How The Fiennes Family Betrayed Sir Ranulph Fiennes

The recent news, broken by The Telegraph, that select relatives and friends are finally permitted to visit Sir Ranulph Fiennes is misleading, the result of deliberate misdirection: the 82-year-old explorer continues to be kept in strict isolation by his wife, Louise Millington-Cotes, and his wishes continue to be disregarded. What is most shocking is that this new arrangement is the product of an agreement between LMC and senior members of the Fiennes clan, who have in the past acted as co-conspirators, united in exercising ironclad control over Ran’s affairs and in the process severely curtailing his rights.

When I first learned of the “new” arrangement of permitting a small number of carefully screened visitors access to Ran, my immediate reaction was that this bush league tactic was designed to quell the intense media scrutiny of the past six weeks. This scheme was most likely concoted in close coordination between LMC and the Fiennes family - particularly Susannah Fiennes, the official portrait artist of King Charles, and her brother, Martin Fiennes, the patriarch of the 1,000-year-old Fiennes clan, which counts Charlemagne, Holy Roman emperor, as but one of its many illustrious ancestors. I formed this opinion based on observations I made in 2025, when Susannah Fiennes collaborated with, defended and lavishly praised Louise Millington-Cotes.

The product of this sinister collaboration was an arrangement, enacted in July 2025, identical to the “new” arrangement that has made headlines this week: The same small group of friends and Fiennes family members, carefully selected by LMC, are permitted to visit Ran in his care home. The 2025 arrangement was not bound to last, I exhaustively pointed out to Susannah Fiennes. Sure enough, Louise Millington-Cotes rescinded her permission for visitors to see her husband the following September, thereby enacting the previous status quo of Ran living in complete isolation, without any visitors or contact to the outside world.

According to the owner of a care home in Wales, on LMC’s strict orders Ran was not permitted to speak of his life as an explorer, nor was he permitted contact with any of the other residents. The care home owner alerted the authorities almost as soon as Ran arrived at this facility, but as usual the British authorities were too slow to react and LMC removed Ran before the authorities acted. The care home owner stated "I wouldn't treat an animal that way."

Ran's untenable situation of not receiving visitors after LMC initially allowed a small handful of visitors to see him lasted for more than a year, until I made Ran’s plight a matter of public record by kicking off a media frenzy in the UK and around the world.

The motive behind the Fiennes family’s close collaboration with Ran’s tormentor and captor is simple. Susannah Fiennes herself told me repeatedly how private the Fienneses are. They and Louise Millington-Cotes are united by a single purpose: To keep any embarrassing details about Ran, as well as his outrageous mistreatment, out of the public eye. If that means severely restricting Ran’s freedom, trampeling all over his rights, and completely disregarding his clearly articulated wishes, then that would be a price well worth paying, according to the warped view of Susannah Fiennes and Louise Millington-Cotes. Unfortunately, for these unscrupulous accomplices, their agenda is diametrically opposed by my crusade to secure Ran’s freedom.

Before taking a deep-dive into the complicated web in which Ran has been entangled, it’s important to carefully evaluate LMC’s modus operandi: Her decades-long history of physical and emotional abuse of her partners and her offspring, her long-running scheme to hide and isolate Ran, and the limited concessions she makes when her hand is forced either by public scrutiny or the realistic prospect of serving time in prison for her crimes.

If reading the headline “Ranulph Fiennes’s Wife Allows Visitors To See Him” caused you, dear reader, to feel a sense of relief that a horrendous situation has been brought to a positive conclusion, then you are greatly mistaken. Your assumption betrays the fact that you don’t fully appreciate the extent of the nefariously calculating and duplicitous ways of Louise Millington- Cotes.

By her own admission in a 2006 interview with The Telegraph, Louise Millington-Cotes is “an evil, evil woman.” Her ex-partner describes simply as a monster. Over the past eighteen months, I have spoken to more than a dozen former employees, business associates and other individuals who have come into contact with LMC. Their accounts all have a common theme of an exploitative, erratic and deranged woman with an extremely evil streak. Even her own son, Alexander, is hard-pressed to say anything positive about his mother.

This may have something to do with the fact that Louise disowned Alexander in 2018. More recently, in April of this year, she phoned Alex’s employer, the defence contractor Thales Group, to lodge an official complaint that Alex had been using his Thales email account to send her threatening and harrassing emails. Thales conducted an internal investigation before apprising Alexander of these claims. Unsurprisingly, Alex was cleared of all charges as he neither emailed his mother from his work account or, for several years, using any other account.

According to Alex, his mother not only isolated him as a child, but has also done the same with his sister, Elizabeth, who is my godchild. Alex detailed a life in which Elizabeth was never permitted to participate in sleepovers, had almost no friends growing up, and was forced to sleep in her mother’s bed up until she left for university last year. The two women also wear the same clothes and, perhaps unsurprisingly, LMC relocated to live with Elizabeth while she attended university in Bangor. Leaving home must have felt like space travel to Elizabeth, after almost two decades living in squalor so horrendous as to defy imagination.

Images shared by Alexander and former staff members show a home in complete and utter chaos, with dog poo in various states of decay, rat and mouse droppings, and a pugent, overpowering stench as a result of six Arctic foxes, a dozen or more cats, a Serval, several dogs and at least one horse all sharing the living quarters with the Fiennes family. In Alex’s words, the whole place was a bio hazard.

Unlike the journalists who have written so extensively about Ran’s situation over the past six weeks, I personally know Louise Millington-Cotes as well as anyone, after vacationing and living with her and Ran. I am also intimately familiar with the family dynamics, as well as LMC’s relationship with members of the Fiennes clan and Ran’s inner circle, including whom she likes (almost no-one) and trusts (even fewer people, if any at all). I have witnessed Louise Millington-Cotes blackmail Ran on several occasions, and I have seen with my own eyes the brutal effects of her physical abuse against him. Finally, I have been privy to at least three planned suicides Ran intended to carry out in his desperation over his maltreatment at the hands of Louise Millington-Cotes.

To understand LMC’s decision to hide and isolate Ran even from closest friends and family, one needs to apply context. Their marriage was one of severe control and increasing restrictions of Ran’s freedom over a timespan of more than two decades. After LMC entrapped Ran by having an affair with him while Ran’s first wife, Ginny Fiennes, was dying of cancer, she later succeeded in forcing him to marry her by using the affair as kompromat with which to blackmail him after Ginny had died. Instead of giving Ran time to grieve the irreplaceable loss, Louise Millington-Cotes blackmailed him again, this time in order to have a child together. Ran told me this story in 2008 when I first discovered how poorly LMC treated him and advised him to file for divorce. 
 Initially, Ran was dead-set against a divorce, fearing that he would become a second Paul McCartney, who had recently gone through an ugly divorce with a one-legged model. His biggest fear was that the affair would be made public, as Louise had so often threatened.

The more I heard from Ran about what Louise had done to him, the more I dug in my heels. Louise is a cancer that needs to be eradicated, I explained. Ran agreed. In order to ensure that the affair would not become subject to media attention, journalists would have to be made aware that Ran was a victim of blackmail. Ran again agreed and so I drove to London and met with a top level crisis PR expert, as well as with journalists at the BBC and ITN. As expected, everyone assured me that the press wouldn’t touch the affair if Louise approached them. “Ran is holy in this country,” Phil Reay-Smith of ITN told me.

Having successfully inoculated the media, I returned to Greenlands and briefed Ran. Only then did he give his approval to getting divorced from Louise. Ran seemed relieved that something could finally be done about the hitherto impossible situation in which he had gotten trapped soon after meeting Louise Millington-Cotes. After Ran apprised me of his suspicion that LMC was monitoring his mobile phone, we agreed that any conversatons about the divorce process would be had in person. Ran then entrusted me to handle all aspects of his divorce from Louise. We made a secret plan: The divorce filing would be made on the eve of Ran’s departure for Nepal, where he was set to climb Mount Everest. This would give Ran ample distance from Louise to ensure she wasn’t able to threaten or otherwise influence him to change his mind.

Less than a week later, Louise Millington-Cotes committed the crime of attempted murder when she pushed Ran off a ladder from their second floor bathroom window late at night and after pouring either hair dye or shampoo into his eyes. Ran fell down the ladder and injured himself so much that the next day he was bruised and limping. Why did Ran have to climb a ladder in the middle of the night, you, the attentive reader, might ask? Because Louise Millington-Cotes had locked Ran out of their home in Cheshire after Ran had refused to comply with her demands to sign over the deeds to two other properties, Greenlands, which had been Ran’s and Ginny’s home, and Old Shute, the property Ginny had intended to be their home away from the staff at Greenlands, which doubled as Ran’s office.

Ran told me he never wanted to sell either place because of the great significance they held. He envisioned Greenlands one day being turned into a museum where visitors could learn about his expeditions, most importantly Transglobe, which had been Ginny’s idea and which the two planned together for seven years before spending three more years to execute the first and only polar circumnavigation via surface travel in history.

If Ran’s determination to finally rid himself of Louise Millington-Cotes and her abusive, criminal behaviour was resolute before she pushed him down the ladder, it doesn’t take much imagination to envision how furious he was the next morning, when I found him limping around the kitchen at Greenlands, yellow puss streaming out of his eyes from the substance LMC had poured into his eyes.

Ran told me how he had walked for several hours through a blistering sleet and hail storm from a restaurant where LMC had abandoned him the night before, after he initially rejected her demand to have Greenlands and Old Shute put in her name. Dressed only in a button-down shirt and his navy blazer, he arrived at their Cheshire home finding the door had been locked. Unable to open the door with his key, Ran retrieved a ladder from the shed and proceeded to climb up to the second floor bathroom, its window ajar. After the violent altercation, Ran required emergency medical attention and was treated at hospital for several hours. Afterwards, he drove to Greenlands.

I was so shocked by waht Ran told me that I didn’t think straight, otherwise I would have told him that we need to leave immediately and head to a safe place like a nearby hotel. It was Sunday and no staff was present at Greenlands. Had we departed Greenlands, LMC would not have found us there when she pulled into the driveway a few hours later. Enraged, LMC repeatedly attempted to blackmail Ran before my eyes, this time using his passport, which she had taken unbeknownst to Ran. Unless Ran sign over the two properties, Louise Millington- Cotes would not return the passport, she told her husband. Ran and I knew the implications. He was scheduled to fly to Nepal the next day. Yet to my surprise, Ran still refused to comply with LMC’s demands. Cursing and screaming, Louise Millington-Cotes departed Greenlands.

After phoning every contact at the Foregin & Commonwealth Office I made during a recent visit there, I was able to obtain a brand new passport that same evening and Ran was able to fly to Nepal the next day. Before going to sleep, I emailed myself what I witnessed Lousie do to Ran. I also phoned Ran’s closest friends and relatives to apprise them of the situation. One of the people I phoned was Susannah Fiennes, Ran’s cousin. Her lukewarm response took me by surprise and she went as far as shifting some of the blame on Ran. When I later told Ran about my conversation with Susannah, he declared that the two had never been close and that he did not appreciate the fact that Susannah had at times taken an overly great interest in his private affairs. In later years, Ran told me that Susannah had suffered through an unhappy marriage and that he attributed her bitterness towads men to this experience.

I had considered Susannah a friend of mine for years. However, after Ran gave me his opinion, a number of conversations Susannah and I had previously took on greater significance. On one occasion, over lunch in Manhattan, Susannah told me that the reason Ginny had gotten cancer was that she had spent years worrying about Ran whenever he was on an expedition. Susannah Fiennes also told me how selfish she thought Ran was for expeditioning.

These statements would take on far greater significance decades later, when I found myself as the only person in Ran’s inner circle wanting to attack Louise Millington-Cotes in order to remove her power of Ran. Like Susannah, Louise is an avowed man-hater. Several former emplyees told me stories of Louise and her daughter, Elizabeth, roaming the family’s Shropshire farm, openly talking about how they believe all men are evil and that the world should be rid of men.

When I first became aware of Ran’s disappearance in February 2025, it had already been five months since Ran was last seen in public. Had Ran not warned me about Susannah, I would have phoned her as soon as I found out about Ran’s disappearance. Instead, I spent many hours speaking to Ran’s best friend, Anton Bowring.

The more details I learned from Anton, the more alarmed I became. According to Anton, Ran had fallen down the stairs inside his and LMC’s Cheshire home and was confined to a wheelchair. As if by some magic, Ran had then taken the extraordinary step of relenting to no fewer than three of LMC’s demands: To appoint her as the executor of his estate, something Ran had refused for many years; and to give her Lasting Power of Attorney for both his finances and his health & welfare affairs.

Given what I witnessed Louise Millington-Cotes do to Ran in 2008, I immediately envisioned LMC standing at the top of the stairs Ran had fallen down, smiling. I also envisoned her locking Ran in a room in their home, severely mistreating him for however long it would take for him to sign the documents she had shrewdly prepared. To this day, this is the only logical explanation for why Ran reversed his decision. The timing fits perfectly, as does LMC’s modus operandi of inflicting severe emotional and physical harm on her victims.

When I shared this scenario with Anton Bowring, he didn’t disagree. Anton also agreed that the most prudent step to take was to petition a court to remove Louise Millington-Cotes as Ran’s legal guardian. But Anton was unsure how to achieve such an outcome. I had done a lot of research into the Court of Protection matters and briefed Anton on its mechanism. Time was very much of the essence, I informed Anton Bowring. We agreed to speak again in a few days.

To my astonishment and chagrin, during our next call, Anton completely reversed his own position and stated “it’s best not to upset the apple cart,” and that Ran should be left alone. “He’s probably alright. I’m sure he’s fine. Well, I hope he is,” Anton Bowring told me. Shocked and dismayed, I remained calm on the outside and for several weeks maintained close contact with Anton, hoping that I could persuade him to take a more robust stance.

When this plan failed, I contacted Arabella Pepper, Ginny’s sister and thus Ran’s former sister- in-law. Back in 2008, Arabella was one of the people I briefed about the blackmail attempt I witnessed and we were aligned on our opinions about LMC. Now, in March 2025, Arabella was cautious in her assessment of Ran’s situation. No-one had seen him in six months and it was therefore quite possible that Ran was no longer compos mentis, Arabella said. Her biggest concern was that whatever happens, LMC doesn’t do anything to harm Ran.

Arabella cautioned me to take any unilateral action and I gave her my assurances that I would coordinate closely with her and Anton. After a few weeks of no progress with Anton vis-a-vis an action plan to rescue Ran, I reluctantly phoned Susannah Fiennes. We had not spoken since 2008, when I alerted her of Louise’s blackmail campaign against Ran, and when I told her that Ran was contemplating suicide on Mount Everest to escape Louise.

As expected, Susannah Fiennes defended Louise Millington-Cotes throughout our initial call, as she would in every subsequent call. When she coldly said that “Ran made his bed, now he has to sleep in it,” I knew that I could not count on the support of Susannah Fiennes. When I phoned Arabella to inform her of Susannah’s treachery, she informed me that Susannah was closely aligned with her brother, Martin Fiennes, the patriarch of the Fiennes clan. “They’re a thousand-year-old family, so of course they’re shrewd. Very stiff upper lip,” Arabella said, before adding that “they don’t like to see their family name in print.”

Tony Brown, Ran’s American nephew via his older sister, was far more supportive. Tony was outraged when I told him what his cousin, Susannah, had told me, and launched into a detailed analysis of the Fiennes clan’s inner workings. It was clear from Tony’s explanation that he did not hold his British relations in especially high esteem. In all the years I’ve known Tony, he has always been one of Ran’s closest and most protective relatives. Tony agreed with me that something must be done to help Ran.

The status quo Susannah and Martin Fiennes had accepted - LMC having control over Ran - was unacceptable to both of us. We agreed that I would work on a way to wrest control over Ran away from LMC. 
 In the ensuring weeks and months, it became increasingly clear that Susannah Fiennes and her brother Martin were more on the side of Louise Millington-Cotes than on Ran’s. Whenever I asked Susannah about contacting King Charles, she would cut me off and told me that this was not an option, despite the fact that Susannah Fiennes has for decades been the monarch’s official portrait artist and thus enjoys access to his majesty.

Then, on April 28, 2025, Susannah Fiennes sent me a WhatsApp message:

“Hello Mike, just to update you on Ran: I’ve had a wonderful conversation with Louise and she had found an excellent-sounding care home for him. Louise is being very helpful, despite an extremely stressful time for her and Elizabeth. Please be patient and know that Ran is in good hands.” She followed this up with another message stating that “we must respect Louise.”

I knew all too well in what good hands Ran was with Louise and my respect for Louise was firmly in negative territory. I responded as follows:
 
 “Well, I certainly do not at all agree with respecting Louise. Fuck Louise! We all know she has never had Ran’s best interest at heart. Respecting Louise is the last thing I would even consider.”

Unimpressed by my diplomatic assessment, Susannah replied:

“Interesting to know what the legal situation is re ‘ownership’ of someone, as their spouse. Like it or not, we must keep on good terms with Louise.”

The following day, still furious that Susannah would defend LMC, I sent her a file containing emails I sent myself in 2008 detailing LMC’s abuse of Ran.

Still unimpressed, Susannah Fiennes simply replied with “Thanks” - a message sufficient in length to confirm to me that Susannah could not be trusted. I had meanwhile been searching for Chris Bowler, LMC’s ex- partner and the father of her son, Alexander.

Finally, on May 1, after dialing the number of every Bowler listed in Birmingham, I reached Chris Bowler. We spoke for almost three hours and what Chris told me was both shocking and insightful. I immediately messaged Susannah Fiennes:

"Summary of t/c today w/Chris Bowler:

1. Within months of moving in with him, Louise demanded to have the deed to his house transferred into her name.

2. When Chris refused, she blew up at him. He was afraid for his life and slept in another room with the door locked and furniture and books leaning against the door to ensure he would be woken by the noise of her trying to gain access to the room.

3. Louise did not allow him to see any of his friends.

4. Louise wore him down into submission where he always answered automatically with

5. Chris battled Louise in the courts for three years before he could see Alexander again.

6. Chris said that when Alexander finally stayed with him, he was 3.5 years old. He was

7. Chris believes Louise knows that friends and family are trying to locate Ran and is basically keeping her enemies closer than her friends by saying they can visit Ran. Chris believes this will not happen. She will just find excuse after excuse.

8. Chris repeatedly said she is the worst person he has ever met and is happy now, after starting a new life. He added she is the nastiest, most evil person he has ever met.

9. “She destroyed my life.” She never passed any messages onto Chris, so he lost touch with many friends.

10. Child protective services professional working at the council said to Chris: “I’ve met a lot of difficult people as part of my job but never someone as bad as her.” (I have this gentleman’s name and am working on tracking him down in order to confirm this story.)

11. Chris: “Living with her was like holding a sweaty sticky of dynamite.”

12. Chris: “Action urgently has to be taken before it’s too late [for Ran].” "

Susannah Fiennes read this message but did not reply. Unsurprisingly, Susannah also didn’t reply three days later, after I sent her a 27-page dossier detailing LMC criminal behaviour, until I followed up with her.

On May 15, 2025, Anton Bowring sent a message to Ran’s friends:

"Dear Friends of Ran,

At last some good news. Susannah Fiennes (Ran’s cousin) has just sent the following:

“Amazing update!! Louise called to ask me to meet her and Ran, and Elizabeth in a London park (I’d better obey her secrecy rules for now). He had two delightful and attentive carers with him. Obviously well looked after. Louise very affectionate to him. Elizabeth remarkably focused on her zoology. Ran gently sweet and worrying about Louise standing up while he was seated in wheelchair (they get him walking properly several times a day). All as good as can be for now. I have a lawyer drafting a simple nda to satisfy L’s concerns. I still don’t know which home he’s in but guess it’s central. It was extremely moving to see them all, and witness that for all her perculiar ways, they are a little family unit with, seemingly, much affection. Xxxx”

I was stunned. How could Susannah Fiennes betray Ran this way? Wasn’t it obvious to her that this display of family bliss was all a carefully choreographed ruse? I phoned Arabella who agreed that Susannah’s assessment lacked critical analysis. “This is farcical,” Arabella said angrily.

Disgusted with Susannah’s fawning over LMC’s staged appearance, I sent a letter to King Charles to apprise him of the severity of Ran’s situation. Out of courtesy, I sent a copy of the letter to Susannah. What ensued next underscored Susannah’s stance on Ran’s situation. She rang me up to severely admonish me for taking this unilateral action, repeating twice that the Fiennes clan “are a very private family.”

She followed this up in a group chat in which she wrote “Mike knows my thoughts...Ran is in extremely good hands.” This was echoed by Anton Bowring who had made his strong opposition to involving King Charles -Ran’s friend of 50 years- known to me on countless previous occasions.

The last time Susannah Fiennes and I spoke, she asked me why, if in 2008 I really had witnessed the things I claimed about Louise, had I not raised any red flags then. I reminded Susannah that I did, in fact, alert her at the time. Susannah denied that this conversation had taken place. When I explained that my alerting her was memorialized in an email I sent myself back in 2008, Susannah scoffed “I’d like to see that email.” After I sent Susannah this email, she did not respond.

With a pronounced sense of frustration and disgust, I contacted Joseph Fiennes. Like Susannah, Joe is Ran’s cousin, but unlike Susannah he enjoys Ran’s trust and admiration. Surely, I thought, Joe would be able to help overcome the impass by assuming a more aggressive posture in the fight for Ran’s freedom. Although Joe empathised with my exasperation over the difficulty the Fiennes family dynamic posed, he openly conceded to the fact that Susannah and her brother Martin Fiennes were in the proverbial driver’s seat and that he would have to defer to them out of respect for their seniority within the Fiennes clan.

In June 2025, one of Ran’s close friends informed me that Louise had entered Ran into a care home in London. LMC had signalled to Susannah Fiennes her readiness to permit carefully screened visitors to see Ran. Each visitor would have to sign an ironclad non-disclosure agreement. Although I strongly objected to this plan and advised both Anton Bowring and Susannah Fiennes that the easiest way around this NDA was for everyone in Ran’s inner circle to refuse to sign it, while at the same time insisting on being allowed to visit Ran, the two were in agreement about appeasing Louise Millington-Cotes.

This development presented a golden opportunity to enact my plan to obtain information about Ran’s condition directly from Ran himself. In order to achieve this objective, someone whom Ran knows, likes and trusts - Susannah Fiennes was clearly out of question - would have to meet him in person, without anyone else knowing about this meeting. This way, Ran would not be under any undue influence or control, and the meeting would not be monitored.

Arabella Pepper was extremely reluctant when I asked her to fly to London and check herself into KYN Hurlingham. Only after much pleading and convincing did she agree to make the journey to London and act as my spy. Although today Arabella claims that she was never a spy, at the time she was well aware of the secretive nature of her mission. As I expected, when she made contact with Ran, he was happy to see her and plainly told her that he wished to see his friends, that doing so would mean going against his wife, that he was afraid of his wife, and that he was left without any money. Arabella sent a one-page summary of her hour-long meeting with Ran detailing that Ran did not lack capacity to make decisions and that he was compos mentis.

Under UK law governing Lasting Powers of Attorney, a deputy must honor the donor’s wishes if the donor is able to articulate these wishes clearly and is of sound mind. Arabella had extracted the most valuable information of all: Louise Millington-Cotes was clearly in breach of her duty as Ran’s deputy by going against Ran’s wishes.

When Susannah Fiennes found about Arabella’s meeting, she sharply assailed Arabella outside KYN Hurlingham. Susannah complained bitterly about Ran being worn out when she and her cousin, Joe Fiennes, visited Ran in the afternoon following Arabella’s meeting with Ran after breakfast. Arabella had made a different assessment. She believed Ran only feigned exhaustion in order to minimise his time in Susannah’s company. Arabella laughed heartily after telling me by phone “knowing Ran and his dislike of Susannah, when she came to see him, he probably pretended to be tired just to get rid of her.”

This all occurred on the same day: July 4, 2025. Arabella never saw Ran again because the staff and management of KYN Hurlingham isolated Ran in a separate room inside the facility before lying to Arabella that he had left the facility.

I chose to stand down because subsequent to Arabella’s visit, Ran was able to see a small handful of friends who had agreed to sign Louise’s and Susannah’s non-disclosure agreement. These visits occurred in July, August and September of 2025. I assumed that the information Arabella had obtained from Ran was sufficient to discourage Louise Millington-Cotes from hiding and isolating Ran again, and hence trained my attention on my watch company.

To my considerable surprise, I learned from one of Ran’s friends in June of this year that contrary to any logic, LMC had yet again prevented friends from visiting Ran. The last time anyone had seen Ran was September 2025. This meant that almost a year had passed without Ran receiving any visitors. In the middle of a major relocation, I was unable to dedicate much time to the matter but resolved to begin working correcting this wrong once I had free time in August.

Finally, on September 1st, 2026, I decided to make Ran’s situation public in an effort to thwart Louise’s nefarious efforts vis-a-vis her husband. Two weeks later, The Telegraph became the first mainstream media outlet to detail Ran’s ordeal in a superbly written article by Alex Diggins, whom I had apprised of the situation back in April. The Daily Mail followed suit with another stellar article. The ensuing media avalanche lasted over four weeks during which countless articles appeared on a daily basis. Ran’s ordeal had finally captured the attention of the entire United Kingdom. It would only be a matter of time before the authorities arrested Louise and freed Ran, I assumed wrongly.

Given years of austerity measures enacted by successive UK governments, the country’s police forces are underfunded, unmotivated and its ranks filled with individuals who are generally incompetent. This is most perfectly illustrated by the case of an 84-year-old former police officer named Henry Frances-Sargeant, who was robbed of 34,000 British pounds by his carer. Despite Mr. Frances-Sargeant’s bank repeatedly raising concerns with the police, the officers mishandled the cases in such a grotesque manner as to leave even the most resoureful author in search for adequate words. Asked not to contact the ageing victim in the evenings, the officer demonstrably only attempted to contact Mr. Frances-Sageant in the middle of the night.

This is the exact same experience I had with the UK police after filing multiple criminal complaints against Louise Millington-Cotes. When I tried to speak with the investigating officer, I was told that no-one was available, only to then receive two phone calls at 2:30 in the morning. Incidentally, the police department I had contacted to file complaints about LMC was the same one who mishandled the case involving one of their former colleagues, Henry Frances-Sargeant: Shropshire’s finest. Unsurprisingly, the Shropshire police failed to take any action and as a result Louise Millington-Cotes still roams freely and even continues to retain control over Ran.

As a result of the wall-to-wall media coverage about Ran's plight, I was contacted by a number of witnesses who had first-hand knowledge of Louise Millington-Cotes's mistreatment of the man I have called Uncle Ran for more than two decades. The former PR manager at Heathrow airport told me that over dinner Ran had said to her "my wife is trying to kill me," by making him work far harder in his 70s and into his 80s than he had when he was younger. Ran had told me and members of his family that he originally intended to retire at 65, but that LMC's incessant spending required him to work far beyond that age.

Today, her control enables Louise Milligton-Cotes to continue to stipulate who can visit Ran. As expected, the only people to whom LMC has granted such permission are none other than her biggest allies, Susannah and Martin Fiennes, as well as those few friends of Ran who have reluctantly signed Louise’s and Susannah’s NDA. Ran’s stepson, Alexander, is not permitted to see Ran. Neither are Arabella Pepper, whom Ran considers his small sister, and Anton Bowring, his best friend.

After examining Louise Millington-Cotes’s modus operandi, it should also come as no surprise that these visits are coordinated to take place in the afternoon, when Ran lacks awareness and is extremely tired, versus the mornings when he does have capacity and energy to meet friends. Surely, this is by design, because if Ran found out that the secret affair and everything else Louise has used to control him for over the course of 23 years have been made public, and that the reaction of the British public to these revelations can best be described as muted, then he would presumably muster the courage to remove Louise Millington-Cotes as his legal guardian - something the hapless authorities, least of all the Office of the Public Guardian, have not been able to accomplish.

And so the fight for Ran’s freedom continues. There’s a lot of work to do before this mission can succeed. Alex Millington-Cotes has launched a fundraising campaign via GoFundMe (search “Fiennes”) to cover the legal expenses associated with a case his lawyers intend to file with the Court of Protection challenging his mother’s control over Ran’s affairs. This crowdfunder has virtually stood still at around 30,000 pounds, which is insufficient to see through a protracted battle against LMC.

Two weeks ago, I sent a 17-page letter to over 50 of Ran’s friends and family, expressing concern that none of them have so far made a substantial contribution to Alex’s fundraiser. Subsequent to this letter, not a single substantial donation has been made, anonymous or otherwise. Not even Joe Fiennes, who benefited from his association with Ran to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds via a National Geographic series featuring his ageing cousin, has contributed to the fund, presumably not to run afoul of Susannah Fiennes and the Fiennes clan patriarch, Martin.

Since neither Ran’s relatives, the Fienneses, nor any of his wealthy friends can be counted on to lend their financial support, it falls on the British public to see this fundraising campaign through. Time is very much of the essence as Ran’s medical condition is suboptimal. As an 82- year-old Parkinson’s patient, he has a life expectance of only another year or two. I therefore appeal to you to underwrite the effort to ensure Ran can life the remainder of his days without the control of his captor-wife, Louise Millington-Cotes and her accomplice, Susannah Fiennes.

In case making donations is not your thing, I’ve made my book about Ran and the fight to secure his freedom available for pre-order via a Kickstarter campaign (search “Fiennes”) and I will augment Alex’s campaign. As with the first two long-form articles I have published on Ran’s situation, I have made this article available free of charge to add detail and context to the generally superb reporting by the British press (with the notable exception of Nick Rufford and Izzy Lyons of the Sunday Times, who made a considerable mess of their article about how Arabella Pepper ended up at KYN Hurlingham, first by removing any mention of my involvement (presumably because I had a serious go at Nick Rufford after he intimidated one of the key witnesses I made available to him for his story) and then by instead dedicating half of their article to profiling the one individual besides Susannah Fiennes who was in total opposition to Arabella’s and my clandestine operation: Anton Bowring.

Finally, you, the alert reader, might have asked yourself why Ran never divorced Louise back in 2008, when we had made plans for exactly such a course of action. In March of that year, just as Ran and I were seated at his desk in his office at Greenlands, going through the paperwork, with Ran ready to sign the engagement letters the lawyers and the crisis PR expert had prepared, a peculiar scene played out: Unexpectedly, Louise Millington-Cotes arrived from Cheshire, stormed into Ran’s office, kicked me out, and subsequently blackmailed Ran with secretly recorded sex tapes. Ran was unable to stomach the idea of these images appearing on the Internet and caved in to her demands to drop the divorce. How did LMC find out about this conspiratorial meeting? How did she know about the impending divorce proceedings?

In closing, I’d like to point out that I regret almost nothing I have done in my life. With one or two exceptions, I would not undo any decisions I made. The one big regret I have is not spending more time with my child, whom I love dearly. The only other regrets are not seeing through Ran’s divorce and not alerting the British press to Ran’s situation as early as February 2025. This is an extremely painful admission for me to make, especially in light of what untold abuse Ran has had to endure since those days in March of 2008, when we had the opportunity to change the trajectory of his life. A lot of time has been lost since Ran’s isolation has first become known to me - far too much time, indeed - and given Ran’s advanced age, time is not on his side.

These regrets, and the information I compiled about Louise Millington-Cotes, inform my undaunted determination to ensure that we Free Ran without further delay!

-Michael Kobold