Prince George, Duke of Kent, KG,KT,GCMG,GCVO (George Edward Alexander Edmund; 20 December 1902 – 25 August 1942) was a member of the British royal family, the fourth son of King George V and Queen Mary. He was the younger brother of Edward VIII and George VI. He served in the Royal Navy in the 1920s and then briefly as a civil servant. He became Duke of Kent in 1934. In the late 1930s he served as an RAF officer, initially as a staff officer at RAF Training Command and then, from July 1941, as a staff officer in the Welfare Section of the RAF Inspector General's Staff. He was killed in a military air-crash on 25 August 1942.
The British royal family comprises Queen Elizabeth II and her close relations. There is no strict legal or formal definition of who is or is not a member of the British royal family.
Mary of Teck was Queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Empress consort of India as the wife of King George V.
Edward VIII was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Empire, and Emperor of India, from 20 January 1936 until his abdication on 11 December of that year.
York Cottage is a house in the grounds of Sandringham House in Norfolk, England.
Sandringham House is a country house in the parish of Sandringham, Norfolk, England. It is the private home of Elizabeth II, whose father, George VI, and grandfather, George V, both died there. The house stands in a 20,000-acre (8,100 ha) estate in the Norfolk Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The house is listed as Grade II* along with its landscaped gardens, park, and woodlands.
Francis, Duke of Teck GCB GCVO, known as Count Francis von Hohenstein until 1863, was an Austrian-born nobleman who married into the British royal family. He was the father of Queen Mary, and thus a great-grandfather of the current British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. Francis held the Austrian title of Count of Hohenstein, and the German titles of Prince (Fürst) and later Duke of Teck, and was given the style of Serene Highness in 1863. He was granted the British style of Highness in 1887.
Windsor Castle is a royal residence at Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It is notable for its long association with the English and later British royal family and for its architecture.
Francis Paget was an English theologian, author and the 33rd Bishop of Oxford.
The Bishop of Oxford is the diocesan bishop of the Church of England Diocese of Oxford in the Province of Canterbury; his seat is at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. The current bishop is Steven Croft, following the confirmation of his election to the See on 6 July 2016.
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, a preparatory school at Broadstairs, Kent. At the age of 13, like his brothers, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) and Prince Albert (later King George VI), before him, he went to naval college, first at Osborne and, later, at Dartmouth.[1] He was promoted to sub-lieutenant on 15 February 1924,[4] and was promoted to lieutenant on 15 February 1926.[5] He remained on active service in the Royal Navy until March 1929, serving on HMSIron Duke and later HMSNelson.[1]
Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, was the third son and fourth child of King George V and Queen Mary. He served as Governor-General of Australia from 1945 to 1947, the only member of the British royal family to hold the post.
St Peter's Court was a prep school for boys at Broadstairs in Kent, U.K. In 1969 it merged with the nearby Wellesley House School and its site was redeveloped for housing.
Broadstairs is a coastal town on the Isle of Thanet in the Thanet district of east Kent, England, about 80 miles (130 km) east of London. It is part of the civil parish of Broadstairs and St Peter's, which includes St Peter's, and had a population in 2011 of about 25,000. Situated between Margate and Ramsgate, Broadstairs is one of Thanet's seaside resorts, known as the "jewel in Thanet's crown". The town's coat of arms's Latin motto is Stella Maris. The name derives from a former flight of steps in the chalk cliff, which led from the sands up to the 11th-century shrine of St Mary on the cliff's summit.
After leaving the navy, he briefly held posts at the Foreign Office and later the Home Office, becoming the first member of the royal family to work as a civil servant.[1] He continued to receive promotions after leaving active service: to commander on 15 February 1934 and to captain on 1 January 1937.[6][7]
From January to April 1931, Prince George and his elder brother the Prince of Wales travelled 18,000 miles on a tour of South America. Their outward voyage was on the ocean liner Oropesa.[8] In Buenos Aires they opened a British Empire Exhibition.[9] They continued from Río de la Plata to Rio de Janeiro on the liner Alcantara and returned from Brazil to Europe on the liner Arlanza, landing at Lisbon.[10] The princes returned via Paris and an Imperial Airways flight from Paris–Le Bourget Airport that landed specially in Windsor Great Park.[11][12]
SS Oropesa was a British steam turbine ocean liner of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company (PSNC). She was built on Merseyside in 1920 and operated between Liverpool and South America. In 1941 the German submarine U-96 sank her in the Western Approaches, killing 106 people aboard.
RMS Alcantara was a Royal Mail Lines ocean liner that was built in Belfast in 1926. She served in the Second World War first as an armed merchant cruiser and then a troop ship, was returned to civilian service in 1948 and scrapped in 1958.
Lisbon is the capital and the largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 505,526 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administrative limits with a population of around 2.8 million people, being the 11th-most populous urban area in the European Union. About 3 million people live in the Lisbon metropolitan area, including the Portuguese Riviera. It is mainland Europe's westernmost capital city and the only one along the Atlantic coast. Lisbon lies in the western Iberian Peninsula on the Atlantic Ocean and the River Tagus. The westernmost portions of its metro area form the westernmost point of Continental Europe, which is known as Cabo da Roca, located in the Sintra Mountains.
On 23 June 1936, George was appointed a personal aide-de-camp to his eldest brother, the new King Edward VIII.[13] Following the abdication of Edward VIII, he was appointed a personal naval aide-de-camp to his elder brother, now George VI.[14] On 12 March 1937, he was commissioned as a Colonel in the British Army and in the equivalent rank of group captain in the Royal Air Force (RAF).[15] He was also appointed as the Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Fusiliers from the same date.[16]
In October 1938 George was appointed governor-general of Australia in succession to Lord Gowrie with effect from November 1939.[17][18] On 11 September 1939 it was announced that, owing to the outbreak of the Second World War, the appointment was postponed.[19]
On 8 June 1939, George was promoted to the ranks of rear admiral (RA) in the Royal Navy (RN), major general (MG) in the British Army and air vice-marshal (AVM) in the Royal Air Force (RAF).[20] At the start of the Second World War, George returned to active military service with the rank of Rear Admiral, briefly serving in the Intelligence Division of the Admiralty.
The Duke of Kent is rumoured to have been addicted to drugs, especially morphine and cocaine, a rumour that reputedly originated with his friendship with Kiki Preston,[24][25][26] whom he first met in the mid-1920s. Reportedly, Prince George shared Kiki in a ménage à trois with Argentinian Jorge Ferrara.[27] Other alleged sexual liaisons were with the art historian and Soviet spy Anthony Blunt, Indira Raje, Maharani of Cooch Behar,[28] and José Uriburu, son of the Argentinian ambassador to the Court of St James's, José Uriburu Tezanos.[29]
In his attempt to rescue his cocaine-addicted brother from the influence of Kiki, Edward, Prince of Wales, attempted for a while to persuade both George and Kiki to break off their contact, to no avail.[30] Eventually, Edward forced George to stop seeing Kiki and also forced Kiki to leave England, while she was visiting George there in the summer of 1929.[31] For years afterwards, Edward feared that George might relapse to drugs if he maintained his contact with Kiki. Indeed, in 1932, Prince George ran into Kiki unexpectedly at Cannes and had to be removed almost by force.[32]
It has been alleged for years that American publishing executive Michael Temple Canfield (1926–1969) was the illegitimate son of the Duke of Kent and Kiki Preston. According to various sources, both Kent's brother, the Duke of Windsor, and Laura, Duchess of Marlborough, Canfield's second wife, shared this belief.[33][34][35][36] Canfield was the adopted son of Cass Canfield, American publisher of Harper and Row.[37] In 1953, Canfield married Caroline Lee Bouvier the younger sister of Jacqueline Bouvier who married U.S. Senator and future U.S. president John F. Kennedy the same year. Canfield and Bouvier divorced in 1958, and the marriage was annulled by the Roman Catholic Church in November 1962.[38]
RAF career
The Duke of Kent before he crossed the Atlantic by air
As a young man the Duke came to the opinion that the future lay in aviation. It became his passion, and in 1929, the Duke earned his pilot's licence. He was the first of the royal family to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air. Before his flying days, he entered the Royal Navy, and was trained in intelligence work while stationed at Rosyth.[39]
In 1939 he returned to active service as a rear admiral in the Royal Navy, but in April 1940, transferred to the Royal Air Force. He temporarily relinquished his rank as an air officer to assume the post of staff officer at RAF Training Command in the rank of group captain,[43] so that he would not be senior to more experienced officers. On 28 July 1941, he assumed the rank of air commodore in the Welfare Section of the RAF Inspector General's Staff.[44] In this role, he went on official visits to RAF bases to help boost wartime morale.[45]
Freemasonry
Prince George was initiated into freemasonry on 12 April 1928 in Navy Lodge No 2612. He subsequently served as master of Navy Lodge in 1931, and was also a member of Prince of Wales's Lodge No 259, and Royal Alpha Lodge No 16, of which he served as master in 1940. He was appointed senior grand warden of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1933, and served as provincial grand master of Wiltshire from 1934, until he was elected grand master of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1939; a position he held until his death in 1942 [46]
On 25 August 1942, George and 14 others took off in a RAF Short Sunderlandflying boat W4026 from Invergordon, Ross and Cromarty, to fly to Iceland on non-operational duties. The aircraft crashed on Eagle's Rock, a hillside near Dunbeath, Caithness, Scotland. All but one were killed, including George, who was 39 years old.[47]
Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince have written about the crash in their book Double Standards, which however has been criticised for its "implausible inaccuracy".[48] They alleged that Kent had a briefcase full of 100-krona notes, worthless in Iceland, handcuffed to his wrist, leading to speculation the flight was a military mission to Sweden, the only place where krona notes were of value.[49]
His death in RAF service marked the first time in more than 450 years that a member of the royal family died on active service.[50] The prince's body was transferred initially to St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and he was buried in the Royal Burial Ground, Frogmore, directly behind Queen Victoria's mausoleum. His elder son, six-year-old Prince Edward, succeeded him as Duke of Kent. Princess Marina, his wife, had given birth to their third child, Prince Michael, only seven weeks before Prince George's death.
One RAF crew member survived the crash: Flight Sergeant Andrew Jack, the Sunderland's rear gunner.[51] Flight Sergeant Jack's niece has claimed that Jack told his brother that the Duke had been at the controls of the plane; that Jack had dragged him from the pilot's seat after the crash; and that there was an additional person on board the plane whose identity has never been revealed.[52]
In popular culture
The Duke's early life is dramatised in Stephen Poliakoff's television serial The Lost Prince (2003), a biography of the life of the Duke's younger brother John. 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 as detesting his time at the Royal Naval College and as having a difficult relationship with his austere father.
Much of George's later life was outlined in the documentary film The Queen's Lost Uncle.[53] He is a recurring character in the revival of Upstairs, Downstairs (2010), played by Blake Ritson.[54] He is portrayed as a caring brother, terrified of the mistakes that his family is making; later, he is portrayed as an appeaser of the German regime, but also as a supportive friend of Hallam Holland.[54]
George and his eldest brother the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII, are shown in Stephen Poliakoff's BBC television serial Dancing on the Edge (2013), in which they are portrayed as supporters of jazz and encouragers of Louis Lester's Jazz Band. A sexual attraction to Louis on George's part is also insinuated.[55]
Titles, styles, honours and arms
Titles and styles
1902–1910: His Royal Highness Prince George of Wales[56]
1910–1934: His Royal Highness The Prince George
1934–1942: His Royal Highness The Duke of Kent
in Scotland from 1935: His Grace The Lord High Commissioner
1932: Royal Bencher of the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn
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.
George VI was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death on 6 February 1952. He became known as a symbol of British determination to win the Second World War against Germany.
Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, is a member of the British royal family. He is the elder son of Charles, Prince of Wales, and Diana, Princess of Wales. Since birth, he has been second in the line of succession to the British throne.
Duke of Edinburgh, named after the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, is a substantive title that has been created three times for members of the British royal family since 1726. The current holder is Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth II.
The House of Windsor is the reigning royal house of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms. The dynasty is originally of German paternal descent and was a branch of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, itself derived from the House of Wettin, which succeeded the House of Hanover to the British monarchy following the death of Queen Victoria, wife of Albert, Prince Consort.
Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn was the seventh child and third son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He served as the Governor General of Canada, the tenth since Canadian Confederation and the only British prince to do so. In 1910 he was appointed Grand Prior of the Order of St John and held this position until 1939.
The title of Duke of Kent has been created several times in the peerages of Great Britain and the United Kingdom, most recently as a royal dukedom for the fourth son of King George V. Since 1942, the title has been held by Prince Edward, Queen Elizabeth II's cousin.
Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy, KG, GCVO, CD is a member of the British royal family.
Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, is a member of the British royal family. He is a first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II through their fathers, Prince George, Duke of Kent, and King George VI. Because his mother, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark was a cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Edward is both a second cousin and first cousin once removed to Prince Charles and his siblings.
Prince Michael of Kent, is a member of the British royal family. He is a paternal first cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, being a grandson of King George V and Queen Mary. He is currently 48th in the line of succession to the British throne, but at the time of his birth was seventh in the line of succession.
Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark,, later known as the Duchess of Kent, was a princess of the Greek royal house, who married Prince George, Duke of Kent, fourth son of King George V of the United Kingdom in 1934. They had three children: Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, Princess Alexandra, and Prince Michael.
Prince of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a royal title normally granted to sons and grandsons of reigning and past British monarchs. It is also held by the Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II. The title is granted by the reigning monarch, who is the fount of all honours, through the issuing of letters patent as an expression of the royal will.
Succession to the British throne is determined by descent, sex, legitimacy, and religion. Under common law, the Crown is inherited by a sovereign's children or by a childless sovereign's nearest collateral line. The Bill of Rights 1689 and the Act of Settlement 1701 restrict succession to the throne to the legitimate Protestant descendants of Sophia of Hanover who are in "communion with the Church of England". Spouses of Roman Catholics were disqualified from 1689 until the law was amended in 2015. Protestant descendants of those excluded for being Roman Catholics are eligible.
Princess Sophia Matilda of Gloucester was a great-granddaughter of King George II of Great Britain and niece of King George III.
Kiki Preston, née Alice Gwynne, was an American socialite, a member of the Happy Valley set, and the alleged mother of a child born out of wedlock with Prince George, Duke of Kent, fourth son of King George V. Known for her drug addiction, which earned her the nickname "the girl with the silver syringe", she was a fixture of the Paris and New York high social circles, and a relation to the powerful Vanderbilt and Whitney families. Her life was marred by several tragic losses and her own mental problems, which eventually led to her suicide at 48.
The Royal Burial Ground is a cemetery used by the British Royal Family. Consecrated on the 23rd October 1928, it surrounds the Royal Mausoleum, which was built in 1862 to house the tomb of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The burial ground lies on the Frogmore Estate, part of Windsor Home Park, in the English county of Berkshire. Many members of the Royal Family, generally except for sovereigns and their consorts, have been interred on the Royal Burial Ground, among them Queen Victoria's children and one sovereign: Edward VIII, 1894–1972. In the adjacent Frogmore Gardens stands the mausoleum of Queen Victoria's mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.
The wedding of Princess Alexandra and Angus Ogilvy took place on Wednesday, 24 April 1963 at Westminster Abbey. Princess Alexandra is the only daughter and second child of Prince George, Duke of Kent, and Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, while The Hon. Angus Ogilvy was the second son and fifth child of The 12th Earl of Airlie and Lady Alexandra Coke.
↑ Nicol, Stuart (2001). MacQueen's Legacy; Ships of the Royal Mail Line. Two. Brimscombe Port and Charleston, SC: Tempus Publishing. p.130. ISBN0-7524-2119-0.
↑ Nicol, Stuart (2001). MacQueen's Legacy; A History of the Royal Mail Line. One. Brimscombe Port and Charleston, SC: Tempus Publishing. p.158. ISBN0-7524-2118-2.
↑ Rubinstein, William D. (2008). "7: The Mysteries of Rudolf Hess". Shadow Pasts: History's Mysteries. Harlow, England: Pearson/Longman. p.147. ISBN9780582505971. Retrieved 18 February 2017. ... probably the strangest book ever written on the Hess affair is Double Standards... The thesis of Double Standards is that Rudolf Hess ... died in the plane crash in northern Scotland in August 1942 which also killed the Duke of Kent ... Hess was being transported to neutral Sweden (not Iceland, given in the official story as the plane's destination) to be handed over to the Germans as the first step in a settlement of the war between Britain and Germany. ... Double Standards seems breathtaking in its implausible inaccuracy.
↑ As a grandchild of a British monarch in the male line, he was styled His Royal Highness Prince George of Wales".
↑ Hugh Murphy & Derek J. Oddy (2010) The Mirror of the Seas; A Centenary History of the Society for Nautical Research London, Society for Nautical Research, p.191. ISBN978-0-902387-01-0
Further reading
Hunt, Leslie (1972). Twenty-one Squadrons: History of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force, 1925–57. London: Garnstone Press. ISBN0-85511-110-0.(New edition in 1992 by Crécy Publishing, ISBN0-947554-26-2.)
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. ISBN0-297-79453-1.
1 Not a British prince by birth, but created Prince Consort. 2 Not a British prince by birth, but created a Prince of the United Kingdom. 3 Status debatable; see his article.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
