Was bisexual prince’s death an accident?
HE was a bisexual, drug-taking prince who was fifth in line to the throne and whose death in a Scottish plane crash fuelled a host of conspiracy theories.
But now an air accident investigator has re-examined the crash that claimed the life of Prince George, Duke of Kent, and 13 other men more than 70 years ago.
Aviation expert Garth Barnard said: ‘In my opinion, there’s been way too much fantasy surrounding this crash.’
On August 25, 1942, the RAF Sunderland flying boat carrying the 39-year-old prince was flying from Invergordon, Ross-shire, to Iceland. But at 1.30pm it crashed into the 800ft high Eagle’s Rock in Caithness.
Though ruled an accident, theories on the tragedy included the prince being murdered by British intelligence amid fears his lifestyle was about to be exposed.
But Mr Barnard said: ‘If the British wanted to assassinate the duke, why not put a bomb on board the plane so that it exploded over the sea?’
His findings will feature in TV documentary WWII: Air Crash Detectives at 10pm on May 28 on the Yesterday channel.
GEORGE Edward Alexander Edmund Windsor would put today’s hardpartying rock stars to shame with his drug-taking, drinking, bisexuality and habit of dressing in drag. He had good looks, was a dashing aviator, a racing driver and a wizard on the dancefloor. His death remains shrouded in mystery for – perhaps most shocking of all – he was Prince George, Duke of Kent, and the Queen’s uncle.
It seems no surprise, then, that the current Prince Michael of Kent has quietly declined to become involved with a biography of his father, who died when he was only six weeks old.
The debauchery that filled George’s short life is clearly now a source of embarrassment and many would dearly like him to rest in both peace and obscurity.
It seems, however, a forlorn hope that the incredible indiscretions of a man The Firm has been trying to forget for nearly eight decades could stay secret.
A cocaine and morphine-addicted wastrel who bedded both men and women, he moved with ease from the pink and fragrant boudoir of Barbara Cartland to the austere bachelor bedroom of ‘dearest darling’ Noel Coward.
He also dallied with, among others, a male Prussian relative, Cambridge spy Anthony Blunt, singer Jessie Matthews and Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, a lady of fragile morals who would carve her own notorious place in society with the infamous ‘headless man’ photographs.
From The Firm’s point of view, the new book about George, being written by respected biographer Christopher Wilson, has annoyingly cast the spotlight once more on the royal rogue – a conscienceless profligate who lived life in the fast lane. From the 1920s until the wartime death of Air Commodore Windsor at the age of 39, there was a dark side to the elegant, erudite Georgie.
The Queen’s uncle was, however, shielded from open scandal by the machinations of the Royal Family, the discretion of society hangers-on and a Press more tolerant of royal indiscretion than today. No banner headlines screamed of his drinking, drugtaking or antics such as cavorting through London’s West End in women’s clothing. There was no revelation of the blackmail pay- off to a male Parisian lover in possession of a cache of indiscreet letters.
IT would also not be known until long after his death he had fathered an illegitimate son whose existence haunted the Royal Family until that troubled man’s tragic death from a heart attack brought on by pills and alcohol.
In an age when the nation believed their ‘betters’ to be incapable of bad behaviour, the son of George V was beloved. Immensely attractive and gifted with the common touch, he was cultured, sensitive and, it i s said, more accomplished than brothers Eddie and Bertie, both of whom became kings as, briefly, Edward VIII and George VI.
A man of action, he was regarded as one of the finest racing- car drivers in Britain and was also an accomplished dancer, once entering and winning a tango competition under an assumed name.
But he is largely forgotten, his memory dimmed by early death, Edward VIII’s abdication in 1936 to marry his American divorcee and the ascension to the throne of Bertie, a devoted husband and father who restored the monarchy’s reputation.
‘Who remembers glamorous, much-loved Prince George?’ asks Wilson, who suggests he had a similar effect on the nation as Princess Diana several generations later.
He added: ‘No monument stands in his name. No posthumous honour was awarded, despite his sacrifice. No one hears his name mentioned. He has been airbrushed.’
However, the prince made a sensational splash during his life. Born in December 1902, he entered manhood at the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. Banking heiress Poppy Baring, actress Jessie Matthews and Coward, with whom he had a ‘dalliance’ from 1925 until his death, were among his first conquests.
Drink and sex would soon not be enough when he met Alice ‘Kiki’ Preston, a wild and beautiful socialite four years his senior known as ‘the girl with the silver syringe’ as a result of her drug-taking.
By the time she met Georgie in the mid-1920s she had been married twice. The prince was captivated and embraced her lifestyle. The Royal Family was aghast, demanding he break off the association. When he refused, the f uture King Edward VIII ‘kidnapped’ his brother, imprisoned him in his home and made him go through ‘cold turkey’.
In an effort to toughen up the young royal, his father had put him into the ‘family business’ – the Royal Navy. But Georgie could not get even that right, suffering f rom chronic seasickness, which wrecked his maritime career.
His bad behaviour would continue unabated and his homosexual affairs were a particular worry for his family – quite apart from any moral scandal, gay sex was illegal.
But they soon had an even bigger problem to deal with. In 1926, it was discovered that one of Georgie’s female lovers was pregnant. At first, suspicion fell on Kiki as the mother, but Wilson believes it was another lover, Violet Evans, a beautiful socialite daughter of a wealthy Canadian coal merchant he met at a Navy ball.
‘Kiki may have suffered the miscarriage of a child who could have been George’s, but the prince became much more dangerously entangled with another woman,’ says Wilson.
Even in the highly decadent 1920s, a baby had the makings of a spectacular scandal, but a solution was f ound. Miss Evans was at that time ‘stepping out’ with Ian Karslake, a dashing young cavalryman who had been at Dartmouth Naval College with the prince.
He agreed to marry her and she was spirited away to Berne in Switzerland, where she gave birth to a son.
KARSLAKE did not, however, want to raise the child, so an adoptive family was found. As a favour to the Royal Family, the fabulously wealthy American publisher Cass Canfield and his wife Katsy, who were then living in London, agreed to take in the unwanted child.
When they returned to New York, their 13-month-old ‘son’ Michael went with them.
But in spite of the privileges heaped on the child, his life later spiralled out of control and he died aged 43 from the effects of drink and drugs.
But i f George’s f amily thought his brush with scandal had brought him to his senses, they were wrong. He continued to have affairs.
It was decided marriage was the answer and in 1934 he wed Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark. However, not even this and the birth of three children could divert the prince from his louche habits.
Eventually, just before the start of the Second World War, it was decided he would be packed off to be Governor General of Australia. When this was halted by the conflict, he joined the RAF; though Wilson says: ‘His duties were relatively menial, involving inspecting bases and aircraft factories.’ But behind the scenes he was apparently involving himself in top secret work and is rumoured to have spent time learning the intelligence ropes at Rosyth, Fife.
The next few years lie in shadow – but on August 25, 1942, he took off from Ross and Cromarty in an RAF Short Sunderland flying boat for Iceland, to meet senior members of the American military.
For a reason never established, it changed course and crashed at Eagle’s Rock, near Dunbeath, Caithness. It remains the most enduring mystery i n the l i fe of the prince, whose death shocked the nation – especially as the Duchess of Kent had given birth only weeks earlier to their third child, today’s Prince Michael of Kent.
I t was not l ong before rumours suggested George was at the controls of the flying boat and members of the aircrew were drunk.
One particularly fanciful story says that, after take-off, the aircraft landed on the estate of the Duke of Hamilton and picked up Nazi deputy leader Rudolf Hess.
But the reason for the death of a prince whose life was anything but mundane is probably more prosaic. The most likely is that adverse weather conditions caused the pilot to turn on a north- easterly course too early, flying into a hillside he should have missed by several miles.
But whatever happened on that fateful night is likely to remain a mystery, given Prince Michael’s reluctance to discuss family secrets.