Major General Andrew Stephenson Ritchie, CBE (born 30 July 1953) is a retired British Army officer and former Commandant of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.
While serving in the British Army, he was able to attend the University of Durham between 1975 and 1978, where he gained a third-class degree in Law and Politics.
[5] He then was posted to the Ministry of Defence in 1986–1987 before joining the 3rd Regiment Royal Horse Artillery, with which he served in Germany, Cyprus, and the United Kingdom from 1988 to 1990.
[11] Ritchie's tenure as Commandant of Sandhurst coincided with the attendance of Princes William and Harry at the academy, but was marred by a series of high-profile security breaches by journalists.
In June 2005, a tabloid reporter successfully smuggled a fake bomb into the academy, and also claimed to have filmed Prince Harry in the supposedly secure military compound.
[12] It was reported in The Daily Telegraph in January 2006 that in the ensuing controversy, Ritchie was saved from being sacked by a personal intervention from Prince Charles, with the Prince of Wales reported to have made "'high-level' phone calls of support" to government ministers and senior officials, and issuing "a hand-written letter" of support for Ritchie.
[12] Ritchie also had a controversial interview with The Daily Telegraph during his Sandhurst tenure, in which he discussed suitable placements for army officers with the words, "Clearly, if say a regiment plays a lot of polo and you are a rugby player, you probably won't want to go to the polo-playing regiment", before conceding in the same interview, "I rather regret using that example", and stressed that the army was far more accessible today than when he first joined in the 1970s.
[14] After leaving Sandhurst, Ritchie instructed media law firm Harbottle & Lewis, who successfully sued the Daily Mirror on his behalf over a front-page story (subsequently repeated in the Daily Express and The Times) headlined, "Harry's Army Chief quits 'over stress'", and "Fall Out!