Prince George, Duke of Kent
| Prince George | |
|---|---|
| Duke of Kent | |
 | |
| Duke of Kent | |
| Successor | Prince Edward, Duke of Kent |
| Spouse | Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark |
| Issue | |
| Prince Edward, Duke of Kent Princess Alexandra, The Hon. Lady Ogilvy Prince Michael of Kent | |
| Full name | |
| George Edward Alexander Edmund | |
| Titles and styles | |
| HRH The Duke of Kent HRH The Prince George HRH Prince George of Wales | |
| Royal house | House of Windsor House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha |
| Father | George V |
| Mother | Mary of Teck |
| Born | 20 December 1902 York Cottage, Sandringham |
| Baptised | 26 January 1903 St George's Chapel, Windsor |
| Died | 25 August 1942 (aged 39) Morven, Scotland |
| Burial | St George's Chapel, Windsor and later Frogmore Royal Mausoleum |
| Occupation | Military |
The Prince George, Duke of Kent (George Edward Alexander Edmund; 20 December 1902 - 25 August 1942) was a member of the British Royal Family, the fourth son of George V and Mary of Teck. He held the title of Duke of Kent from 1934 until his death in 1942.
Contents |
Birth
Prince George was born on 20 December 1902 at York Cottage on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, England. His father was The Prince George, Prince of Wales, the eldest surviving son of Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. His mother was the Princess of Wales, the eldest daughter of The Duke and Duchess of Teck. At the time of his birth, he was fifth in the line of succession. As a grandchild of the British monarch in a male line, he was styled His Royal Highness Prince George of Wales.
He was baptised in the Private Chapel at Windsor Castle on 26 January 1903 by Francis Paget, Bishop of Oxford (with "ordinary" water, as opposed to water from the Jordan River, which is almost always used for royal christenings). His godparents were his grandparents King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, his grand-uncle Prince Valdemar of Denmark, Prince Louis of Battenberg, and his grand-aunts The Dowager Empress of Russia and Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein.
[edit] Education and career
Prince George received his early education from a tutor and then followed his elder brother, Prince Henry (later the Duke of Gloucester), to St. Peter's Court Preparatory School at Broadstairs, in Kent. At age thirteen, like his brothers, Prince Edward (later Edward VIII) and Prince Albert (later George VI), before him, he went to naval college, first at Osborne and, later, at Dartmouth. He remained in the Royal Navy until 1929, serving on the Iron Duke and later the Nelson. After leaving the navy, he briefly held posts at the Foreign Office and later the Home Office, becoming the first member of the British Royal Family to work as a civil servant.
In 1939, he was elected Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, an office he held until his death.[1]
At the start of World War II, he returned to active military service at the rank of Rear Admiral, briefly serving on the Intelligence Division of the Admiralty. In April 1940, he transferred to the Royal Air Force. He temporarily relinquished his rank as Air Vice-Marshal (the equivalent of Rear Admiral) to assume the post of Staff Officer in the RAF Training Command at the rank of Air Commodore.
Marriage
On 12 October 1934,[2] in anticipation of his forthcoming marriage to Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, his second cousin, he was created Duke of Kent, Earl of St Andrews and Baron Downpatrick. The couple married on 29 November 1934 at Westminster Abbey. The bride was a daughter of Prince Nicholas of Greece and Denmark and a great-niece of Queen Alexandra.[3] It was the last marriage between a son of a British Sovereign and a member of a foreign Royal House to date. Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth II) of York, daughter of King George VI, married Prince Phillip of Greece in November of 1947. This was the last marriage between Royal Houses.
Princess Marina became known as HRH The Duchess of Kent following the marriage. She and her husband had three children:
- Prince Edward of Kent, born 9 October 1935
- Princess Alexandra of Kent, born 25 December 1936
- Prince Michael of Kent, born 4 July 1942
Personal life
Both before and after his marriage, Kent had a long string of affairs with both men and women, from socialites to Hollywood celebrities. The better known of his partners included the African-American cabaret singer Florence Mills, banking heiress Poppy Baring, socialite Margaret Whigham (later Duchess of Argyll), musical star Jessie Matthews and actor Noel Coward, with whom he carried on a 19-year affair.[4] Intimate letters from the Duke to Coward are believed to have been stolen from Coward's house in 1942.[5]Indira Raje, the Maharani of Cooch Behar (1892–1968), in the late 1920s, according to British historian Lucy Moore.[6] There is some suggestion that the duke had an affair with
The Duke of Kent is also said to have been addicted to drugs (notably morphine and cocaine) — a weakness which his brother the Prince of Wales was deputed to cure him of during the latter part of the 1920s — and reportedly was blackmailed by a male prostitute to whom he wrote intimate letters. Another of his reported bisexual liaisons was with his distant cousin Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia; homosexual spy and art historian Anthony Blunt was reputedly another intimate.[7] The Duke was known to have attempted to court Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. She spurned the overture and married Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Bisterfeld instead.
In addition to his legitimate children, the Duke is said to have had a son by Kiki Preston (née Alice Gwynne) (1898–1946), an American socialite whom he reportedly shared in a ménage à trois with Jorge Ferrara, the bisexual son of the Argentine ambassador to the Court of St. James's. Known as "the girl with the silver syringe", drug addict Preston, a cousin of railroad heiress Gloria Vanderbilt, was married first to Horace R.B. Allen and then, in 1925, to banker Jerome Preston.[8] She died after jumping out of a window of the Stanhope Hotel in New York City. According to the memoirs of a friend, Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Prince George's brother (the Duke of Windsor) believed that the son was Michael Canfield (1926–1969), the adopted son of American publisher Cass Canfield and the first husband of Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.[9]
The Duke's early life is dramatised in Stephen Poliakoff's 2003 television serial The Lost Prince - a biography of the life of his younger brother, John, who suffered from epilepsy, was isolated from most of the family and kept away from public gaze, and who died at the age of 13. In the film, the teenage Prince 'Georgie' is portrayed as sensitive, intelligent, artistic and almost uniquely sympathetic to his brother's plight. He is shown to detest his time at Naval College, and to have a difficult relationship with his austere father.
Much of his later life was outlined in the documentary film The Queen's Lost Uncle mentioned above. The Duke's bisexuality and drug addictions were explored in African Nights, a 2004 play written by American playwright Jeffrey Corrick.
Honorary appointment
In 1932 he was appointed as Royal Bencher of The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, a position previously occupied by his father, the King.
Death
Prince George was killed in northern Scotland on August 25, 1942 as a passenger in the crash of a Short Sunderland flying boat airplane. The plane was en route from Evanton, Rosshire to Iceland, and then on to Newfoundland.
Many questions remain about this mission and Prince George's role in it.[10] An unproven claim has been made that British Intelligence assassinated Prince George. One possible reason is given by author Charles Higham, in the second, revised edition of his book The Dutchess of Windsor: The Secret Life, as serious concern over the Duke of Kent's lack of discretion and his political dealings with Nazi leadership, with negotiations towards a separate peace, to allow Germany to concentrate on its war with the Soviet Union in eastern Europe. Higham writes that the Special Operations Executive (SOE), worried that the Duke would talk about these matters once he left the British Isles, tampered with the plane before its takeoff, ensuring its crash soon afterwards, with the deaths of all but one of the passengers.[11]
There is another claim that the plane struck Wolf Rock on Ben Morven while attempting to take off from Loch More after picking up Rudolf Hess who had been smuggled north after parachuting on Eaglesham Moor, near East Kilbride on a mission to broker a peace deal between Germany and Britain. The Sunderland was certainly heading Southwest when it hit the ground and broke up, although it has been claimed that The Duke of Kent was at the controls and he was "buzzing" his cousin's lodge at Langwell Estate, Berridale. (Many of the passengers had been up late at a party, and a radio operator is believed to have overheard the Duke demanding to take the controls by pulling Royal rank.) Purportedly, women's clothing and footwear was found at the crash site by estate workers first on the scene. A possible reason for the Sunderland crashing was it was unable to gain enough altitude/airspeed after take off to clear the hillside, due to its short take-off on Loch More, extra passenger and heavy fuel load, enough to take it to Ayrshire without stopping. One member of crew survived the crash with only minor injuries, but never talked about the event and took what he knew to the grave, further fuelling conspiracy theorists.[12]
Authors Lynn Pickett, Clive Prince and Stephen Prior in their books Double Standards: The Rudolf Hess cover-up and War of the Windsors likewise claim that the Duke of Kent's plane stopped to pick up Rudolf Hess, and that it was part of a peace plan that would have ousted Churchill from power, [13] thus leaving the unstated implication that if the Duke was assassinated by British Intelligence it must have been 'agreed' at the level of Winston Churchill. "The German Ambassador to Portugal, Baron von Hoyningen-Huene, reported to von Ribbentrop that according to the British community in Lisborn, the flying boat was sabotaged in order to kill Kent because he was in favour of peace with Germany".[14]
Funeral
The Duchess of Kent had given birth to their third child, Prince Michael of Kent, only six weeks earlier. The Duke's remains lay initially in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. Later they were buried in the Royal burial ground, directly behind Queen Victoria's mausoleum, at Frogmore, Windsor. He was succeeded as Duke of Kent by his eldest son, Edward.
Titles, styles, honours and arms
Titles and styles
- 20 December 1902–6 May 1910: His Royal Highness Prince George of Wales
- 6 May 1910–12 October 1934: His Royal Highness The Prince George
- 12 October 1934–25 August 1942: His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent
- in Scotland: May 1935: His Grace The Lord High Commissioner
Honours
British honours
- KG: Knight of the Garter
- KT: Knight of the Thistle
- GCMG: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George
- GCVO: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order
- Royal Victorian Chain
Arms
Around the time of his elder brother Prince Henry's twenty-first birthday, Prince George was granted the use of the Royal Arms, differenced by a label argent of three points, each bearing an anchor azure.[15]
Ancestry
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See also
References
- ^ Picknett, Lynn, Prince, Clive, Prior, Stephen & Brydon, Robert (2002). War of the Windsors: A Century of Unconstitutional Monarchy, p. 153. Mainstream Publishing. ISBN 1-84018-631-3.
- ^ Yvonne's Royalty: Peerage
- ^ Picknett, Prince, Prior & Brydon, p. 82.
- ^ Picknett, Prince, Prior & Brydon, p. 56.
- ^ Coward, Noel, "The Letters of Noel Coward," Alfred A. Knopf, 2007
- ^ Moore, Lucy, "Maharanis," Viking, 2004.
- ^ Picknett, Prince, Prior & Brydon, p. 57.
- ^ Picknett, Prince, Prior & Brydon, p. 58.
- ^ Westminster, Loelia, Duchess of, "Grace and Favour", Weidenfeld Nicholson, 1961
- ^ Prince George, Duke of Kent
- ^ The Duchess of Windsor: The Secret Life, second, revised edition, by Charles Higham, 2005.
- ^ Royal Nazis and the Scottish connection at www.martinfrost.ws
- ^ Pickett, Prince and Prior Double Standards: The Rudolf Hess cover up, Time-Warner books (2002), p427-435
- ^ Pickett, Prince and Prior, The War of the Windsors, Mainstream (2002), p187
- ^ Heraldica – British Royal Cadency
Further reading
Miller, Peter. "The Other Prince". The Sunday Times (January 26, 2003).
Warwick, Christopher. George and Marina, Duke and Duchess of Kent. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988. ISBN 0297794531.
External links
| Prince George, Duke of Kent Cadet branch of the House of Wettin Born: 20 December 1902 Died: 25 August 1942 | ||
| Freemasonry offices | ||
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| Preceded by Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn | Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England 1939–1942 | Succeeded by Henry Lascelles, 6th Earl of Harewood |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| Preceded by New Creation | Duke of Kent 1934–1942 | Succeeded by Prince Edward |
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