The Royal Geographical Society held a gala evening on October 23, 2024, honouring the extraordinary life of Sir Ranulph Fiennes, widely described as ‘the world’s greatest living explorer’.
Its South Kensington headquarters is packed with reminders of his fearless expeditions, the kind of exploits that seem lifted from the pages of a Boy’s Own annual.
Suspended in the hallway is the sledge Fiennes hauled across Antarctica during his record-breaking unsupported crossing of the continent. The journey began in 1992 and, after 93 punishing days, concluded in 1993.
Visitors can also see a replica of the ‘radio hut’ from his remarkable pole-to-pole surface circumnavigation of the globe. The venture took seven years to prepare and almost three years to complete — an achievement no one else has matched.
Among his many feats, Fiennes scaled the north face of the Eiger at 62, reached the summit of Everest at 65 and helped discover Oman’s lost city of Ubar, often known as the ‘Atlantis of the Sands’.
Dinner guests were therefore keen to hear from the celebrated adventurer, then in his 80s, whose place among Britain’s greatest explorers has long been compared with that of Scott and Shackleton.
But he did not arrive.
Instead, the guest of honour appeared briefly in a pre-recorded video, speaking from his sofa.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes made his final public appearance by video at a Royal Geographical Society event in South Kensington.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes pictured with his second wife, Lady Louise Millington-Cotes.
‘Hello, everybody, Ran here,’ he said, glasses perched on his nose and reading from a script which was just out of shot.
‘I’m sorry I’m not well enough to be with you there this evening. Thank you for being my number one team. I do hope we will be together for many more adventures to come.’
Then the screen went blank and he was gone.
Who in the audience could have possibly imagined that it would be the last time Sir Ranulph was seen in public?
Letters wishing him well have been returned to senders unopened. The usual Christmas cards from him have never arrived.
His absence and silence – in the aftermath of that now haunting clip – have become the main topic of conversation among those who know and love him in email chains and WhatsApp groups.
Finally, nearly two years on, they have gone public.
‘Where in the world is Ranulph Fiennes?’ is the sensational headline of a new blog posted by his close friend Michael Kobold.
Sir Ranulph in a snow hut in Antarctica in 1979 as part of the Transglobe Expedition
‘It’s time to unveil a secret: My friend of almost 30 years has gone missing and nobody besides a tiny handful of individuals seems to want to do anything to change this disgraceful status quo,’ he writes.
The filmmaker and author collaborated on one of Sir Ranulph’s books and has shared many adventures with him down the years, including hunting Nazi war criminals and taking part in climbing expeditions in the Alps and on Everest.
He reveals an extraordinary story – the hyperbole is justified in this case – behind the ‘disappearance’ of Sir Ranulph in his long and detailed missive.
It involves the intervention of his close friend King Charles, actor Joseph Fiennes – star of Shakespeare in Love, who is said to have joined the search for his cousin – and an ‘undercover operation’ at a London care home where Sir Ranulph was suspected to be living at one point. All of which makes astonishing reading.
‘That a national hero like Ran Fiennes could end up in such a predicament is shocking,’ added Mr Kobold.
The chain of events that has culminated in the ongoing mystery surrounding Sir Ranulph’s whereabouts began more than two decades ago with the death in 2004 of his beloved first wife Virginia ‘Ginny’ Fiennes, his childhood sweetheart, from cancer.
Sir Ranulph considered ending his own life after he lost the woman he had been married to for 34 years. But a little over a year later – against all expectations – he met someone who became his new wife.
At 38, Louise Millington-Cotes, a horse trainer from Cheshire, was 23 years younger than Sir Ranulph and had a young son, Alexander.
Sir Ranulph pictured with his first wife, childhood sweetheart Virginia ‘Ginny’ Fiennes, who died in 2004 from cancer
Sir Ranulph became a father for the first time at the age of 62 shortly after they were married when their daughter Elizabeth was born.
The couple, who met at a Royal Geographical Society event, divided their time between their two farms – one in the wilds of Exmoor, where Sir Ranulph trained for his expeditions by going on long runs, the other in the West Midlands.
Almost from the beginning, there were reports that all was not well. A string of key staff at Exmoor, including Sir Ranulph’s long-serving personal assistant and a couple who managed the estate, left after the arrival of the new Mrs Fiennes.
At the same time, his friends – many of whom were not invited to the wedding – spoke of being cut out since the marriage.
This sounds eerily familiar to Christopher Bowler, the former partner of Louise Fiennes and the father of Alexander. They split up soon after their son was born in 1995.
Mr Bowler, 65, who runs a hospitality business, exclusively told the Daily Mail this week: ‘I met Ranulph once or twice dropping Alexander off at the end of a weekend at a petrol station in Cheshire.
‘I felt like saying to him – one bloke to another – “Don’t do it, don’t marry her”. I could just see that he was going to have so much trouble and strife. In the end I didn’t say anything because I was nervous that he might have told her, and I probably wouldn’t have seen Alex ever again.
‘She cut me off from all my family and friends in subtle and not so subtle ways. They gave up calling because she would never tell me that they had rung. I ended up feeling very isolated.’
Ranulph (left) pictured with wife Louise Fiennes (centre) and his third cousin, actor Ralph Fiennes (right) in London in 2012
Indeed, not long after Ran and Louise were married, Mr Bowler told The Mail on Sunday of his troubling experiences with his ex, recalling that she had refused to name him as Alexander’s father. Consequently, he’d taken her to court and needed a DNA test in order to obtain reasonable access to the boy.
Mr Bowler said then: ‘She is like a chameleon – you never know where you are with her…
‘She liked to be in charge. Once we got together she started to try to alienate me from my friends. She seemed particularly worried if it was a woman on the telephone asking for me.
‘It was as if she was jealous of me having a wide circle of friends while she did not have many.
‘And she appeared to be frightened of getting too close to people. She even broke off any relationship with her mother and an aunt simply because I got on well with them.’
Of course there may be two sides to the story. While at the time Lady Fiennes did not respond to the allegations made by her former partner, she later did an interview in which she suggested that she was being unfairly portrayed by people.
Discussing why former staff had left, she said ‘when I saw that [the animals] were being allowed to deteriorate, the big bad wolf in me kicked up a fuss. So, of course, I am an evil, evil person’.
It’s hard to believe a man who famously sawed the tips off his frostbitten fingers at home because they were causing him so much pain could drop out of sight so completely.
Two years on from his disappearance, Sir Ranulph’s family and friends have gone public in a bid to find him
But the person Christopher Bowler used to meet at the petrol station to drop off his son, who was once a member of the SAS, is much older and more vulnerable now.
Sir Ranulph has spoken openly about his diagnosis of Parkinson’s and was forced to give up driving following a car accident in September 2024, not long before his tribute evening at the RGS.
Michael Kobold has now formed an unlikely trio with Arabella McIntyre-Brown, younger sister of Sir Ranulph’s late wife, and Ran’s stepson Alexander.
Now 31, the boy whose father had to go to court to be acknowledged has become estranged from his mother and joined forces to try to find the great explorer. As Mr Kobold writes: ‘Alexander Millington [Louise Fiennes’ estranged son] has now joined Arabella’s and my campaign. There are now three of us…’
Other friends have also been working tirelessly to find him.
According to Mr Kobold, Joseph Fiennes, who didn’t know his cousin as a child but who had become close to the Old Etonian in recent years, visited and phoned care homes in the hope they had admitted someone matching his description.
In the summer of 2025, news reached his friends that Sir Ranulph was indeed in a care home in Fulham under an alias. According to Mr Kobold, staff had been given instructions not to allow any visitors.
There could be a perfectly legitimate reason for this but Mr Kobold was undeterred in his quest.
So he came up with a plan that, to quote Arabella – a writer who lives in Romania – was like ‘stumbling into a John le Carre novel’.
He would pay for her to check into the home in the hope of making contact with her brother-in-law. ‘Arabella was the perfect spy for this mission,’ Michael disclosed in his blog.
‘She resides in Romania, has been very close with Ran since childhood, and thanks to several medical ailments and her advanced age, her week-long stay would not cause any concern for care home’s staff.
‘As expected, Arabella made her mark on the first morning of her stay. When she messaged me, she was at breakfast in the same communal room as Ran, I was elated. This was the first time in almost a year that anyone had seen him.
‘Arabella reported that Ran seemed in good condition for his age but was frail, nevertheless. After breakfast, she approached Ran and introduced herself. It took him a few moments to recognise Arabella, but once he made the connection Ran was warm and chatty.’
Their joy did not last long.
‘Shortly after the meeting, Ran was removed from the communal area by the staff in an effort to forestall any further interaction between him and Arabella… whom Ran considers his little sister,’ his old friend explained in his explosive blog.
‘For the rest of her week-long stay, Arabella never saw or heard from Ran again. She checked his room on several occasions and found it to be empty. After her stay had concluded and she returned home to Romania, Arabella was contacted by a resident whom she had befriended.
‘She told Arabella that Ran had been there the entire week and that he was isolated in a separate room. Now that Arabella had departed, Ran was back in his usual room and perusing the facility’s communal spaces.’
According to Mr Kobold, following this episode, Sir Ranulph was visited by a handful of his friends. There was another dramatic twist, however.
They had to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) promising not to reveal his location, his ‘physical and mental wellbeing’ or details of his healthcare. Again, there could be an innocent explanation. Sir Ranulph Fiennes was a private man, after all, and he might not have wanted such personal details to become public.
Even so, the issuing of NDAs was, by any standard, draconian. In any event, the visits did not last long and by the autumn of 2025 they had ended. Friends think Sir Ranulph has since been moved to different accommodation, but they have no idea where.
Michael says he took two further steps to find out the truth. He wrote to the Office of the Public Guardian, which exists to protect the elderly and the vulnerable from being exploited by those granted power of attorney.
Safeguarding teams in Sir Ranulph’s home town and in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham where the care home is located were also alerted.
Mr Kobold says they visited Sir Ranulph and reported back that he had given his wife power of attorney and had confirmed to officers that he was happy with that arrangement. As such, no further action would be taken.
After his efforts failed, he next wrote to King Charles.
Charles was a patron of Sir Ranulph’s most famous expedition when he and his team circumnavigated the world by land, sea and ice in 1983, which His Majesty called ‘the most ambitious undertaking of its kind ever attempted’.
They had been friends ever since. ‘I wrote a letter to his Majesty King Charles apprising him of Ran’s situation,’ Michael recounted. ‘A relative of the King whom I befriended decades ago personally conveyed the message to His Majesty. As a result, King Charles entrusted his personal equerry to look into this matter.’
The intervention came to nothing. And now, Michael Kobold has made his friend’s plight known to a wider audience.
Louise Fiennes was approached for comment in a letter delivered to her last known address but there has been no response. Meanwhile, Ran’s circle of devoted friends remain determined to see their beloved adventurer again.
At 82 and in fragile health, there may not be many years left to enjoy his singular character.