Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s rent deals and Princess of Wales cancer hug lead papers

Friday’s front pages drew a stark line through the modern monarchy. One story centred on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s finances at Royal Lodge, where a 50-page National Audit Office report said he sublet three of the eight cottages on the grounds and made money from the Windsor estate while paying a peppercorn rent for two decades. The other showed the Princess of Wales in Manchester, hugging 30-year-old Claire Lorente as she rang the bell to mark the end of cancer treatment.

The audit findings sharpened the scrutiny around Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s lease. The report said the arrangement was permitted under the terms of his lease and traced back to a £7.5 million refurbishment payment in 2003. It also said King Charles III was paying the rent on two properties leased to Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, who are non-working royals. A royal source said the cottages were sublet to staff or their families at reduced rates to cover maintenance and running costs, though no figures for the rental agreements were made public.

The politics of the affair are now as significant as the property details. Norman Baker, the former Liberal Democrat minister, called the arrangements “outrageous” and argued the money should have gone to the Crown Estate rather than Andrew’s pockets. The Public Accounts Committee launched an inquiry into the Crown Estate in 2025 after receiving Royal Lodge correspondence, pushing the issue beyond palace housekeeping and into questions of public accountability over royal assets.

On another front page, Catherine, Princess of Wales, offered a different image of royal visibility: not privilege under pressure, but empathy in a hospital ward. At The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester, she embraced Claire Lorente as the 30-year-old completed treatment, speaking with Claire, her husband Pablo and their baby Enzo about the strain cancer places on families. The Princess said cancer “puts so much in perspective” and stressed that support matters for relatives as much as patients.

The Christie treats more than 60,000 patients a year, and Catherine also visited the art session, the wellbeing garden and the Teenage and Young Adult Unit. Her visit came after a Windsor Castle reception earlier in the week marking cancer charities and researchers, underscoring how the Princess has turned her own recovery into a public role that is less about ceremony than reassurance. After revealing in 2024 that she had been undergoing preventative chemotherapy and later saying in January 2025 that she was in remission, her Manchester appearance gave the papers a very different royal narrative to place alongside Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s lease scandal.