This book began as a lockdown project – a series of Zoom conversations between the Duke and his co-author, the royal expert Hugo Vickers. The book consists of extracts from interviews with the Duke and his family which Vickers has edited and pulled together with a commentary. It’s a good way of writing a memoir, and the book is a pleasure to read.
HRH The Duke of Kent, then Prince Edward, between the Queen, then Princess Elizabeth, and Princess Margaret, at Frogmore House in Windsor, 1930s 'I always felt I wanted to support her. That’s by far the most important thing in life': HRH The Duke of Kent, then Prince Edward, between the Queen, then Princess Elizabeth, and Princess Margaret, at Frogmore House in Windsor, 1930s CREDIT: Private Collection of HRH The Duke of Kent The Duke of Kent is “thoroughly royal” on both sides of his family. His mother, Princess Marina, was a first cousin of Prince Philip. He has so many cousins that he admits to getting “hopelessly confused” whether they are Greek or Russian or Serbian. The Duke grew up at Coppins, his parents’ home near Windsor, but his idyllic childhood was shadowed by the war and the death of his father Prince George in an air crash in 1942.
The Duke was six when his father was killed, and he has few memories of him. “The sad thing is,” he says, “I can only remember isolated moments – he was away so much because of the war.” Prince George was a fascinating figure, a cultivated playboy prince who had a string of unsuitable affairs. The contrast between father and son could hardly be greater.
Princess Marina was left to bring up her three children on her own. “It was difficult for my mother,” says the Duke. “She really didn’t have many friends in England.” She was close to her relations and especially her two sisters, one of whom was married to a German count and lived in Germany during the war, while her other sister, Olga, the wife of Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, was in exile in South Africa. “We were too young to be aware,” recalls the Duke, “but what these people must have gone through, divided families and so on. It must have been terribly difficult.” Later, the three sisters came to be known as the Fabergé aunts. They would collapse into fits of helpless laughter at slapstick jokes, and they were gifted mimics. Marina was effortlessly chic, and other royals seemed chunky and homespun by contrast with her.
'We were too young to be aware what these people would have gone through': Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, arm-in-arm with his sister Princess Alexandra and his mother Marina, Duchess of Kent and Princess of Greece, in the garden of their family home, Coppins, in the village of Ivers, Buckinghamshire, 1956 CREDIT: Hulton Deutsch Coppins was “the cosiest house possible” according to the Duke’s brother, Prince Michael, but after the war money was tight. Marina didn’t receive a war widow’s pension. The Duke suggests that Tommy Lascelles, the King’s private secretary, “maybe felt it would look bad for a member of the Royal Family”. To pay the bills, Princess Marina “had to sell a lot of my father’s collection at Christie’s in 1947”. Eventually the princess was given a provision on the civil list.
