Paperback: "In 1953, at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Alice was dressed from head to foot in a long gray dress and a gray cloak, and a nun's veil. Amidst all the jewels, and velvet and coronets, and the fine uniforms, she exuded an unworldly simplicity. Seated with the royal family, she was a part of them, yet somehow distanced from them. Inasmuch as she is remembered at all today, it is as this shadowy figure in gray nun's clothes..."
One of the most overlooked members of England's Royal Family, Princess Alice (25 February 1885 - 5 December 1969) is perhaps one of the most fascinating. Her life bridges the tumultuous history of twentieth-century Europe and seems intertwined with the tragedy and glory of every significant achievement and loss of that era.
Princess Alice, mother of Prince Philip, was something of a mystery figure even within her own family. She was born deaf, at Windsor Castle, in the presence of her grandmother, Queen Victoria, and was brought up in England, Darmstadt, and Malta.
In 1903, she married Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark, and from then on her life was overshadowed by wars, revolutions, and enforced periods of exile. By the time she was thirty-five, virtually every point of stability was overthrown. Though the British royal family remained in the ascendant, her German family ceased to be ruling princes, her two aunts who had married Russian royalty had come to savage ends, and soon afterwards Alice's own husband was nearly executed as a political scapegoat.
In the middle years of her life, she suffered from a serious religious crisis and at the age of forty-five was placed in a sanitarium in Switzerland. Pronounced a paranoid schizophrenic, it seemed that she would never walk free again. How she achieved her recovery is just one of the remarkable aspects of her story.
Alice, Princess Andrew of Greece (2000) is a compelling biographical account about the late mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II, the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms.
About the author: Hugo Vickers was born in 1951 and educated at Eton and Strasbourg University. His books include Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough; Cecil Beaton; Vivien Leigh; Loving Garbo; Royal Orders; The Private World of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor; and The Kiss, which won the 1996 Stern Silver Pen for Non-fiction. He is an acknowledged expert on the royal family, appears regularly on television, and has lectured all over the world. Hugo Vickers is married and has two sons and a daughter. He and his family divide their time between London and a manor house in Hampshire.
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