Biographer Alleges Years-Long 'Friends with Benefits' Relationship Between Sean 'Diddy' Combs and Sarah, Duchess of York

A newly updated paperback edition of royal biographer Andrew Lownie's book Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York contains a fresh allegation that Sarah, Duchess of York, had a years-long relationship with the music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs — a claim that Ferguson's camp has firmly denied and that rests, by the author's own account, on anonymous sources. The allegation surfaced in extracts published by the Daily Mail ahead of the paperback's May 21, 2026 release, and it has drawn wide attention chiefly because it sits at the intersection of two figures already entangled in major public controversies.
According to the book, Combs and Ferguson first met at a New York party hosted by Ghislaine Maxwell in 2002, and an arrangement Lownie describes as a "secret friends with benefits" relationship began around 2004 and continued for several years. Lownie attributes the account to unnamed former employees and associates of both figures, including a former staffer at Combs's Bad Boy Records who, he writes, claimed Combs was "obsessed" with the royal family and boasted about a sexual relationship with Ferguson. The author has acknowledged the claims are sourced to such accounts rather than to either of the principals.
Ferguson's representatives have rejected the allegation outright. A source described as close to the former Duchess of York called the story "blatantly untrue," and a separate insider told one newspaper it was "fabricated nonsense" and "yet another false allegation from Andrew Lownie." The denials are central to the story rather than a footnote: the most striking elements of Lownie's account — including assertions about lavish hotel meetings and crude remarks attributed to Combs — derive from secondhand sourcing and have not been independently corroborated, and neither of the two people at the center of the claim has confirmed any of it.
Lownie, for his part, has stood by his reporting. "I stand by it. It's fully sourced with former employees of P Diddy and Sarah Ferguson," he told The Times after the denials emerged. Supporters of the author note that his earlier work on the royal family has not faced successful legal challenge, while critics and Ferguson's allies counter that "fully sourced" to anonymous former employees is a long way from established fact, particularly for an allegation of this nature about named living people. Both things can be true at once: that a reputable author is standing behind his sources, and that the specific claims remain unproven and contested.
The reason the allegation has spread so quickly has less to do with its evidentiary weight than with the company it keeps. The reference to a 2002 Maxwell-hosted party revives long-standing scrutiny of Ferguson's documented past ties to the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — ties that have already had real consequences for her. Ferguson was dropped as a patron by several charities, including a children's hospice, the Teenage Cancer Trust, and an allergy research foundation, after leaked correspondence revealed she had described Epstein in effusive terms as a "supreme friend." The new book lands amid continuing fallout surrounding her former husband, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former Prince Andrew, whose own Epstein associations have been the subject of sustained legal and public attention. The original 2025 hardback of Entitled was itself a detailed and unflattering account of both figures' conduct, and the paperback adds further material.
Combs's name adds a second layer of notoriety. He is currently serving a federal prison sentence following his 2025 conviction on charges related to transporting individuals for prostitution, a case that generated enormous coverage. That conviction is a documented fact; it is also separate from, and provides no corroboration for, the specific claim about Ferguson, even though the two are now being discussed together. The framing in some coverage — particularly in partisan and tabloid outlets — has folded the allegation into broader, ongoing demands for transparency about Epstein's network, a subject that continues to attract genuine legal and public interest but that should not be conflated with an unverified personal claim.
For readers, then, the appropriate way to weigh the material in Lownie's updated volume is with considerable caution. The book offers new assertions, vigorously defended by its author and just as vigorously denied by Ferguson's representatives, against a backdrop of previously reported and better-documented episodes in the lives of both Ferguson and the former Prince Andrew. Given the serious reputational stakes for everyone named and the gravity of the Epstein and Maxwell cases that form the backdrop, responsible treatment of these claims requires foregrounding the denials, flagging the reliance on anonymous sources, and seeking direct responses from those accused — none of which has yet resolved the central factual dispute. The broader intersection of celebrity, royalty, and figures connected to Jeffrey Epstein remains a sensitive and closely followed subject, but heightened public interest is not a substitute for corroboration, and the allegations at the heart of this account remain, for now, exactly that.