991 Maxwell disappeared from his yacht near the Canary Islands. His body was found in the sea: he was 68. Some thought he’d been murdered or committed suicide, others that it was an accident. Three pathologists could not agree on the cause.
Immediately following his death it was discovered that he had raided the MGN Pension Fund and taken £440m that was meant to be preserved to pay the pensions of his 32,000 employees.
Her father’s guilt was obvious and left the family with little money, but Ghislaine continued to defend him. “He wasn’t a crook,” she kept saying.
His sons Ian and Kevin were charged with fraud but were acquitted in 1996. Meanwhile, Ghislaine’s world had collapsed. She moved to New York and became friendly with Jeffrey Epstein. One helpful move for the couple was for them to draw close to Andrew. It is said that Andrew and Ghislaine were “very, very close” in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Andrew has been under intense scrutiny due to his long-standing friendship with Epstein, who died in August, 2019, in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York, awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Whether he committed suicide by hanging is not confirmed.
Andrew shared confidential information with Epstein while serving as a UK trade envoy, which has been confirmed by the Epstein Files recently released by the US Department of Justice.
They also appear to confirm that the photograph of Andrew with his arm around the 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre is real, which he has always denied. However, he settled out of court in 2022, giving Virginia (who has since committed suicide) £12 million, though he continues to deny all allegations of sexual misconduct.
.Ghislaine was a frequent visitor to royal residences and in the early 2000s visited Buckingham Palace as often as four times in a single day. Young girls Ghislaine was believed to choose would arrive at out-of-sight staff entrances. Palace employees would be told: “Mrs Windsor will arrive shortly, please let her in and show her up.” The staff are said to have felt very uncomfortable. Sometimes the girls went into Buckingham Palace itself to see Andrew.
In December 2021, a New York jury found Ghislaine guilty of five out of six counts, including the most serious charge, that of sex trafficking of a minor.
Queen Elizabeth II stripped Prince Andrew of most of his military affiliations and royal patronages in January 2022. In 2025 King Charles removed his remaining titles, including His Royal Highness, and his final military rank of Vice Admiral.
Andrew also hosted Maxwell and Epstein at prestigious royal estates, including Sandringham and Balmoral. It was mutually beneficial for Ghislaine and Epstein. She could introduce him to her wealthy and powerful friends and he could acquire her lifestyle.
Much good it did her: both her father and erstwhile lover died surrounded by scandal in mysterious circumstances, while she contemplates spending most of the rest of life in an American jail having somehow tried to please two dreadful men.