It’s time to stop wasting energy on scoundrels and start celebrating role models like the Princess Royal instead

Last week was a tale of two royals: the grafter and the grifter. The largely unsung part of the story concerns the customary, good-humoured way the Princess Royal carried out official engagements in Dublin with minimum fuss. While visiting Irish president Michael D Higgins on Wednesday the thrifty HRH was invited to sign the visitors’ book at his official residence and said: “Am I wasting an entire page of paper?” Her host, a lifelong Leftie, replied: “You deserve the whole page.” As indeed she does.

It’s hard to imagine anyone, let alone a republican socialist, offering such a sentiment to Anne’s spoilt brother, Prince Andrew. The disgraced prince continues to drag the Windsors ever further into the mire, courtesy of an explosive new book about him and his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lownie.

The tawdry details manage to be jaw-droppingly comprehensive and at times tediously predictable all at once. Most of us knew “Randy Andy” was boorish and sexually incontinent to the point he may well have slept with an allegedly trafficked young woman. We were also aware there’s no Mr Moneybags so disreputable the prince won’t tap the geezer for cash, or even go for a chummy stroll after he’s been jailed for “procuring a child for prostitution”. So, the fact the book adds fresh details about Andrew’s grubby sex life, profligate ex-wife and potential serious breaches of national and royal security is merely the mouldy cherry on the cupcake of his indiscretions.

But it seems to me the worst scandal is the fact we waste more energy on scoundrels than role models. Especially when a blazing national heroine like Princess Anne is about to turn 75 and still zips past the entire royal pack in terms of public service, like a filly version of Frankel at Ascot.

Over the course of 2024, she carried out 474 official engagements (over 100 more than cancer-stricken Charles and almost 200 more than Edward), despite being hospitalised in June for concussion. She was back in the saddle (pun fully intended) straight afterwards, with a visit to the Riding for the Disabled Association national championships. The Princess has championed the charity since 1985, with similarly devoted patronage to Save the Children, St John Ambulance and more than 300 other charities and associations.

This surely makes her the Gordon Gekko of public service – leisure is for wimps. And fashion is for dupes. Anne has recycled favourite garments for decades and maintained the same svelte figure since her 20s. No Mounjaro, crazy diets or promotion deal with WeightWatchers à la Fergie; just a will of iron.

Then there’s Anne’s young professional achievements in a family where junior members are often more noted for holidays than hard grind. She not only carried off the individual gold medal at the 1971 European Eventing Championships at Burghley but went on to represent Britain at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, becoming a heroine for a generation of schoolgirls. (Yes, me.)

But what many of us cherish most in the princess is her deliciously blunt manner. Take the dark episode when she was almost kidnapped by Ian Ball in 1974 after he shot her chauffeur and bodyguard. Ball aimed his pistol straight at Anne and said: “I want you to come with me for a day or two,” earning the withering riposte: “Not bloody likely.” She’s also famed for a “naff off!”, directed at the paparazzi who snapped her tumble at the 1982 Badminton Horse Trials – although the actual term used was much saltier.

Then there’s the claim she won’t curtsey to Queen Camilla and is alleged to have said: “You’re the Queen Consort, not the Queen.” If that’s the truth, good for her. Much as I admire Camilla, there’s no reason on earth why a woman of Anne’s age and standing should bow the knee to a newly-crowned second spouse. Although no exchange quite outdoes the time Cherie Blair suggested the princess could drop the formal “Mrs Blair” and address her by her Christian name. Anne swiftly put her in her place: “I’d rather not, it’s not how I was raised.”

And while Andrew spent decades lobbying for Beatrice and Eugenie to keep the titles and public-purse privileges he felt were their birthright, like a security detail, Anne quietly decided there was zero need for her children to be part of the royal circus. As a result, Peter and Zara Phillips appear to be the jolliest and best-adjusted kids of that generation of Windsors; the only ones you could imagine wheeling a barrow full of horse-dung as a matter of course. In Anne and her family, you see happy echoes of Prince Philip, who rebelled against stuffy palace protocol and was happiest carriage driving, or outdoors with his barbecue.

Added to these virtues Anne appears, like most horsey people, to have a refreshingly uncomplicated attitude towards sex. While Andrew’s taste in women could best be described as indiscriminate (Lownie’s book suggests his lovers total at least 1,000), his sister is drawn to old-fashioned manly virtues. Her taste runs to soldiers, sailors, protection officers and horsemen. Dashing Andrew Parker Bowles is an ex and she’s alleged to have had an affair with her former bodyguard, Peter Cross. She met her discreet second husband, naval officer Timothy Laurence, when he became equerry to the late Queen. By December, they will have been married for a steadfast 33 years.

King Charles III, Princess Anne and Prince Andrew at The Queen’s funeral Credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

But it’s two state occasions that truly cemented Anne’s place in the royal firmament. Firstly, her supremely dignified yet touching response to the death of the Queen: “I was fortunate to share the last 24 hours of my dearest Mother’s life. It has been an honour and a privilege to accompany her on her final journey.” And then her glorious role as King Charles’s official bodyguard at his coronation. Forget ludicrous Penny Mordaunt in her show-off’s cape, the female star of the show was the Princess Royal as Colonel of the Blues and Royals, leading 6,000 members of the military on horseback at an age when many Britons struggle to mount the stairs let alone a charger.

In fact, the worst you can say of Anne in her 75 years of service is that she appeared on the dismal It’s a Royal Knockout in 1987, having been strong-armed by her brother Edward who was trying to develop a career in TV.

What the decades since have proved is that the Princess Royal was born to be team captain, while her brother Andrew has sunk from joker to total loser.