BRITAIN’S greatest explorer has spent a lifetime disappearing into the world’s most hostile places. Extraordinarily, over the last few months, his friends and family have been saying they don’t know where he is.
For more than half a century, Fiennes has gone where most sensible people would prefer not to go. He has crossed deserts, endured polar expeditions, climbed Everest, lost fingers to frostbite and become the first person to reach both poles by surface travel. His achievements have made him one of the most recognisable explorers of the modern era.
Yet for almost two years, the 82-year-old has barely been seen in public.
And now an investigation by The Telegraph has uncovered a deeply troubling story about where he has been, the care he has received and the increasingly desperate attempts by friends and relatives to establish his whereabouts.
According to friends and family, the last time Fiennes was seen publicly was on October 23, 2024, when he sent a video message to the Royal Geographical Society for an event marking the Transglobe Expedition.
His stepson, Alexander, reportedly last saw him in person the previous month.
After that, members of Fiennes’ circle began to notice something unusual. Letters and Christmas cards were returned unopened. Friends who had previously been able to contact him could no longer do so.
It was not simply that Britain’s most famous explorer had withdrawn from public life, but people who knew him personally said they could not establish where he was.
Fiennes has always been entitled to privacy, and there is nothing inherently suspicious about an elderly person withdrawing from public appearances. But according to the people who have spoken to the Telegraph, attempts to contact him repeatedly failed, eventually leading some of his friends and relatives to begin actively searching for him.
Their search eventually led to a care home in Fulham. According to the newspaper’s investigation, Fiennes had been placed in a succession of care homes under a false name, with restrictions placed on who could visit him.
One of his old friends, Anton Bowring, reportedly discovered that Fiennes was living at KYN Hurlingham in Fulham during 2025 and attempted to see him. He was unsuccessful.
Another relative, Arabella McIntyre-Brown – the younger sister of Fiennes’ first wife – took a more extraordinary approach.
Rather than simply asking to visit, she checked herself into the care home as a resident. The arrangement allowed her to see Fiennes, whom she knew well.
She told the Telegraph that he was lucid, that his personality and sense of humour remained intact and that his memory appeared clear. She said he understood that he was generally better in the mornings but became increasingly confused during the afternoons and evenings.
Most importantly, she said he told her that he wanted to see his friends. But shortly afterwards, according to her account, she was told that staff knew of her relationship with Fiennes and would have to inform his wife.
The following day, she says, she was told that Fiennes was no longer a resident. She has not seen him since.
The most significant development reported by the Telegraph concerns a period earlier this year when Fiennes was living in a care home in Wales.
According to the newspaper, he spent approximately seven weeks there before being moved to another care home in Cheshire.
During that period, the owner of the Welsh care home raised concerns about the legal basis for the restrictions placed upon Fiennes.
Care Inspectorate Wales subsequently advised that Fiennes was being unlawfully deprived of his liberty because the necessary deprivation-of-liberty safeguards were not in place.
Those safeguards exist for a very specific reason. When an adult who cannot consent to their care arrangements is subject to continuous supervision and control and is not free to leave a care setting, there has to be a lawful process governing those restrictions. The safeguards are intended to protect vulnerable people and ensure that restrictions are necessary, proportionate and in their best interests.
The Welsh care-home owner also reportedly raised wider safeguarding concerns with the Office of the Public Guardian.
Among the issues were arrangements surrounding medication and a document relating to whether Fiennes should be resuscitated.
According to the Telegraph, his wife – Louise Millington-Cotes – supplied his medication rather than having him registered with a local GP. The care-home owner subsequently raised questions about some of the medication and instructions provided.
There were also concerns about a document described as a ‘Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation’ form, which the care-home owner said appeared incomplete.
The Telegraph further reports that an oxygen cylinder had been placed in Fiennes’ room but that care-home staff could not establish that it had been supplied through a clinical oxygen provider or that there was appropriate paperwork authorising its use.
Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the story is the degree of secrecy surrounding Fiennes’ whereabouts. Apparently, his wife insisted that he be registered at one Welsh care home under an alias. Staff were reportedly told that he was an ex-SAS soldier whose life might be at risk from extremists.
When he went outside with a private carer, the Telegraph reports that he was instructed to wear a hat, sunglasses and gloves, apparently to make him more difficult to identify.
Visitors to the London care home were reportedly asked to sign non-disclosure agreements before seeing him.
The Telegraph’s reporting comes against a background in which Fiennes has himself spoken publicly about Parkinson’s disease, and he was forced to stop driving following a car accident in 2024.
At the centre of the dispute is the role of lasting powers of attorney. Fiennes’ wife was granted lasting power of attorney in 2024. Such arrangements exist to allow someone trusted to make decisions on another person’s behalf when that person is no longer able to make certain decisions themselves.
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