Prince George, Duke of Kent

Prince George
Duke of Kent
Successor	Prince Edward
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
House	House of Windsor House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
Father	George V of the United Kingdom
Mother	Mary of Teck
Born	20 December 1902(1902-12-20) York Cottage, Sandringham
Died	25 August 1942(1942-08-25) (aged 39) Morven, Scotland
Burial	St George's Chapel, Windsor and later Frogmore Royal Mausoleum

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 and fifth child of George V and Mary of Teck, and younger brother of Edward VIII and George VI. He held the title of Duke of Kent from 1934 until his death in 1942.

Birth

Prince George was born on 20 December 1902 at York Cottage on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, England. His father was Prince George, Prince of Wales, the eldest surviving son of King 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 behind his father and three older brothers. 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, usual for royal christenings). His godparents were: King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra (his paternal grandparents); the Dowager Empress of Russia (his paternal grandaunt, for whom his paternal aunt Princess Victoria stood proxy); Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein (his paternal grandaunt); Prince Valdemar of Denmark (his granduncle, for whom Prince George's uncle Prince Carl of Denmark stood proxy); and Prince Louis of Battenberg (his cousin).

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 October 1938 George was appointed Governor General of Australia in succession to Lord Gowrie with effect from November 1939. On 11 September 1939 it was announced that, owing to the outbreak of World War II, the appointment was postponed.

In 1939 George was elected Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, an office he held until his death.

At the start of World War II, George returned to active military service in 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 at RAF Training Command in the rank of Air Commodore.

Prince George with Prince Edward outside Rideau Hall's main door, during a Royal visit to Canada, 4 August 1927.

Marriage

On 12 October 1934, in anticipation of his forthcoming marriage to his second cousin Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark 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. It was the last marriage to date between a son of a British Sovereign and a member of a foreign Royal House. Princess Elizabeth (later Elizabeth II), daughter of King George VI, married Prince Philip of Greece in November 1947. This was the last marriage between the British and other Royal families.

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

British Royalty
House of Windsor
George V
Edward VIII George VI Mary, Princess Royal Henry, Duke of Gloucester George, Duke of Kent Prince John Grandchildren Elizabeth II Margaret, Countess of Snowdon Prince William of Gloucester Richard, Duke of Gloucester Edward, Duke of Kent Prince Michael of Kent Princess Alexandra

Both before and after his marriage, Prince George had a long string of affairs with both men and women, from socialites to Hollywood celebrities. The better known of his lovers included the African-American cabaret singer Florence Mills; banking heiress Poppy Baring; socialite Margaret Whigham (later Duchess of Argyll and involved in a notoriously scandalous divorce case); Barbara Cartland, later known as a romantic novelist; and musical star Jessie Matthews. Claims that he had a 19-year affair with Noël Coward were denied by Coward's long-term partner, Graham Payn. Intimate letters from the Duke to Coward are believed to have been stolen from Coward's house in 1942. There is some suggestion that the duke had an affair with Indira Raje, the Maharani of Cooch Behar (1892–1968), in the late 1920s, according to British historian Lucy Moore. He was also extremely close to Henry "Chips" Channon.

The Duke of Kent is 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 sexual liaisons was with his distant cousin Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia; art historian Anthony Blunt was reputedly another intimate. The Duke was known to have attempted to court Crown Princess Juliana of the Netherlands. She spurned the overture and married Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld 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. 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 Temple Canfield (1926–1969), the adopted son of American publisher Cass Canfield – and the first husband of Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Another reputed illegitimate lovechild was Raine McCorquodale, daughter of Barbara Cartland, whose step-granddaughter Diana Spencer married George's great-nephew Charles.

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. In 1937 he was granted a commission in the Royal Air Force as a group captain. He was also made the Honorary Air Commodore of No. 500 (County of Kent) Squadron Auxiliary Air Force. Prince George was later promoted to the higher rank of air vice-marshal but, on taking up active RAF duties as a welfare officer in 1940, he relinquished his senior rank, reverting to group captain.

Death

Prince George was killed on 25 August 1942 when the Short Sunderland flying boat in which he was a passenger crashed into a hillside near Dunbeath, Caithness, in bad weather. The plane was en route from Evanton, Ross-shire, to Iceland, and then on to the Dominion of Newfoundland.

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, Frogmore, directly behind Queen Victoria's mausoleum, Windsor. He was succeeded as Duke of Kent by his elder son, Edward.

In popular culture

The Duke's early life is dramatised in Stephen Poliakoff's 2003 television serial The Lost Prince, a biography of the life of the Duke's younger brother John, who suffered from epilepsy, was isolated from most of the family and also 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.

He appears in the first and third episodes of the 2010 revival of Upstairs, Downstairs, played by Blake Ritson. The mini-series takes place in 1936, during the short reign of his elder brother, Edward VIII. He is portrayed as a caring brother, terrified of the mistakes that his family is making. In the later series he is portrayed as an appeaser of the German regime in a conversation with Holland who refuses to pass on a letter to the führer prior to the Munich meeting in 1938.

A more complete background can be found in the 6 volume Churchill "World War II" Vol 1.

Titles, styles, honours and arms

Royal styles of The Prince George, Duke of Kent
Reference style	His Royal Highness
Spoken style	Your Royal Highness
Alternative style	Sir

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 – 25 August 1942: His Grace The Lord High Commissioner

Prince George's coat of arms

Honours

British honours

• KG: Knight of the Garter 1923
• KT: Knight of the Thistle 1935
• GCMG: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George 1934
• GCVO: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order 1924
• 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.

See also

• British Royal Family

Further reading

• Hunt, Leslie. Twenty-one Squadrons: History of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, 1925–57. London: Garnstone Press, 1972. ISBN 0-85511-110-0. (New edition in 1992 by Crécy Publishing, ISBN 0-94755-426-2.)
• Millar, Peter. "The Other Prince". The Sunday Times ( 26 January 2003).
• Warwick, Christopher. George and Marina, Duke and Duchess of Kent. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988. ISBN 0-29779-453-1.
• http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-queens-lost-uncle/4od

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Duke of Kent
• Portraits of Prince George from the National Portrait Gallery

Prince George, Duke of Kent House of Windsor Cadet branch of the House of Wettin Born: 20 December 1902 Died: 25 August 1942
Masonic offices
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