Royal sent email after Virginia Giuffre photo emerged but later claimed he had ceased contact with Epstein in 2010

Prince Andrew told Jeffrey Epstein in an email “we are in this together” after a picture of the British royal with his arm around a teenage Virginia Giuffre was first published in 2011.

The email will pile further pressure on the Duke of York and the royal family because he previously told the BBC he had ceased contact with the convicted child sex offender by that point.

Correspondence between the king’s younger brother and Epstein, published in the Mail on Sunday and the Sun on Sunday, appears to show that was not the case.

Andrew emailed Epstein on 28 February 2011, the day after the well-known photograph of the duke, Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell was made public. He told Epstein to “keep in close touch” and expressed a wish to “play some more soon”.

In 2019, Andrew told the BBC’s Newsnight programme that he broke off his friendship with Epstein in December 2010, after the two men were photographed together strolling in New York.

But he wrote to Epstein in the message after the photo was published: “I’m just as concerned for you! Don’t worry about me! It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it. Otherwise keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!”

He is said to have signed off with: “A, HRH The Duke of York, KG.”

Epstein was found dead in his cell at a federal jail in Manhattan in August 2019 while he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges. The death was ruled a suicide.

In 2008 he pleaded guilty to charges of solicitation of prostitution and of solicitation of prostitution with a minor, for which he served time in jail.

In January this year, a section of the email from the Duke of York emerged in court documents. At the time it was reported to be from a “royal family member”.

It related to a claim made by the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK banking regulator, and appeared in court documents for a legal case involving the former Barclays chief executive Jes Staley. Staley was appealing against a finding by the watchdog that he had given a misleading account of the nature of his relationship with Epstein.

In a November 2019 interview with Newsnight, Andrew told the journalist Emily Maitlis: “I ceased contact with him [Epstein] after I was aware that he was under investigation and that was later in 2006 and I wasn’t in touch with him again until 2010.”

He later said that in December 2010 “I had to show leadership and I had to go and see him and I had to tell him ‘that’s it’.”

Buckingham Palace and the Duke of York’s office have been contacted for comment.

Also this weekend, it emerged that Tony Blair met Epstein in Downing Street while he was prime minister after a recommendation by Peter Mandelson, who last month was sacked as US ambassador after new information emerged about how close he had been to the convicted child sex offender.

Blair’s meeting emerged in papers released at the National Archives and predated Epstein’s criminal conviction. Epstein visited Blair on 14 May 2002.

Mandelson was then a backbench Labour MP, having resigned from government for a second time amid controversy. He had described Epstein to Blair’s chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, now the UK national security adviser, as “safe” and a “friend” in an email before the meeting.

Jeffrey Epstein ‘threatened to destroy’ Sarah Ferguson before her apology

Duchess’s then spokesperson recalls disgraced financier’s ‘Hannibal Lecter-style’ phone call after she disowned him

The Duchess of York allegedly sent an email apologising to disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein after he threatened to “destroy her” in a “Hannibal Lecter-style” phone call, according to reports.

Sarah Ferguson sent the message in April 2011, describing Epstein as a “supreme friend”, after she had publicly disowned him in the media.

James Henderson, her spokesperson at the time, said the email was sent after a “really menacing and nasty” phone call from the sex offender, in which he had a “Hannibal Lecter-type voice”, the Telegraph reported.

Henderson said that Epstein was incensed by her description of him as a paedophile and made a “chilling” phone call in which he threatened to take legal action, the paper said.

Several charities severed ties with the duchess, 65, on Monday after the emergence of her email.

Her apology to Epstein followed an interview published in the Evening Standard in March 2011 in which she said that she had made a “terrible, terrible error of judgment” in accepting £15,000 from the financier, a convicted sex offender, to pay off her debts, adding: “I abhor paedophilia.”

In her apology email to Epstein, reported by the Sun, she described him as a “steadfast, generous and supreme friend”. She also “humbly apologised” for criticising him in public and told him she was aware “you feel hellaciously let down by me”.