{"id":576231,"date":"2026-08-21T21:20:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T21:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/576231\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T21:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T21:20:09","slug":"the-castle-jon-ronson-investigates-a-man-bringing-women-to-his-castle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/576231\/","title":{"rendered":"The Castle: Jon Ronson investigates a man bringing women to his castle"},"content":{"rendered":"
The book is so page-turningly intriguing, disturbing and downright bizarre that I \u2013 as someone who also tells true stories for a living \u2013 find it unfair such an astonishing story should have fallen so easily into the lap of Jon Ronson, who surely already has more than enough.<\/p>\n
Jon Ronson during one of his live tours in 2025. Photo \/ Sara Bowrey<\/p>\n
What Ronson quickly learns about Mark is that he\u2019s an extremely wealthy man in his early 60s attempting to bring young women to live in his castle, ostensibly to star in a reality TV series called 101 Princesses.<\/p>\n
The show\u2019s central conceit, according to Mark, is that the young women are auditioning to be his \u201cqueen\u201d, by, among other things, making out with each other on camera in settings as varied as the castle\u2019s pole dancing nightclub and hot tub grotto.<\/p>\n
If this is all sounding a bit Playboy mansion to you, you\u2019re not alone. Ronson spends considerable time in the early pages comparing Mark to Hugh Hefner, who also kept women at his beck and call at a gaudy shrine to his own desires.<\/p>\n
The story of Mark, like Hefner\u2019s, is so strange that, were it not documented by a journalist, it would be unbelievable.<\/p>\n
During their first meeting at The Castle, Mark explains the concept of 101 Princesses to Ronson. In short, he says he finds women on dating apps, initiates relationships with them, brings them to the castle and coaxes them into having sex with the other women living there.<\/p>\n
In the book, Ronson quotes Mark as saying: \u201cI always thought it would be amazing if I had living here six, eight girls, but the only way it works is if the girls love girls. That\u2019s how Princessing works.\u201d<\/p>\n
He goes on to tell Ronson that once the women are brought around to the idea of sex with other women, \u201cthey actually really like it\u201d.<\/p>\n
After sharing this and other self-incriminating revelations, Mark asks Ronson to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Ronson refuses. He already knows the enormity of the story he has on his hands. The only difficulty he faces is how to tell it.<\/p>\n
He tells me: \u201cThere\u2019s nothing obviously relatable about Chris Mark. The trouble you have luring women to your castle \u2013 that\u2019s not an obviously resonant story. But then I thought, actually, there is something unexpectedly resonant here, which is that he is discovering that you can\u2019t lord it over your princesses in your castle any more like it\u2019s the 1970s.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnless you\u2019re the creme de la creme of manosphere influencers, it\u2019s a terrible time to try to be Hugh Hefner.\u201d<\/p>\n
The deeper Ronson got into Mark\u2019s story, the more he came to see it as more than the story of one man who\u2019s gone off the rails.<\/p>\n
He got to thinking about society\u2019s changing nature and how men fit within it: \u201cYou know, factory life\u2019s dead, office life\u2019s dying, there\u2019s been a power rebalancing, men are realising that certain privileges they had in the past they don\u2019t have any more.\u201d<\/p>\n
The question that remains is: what happens to men now?<\/p>\n
\u201cAt least part of the answer is that we\u2019re all being encouraged to be content creators, personal brands. I heard a statistic that 39% of Americans now consider themselves content creators.\u201d<\/p>\n
The need to establish and nurture oneself as a brand, coupled with the sea of conflicting ideologies and attempts to define what being a man is, Ronson says, is \u201cturning people haywire\u201d.<\/p>\n
Although The Castle is primarily the story of Mark, it takes detours into the stories of a few other men turning haywire in their own ways, including a lawncare influencer, the creator of Father Ted, a town historian and Ronson himself.<\/p>\n
The Castle by Jon Ronson centres on a man who owns a literal castle in rural Connecticut in the United States.<\/p>\n
Far from letting himself off, Ronson is a brutal self-critic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI judge myself entirely on work and there\u2019s definitely a kind of gnawing emptiness that creeps in on the days off, and there are no days off for that reason,\u201d he tells me.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the one contribution I can make, the one thing I can do well \u2013 these stories \u2013 and it fulfils me. As Randy Newman said when I asked him, \u2018Why do you write songs?\u2019, he said \u2018It\u2019s how I judge myself and how I feel better\u2019. And that\u2019s definitely true for me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always remember [British documentarian] Adam Curtis saying to me: \u2018I sit in my little room constructing my stories because it makes the outside world feel less frightening\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m harnessing the horrors of the world by making them work as a story.\u201d<\/p>\n
He describes himself as an introvert who hates and avoids social occasions. He says he\u2019s not so bad with outdoor parties, helped in part by cannabis edibles, legal in New York State, where he lives. But the thought of a party in a New York City apartment, he says, fills him with horror, to the extent he would spend much of his time at such an event hiding in the toilet.<\/p>\n
The page is a safer, more pleasurable place for introverts. \u201cYou can control a story in a way you can\u2019t at a dinner party,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Despite a stellar, decades-long career, Ronson admits every time he writes a book it feels like he\u2019s doing it for the first time. \u201cLike I\u2019ve forgotten all the tricks and I\u2019m starting from scratch,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
However, the story behind The Castle was so compelling and crazy, he quickly forgot the self-doubt and remembered how much fun it is.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, you\u2019re on a journey. It\u2019s dark and scary, but it\u2019s also absurd and funny. It\u2019s all the things I love to do. Yeah. And I\u2019ve gotta say, I wrote those chapters with a real sense of joy.\u201d<\/p>\n
In book-length non-fiction storytelling, he occupies rarefied air alongside big names like Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink), Michael Lewis (Moneyball, The Big Short) and Patrick Radden Keefe (Empire of Pain, London Falling). But where those writers are authoritative, decisive and confident on the page, Ronson is a bit of a shambles. This is by design.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople like us, there\u2019s pressure on us and maybe pressure inside of us to be this kind of authority figure, like we know what we\u2019re talking about. But very often we don\u2019t,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
He recognises he\u2019s prone to cognitive biases and other human errors. Recognising this is one thing; admitting it on the page is another.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think people like it. If you present yourself as this sort of slightly bumbling Clouseau-type, Colombo-type investigator where you\u2019re full of your own flaws too. That\u2019s the truth about people \u2013 we\u2019re basically a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the past five years, contemporaneous with the events he documents in The Castle, Ronson has produced two seasons of the hit BBC podcast series Things Fell Apart, in which he tells stories of people caught up in the opening salvos of what became known as the culture wars.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s difficult territory because these are touchy times, people are increasingly divided, and their beliefs are increasingly reinforced by social media and the bubbles they occupy within it. <\/p>\n
Ronson says ideology-led journalism, increasingly prevalent in the United States, stops you being surprised and is part of the problem.<\/p>\n
Asked for a solution to the social division chronicled in Things Fell Apart and The Castle, Ronson says: \u201cThe solution to it is this \u2013 it\u2019s narrative non-fiction: you\u2019re not being led by ideology, you\u2019re being led by curiosity; you want to find things out and you\u2019re prepared to be surprised; you\u2019re prepared to go places where you didn\u2019t expect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re the way out of this. We\u2019re the way to fix this.\u201d<\/p>\n