It was expected that there would be a flurry of new books published to commemorate Prince Philip's 100th birthday last June. The prince died on April 9, just two months short of his centenary.
Prince Philip Revealed was written by Ingrid Seward and was published by Atria Books in 2020. To say that this book is a disappointment is an understatement. Truly an understatement as this is an example of a book being rushed out without taking the time to check the facts.
Is Prince Philip Unrevealed a good book? No. While I was not expecting a scholarly tome on Philip's life, I also did not expect a mishmash of words on pages masquerading as a poorly researched biography, crying out for a capable editor.
Ingrid Seward is Majesty Magazine's editor-in-chief and has been writing and reporting about royalty for decades. She would have access to the best and most accurate sources, but this accuracy is largely not on view in this book. She devotes nearly an entire chapter to the rumors about Philip's infidelity, even including the ill-founded comments by one writer who claimed that Philip had an affair with Princess Alexandra, the queen's first cousin.
This was disputed by more responsible writers nearly 30 years ago. Alexandra and Elizabeth are very close so it is unlikely that Alexandra, whose mother, Marina, was Philip's first cousin, had an affair with Philip.
Philip certainly appreciated women, including his wife. This is not a surprise as he was close to several formidable or strong women while growing up. This included his grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven, his four sisters, and Lady Zia Wernher.
There were rumors of an affair with Zia's daughter, Sacha, the Duchess of Abercorn. They were close friends but their relationship, platonic or not, ruptured, and the Duchess was largely frozen out of Philip's circle.
Unfortunately, far too many facts were left out of the book. A good editor would have worked with Ingrid, asking her to make sure her statements were correct. She describes two of Philip's sisters as the eldest sister. Only one can be the eldest!
The book is rife with mistakes and inconsistencies. Here are the mistakes I found:
page 16: "However, Louis had married Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, and being a Grand Duke of Hesse himself, he was considered too German to be head of the Royal Navy in wartime."
Seriously? Grand Duke of Hesse himself? Goodness, gracious. Victoria was the daughter of the late Grand Duke Ludwig IV and Hesse and By Rhine. Her younger brother, Ernst Ludwig, was the last reigning Grand Duke. Prince Louis was Ludwig IV's first cousin, the son of his younger brother, Prince Alexander who married Julie von Hauke, a Polish countess. This marriage was morganatic. Julie was created Princess of Battenberg. Their children and male-line descendants were styled as Prince or Princess of Battenberg.
Hardly a Grand Duke, Ingrid. Nor was Philip's grandmother, Queen Olga, the niece of Nicholas II. She was a granddaughter of Nicholas I and a first cousin twice removed to Nicholas II.
This is very, very sloppy.
page 16: Prince Louis was created Marquess of Milford in 1917, the same year as King George V changed the house name to Windsor. Not three years earlier.
page 17. The Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was a British Princess by birth: Princess Augusta of Cambridge, elder sister of Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck, and Queen Mary's favorite aunt. Augusta was Queen Victoria's first cousin.
Julie von Hauke was not a commoner. Her father was made a count by Nicholas I in 1829, 4 years after Julie's birth.
Page 20. Prince Louis of Battenberg was the grandson of Grand Duke Louis II of Hesse and By Rhine, not Hesse-Darmstadt. Louis II was also the grandfather of Victoria's father, Grand Duke Louis IV of Hesse and By Rhine.
page 21: Princess Alexandra of Hesse (and by Rhine) did not marry Nicholas II. Her name was Alix. She took the name Alexandra Feodorovna when she converted to Orthodoxy.
page 26 Princess Anastasia's will was rather straightforward as her husband and several family members benefited from her inheritance, But it was her sister-in-law, Princess George of Greece and Denmark (Marie Bonaparte) who paid a lot of Andrew's bills. She also lent Andrew one of her homes in Paris.
Page 28. Ingrid describes Cecilie as Philip's ELDEST sister. Really, Ingrid? Cecile was the third of the four daughters. Margarita was the eldest.
Page 32. Cecile married Georg Donatus, not George Donatus, Sophie's husband was Christoph, not Christophe.
page 35. Theodora married in August 1931. Philip was on summer holiday.
page 46-47 Lady Zia (her style after the marriage) had to marry money as her father had lost his fortune after the Russian Revolution. Yes, Philip was very close to Lady Zia and her children, and not merely because she was Nada's sister.
Nada and Zia's father was Grand Duke Michael Mikhailovitch of Russia. Zia was also a great friend of King George II of the Hellenes, who was Philip's first cousin.
Zia's two daughters, Gina and Marilyn, were childhood playmates of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. Their older brother, Alex, was Philip's mentor.
https://royalmusingsblogspotcom.blogspot.com/2020/05/alex-wernher-close-friend-of-duke-of.html
48: Georg Donatus, known as Don. Of course, Ernie was known as Uncle Ernie. He was Alice's uncle, the younger brother of her mother (Philip's grandmother) Victoria, Marchioness of Milford Haven'
Again, Christoph, not Christophe of Hesse. and he was known as Cri, not Chri.
Neues Palais Not Nues.
49: Ingrid gets it right this time when she describes Margarita as Philip's eldest sister but forgets to correct the earlier mistake when she describes Cecile as the eldest sister. But she trips up again when she writes "They were married at Schloss Weikersheim." Gottfried and Margarita were married in civil & religious ceremonies at Schloss Langenburg, not Schloss Weikersheim.
The Lutheran wedding took place in Schloss Langenburg's chapel.
I laughed a bit at this sentence: "History does not relate who paid for the lavish receptions for each of Philip's sisters' weddings, but it certainly beyond Andrew's means."
Indeed, Andrew did not pay for what we now call receptions. The four women married into wealthy families, especially Hesse and By Rhine and Baden, and three of the four sisters married the heirs to the heads of the families. None of the receptions were grandiose affairs.
The guest list for Sophie's wedding was limited to the bride and groom's families. Margarita's wedding also had a small guest list as the wedding received little press, even in the Weiner Salonblatt, a weekly Vienna society newspaper. Cecile and Theodora's marriages were covered in great detail in this publication.
[The Weiner Salonblatt is a great source for royal and noble social events in the first half of the 20th century. I found the publication helpful when I wrote my article, Four Sisters, Four Weddings, which was published last year in Royalty Digest.]
50: the two brothers-in-law who were "confirmed Nazis" were Prince Christoph of Hesse and the Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Prince Berthold never joined the Nazi Party and Don and Cecilie only became members a few months before their deaths.
55: Although George Milford Haven was Philip's guardian, his grandmother and the Wernhers were more involved in his life. It was only when he entered Dartmouth that Uncle Dickie began to pay attention to him. Before this, Dickie and Edwina were too busy with their own social lives to take a real interest in Philip.
75: Here Ingrid writes about Philip's naturalization, but neglects to mention that the naturalization was unnecessary because he was a British citizen from birth as he was a non-Catholic descendant of the Electress Sophie of Hannover. This was due to the 1707 Sophia Naturalization Act, which gave citizenship to her Protestant descendants in perpetuity ... well, until the 1949 British Nationality Act, but the SNA remained valid for Sophia's descendants born before 1949.
Readers need to know these facts as it is important for the biographer to provide context.
A year before Philip's naturalization, another descendant of Queen Victoria, Prince Friedrich of Prussia, a grandson of former Kaiser Wilhelm II, used the Sophia Naturalization Act to get his British passport. He was studying in England when the Second World War broke out. Friedrich was interned in England and Canada before returning to live in England, where he met and married Lady Brigid Guinness, daughter of the very wealthy Earl of Iveagh.
79: the people of Wales did not give a gold nugget to use for Elizabeth's wedding ring. In 1923, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon's wedding ring was made from Welsh gold from the Clogau St David's mine. There was enough gold in that nugget to make three more rings: Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, and the Princess Royal.
83: 3rd Marquess, not Third Marquess.
101: What was the reason for this sentence: "On July 4, 1949 -- American Independence Day -- Princess Elizabeth's personal standard flew from the roof of Clarence House for the first time." There was no need to include American Independence Day as the event (the flying of the standard) was not relevant to what was happening on the other side of the Pond."
103: Malta "unsuitable for small children." So no children were living in Malta when Philip was based in Malta? In 1927, the Duke and Duchess of York did not take baby Elizabeth with them on their overseas tour because they were traveling by ship and would be gone for several months. The same information is repeated on the next page. Elizabeth did not move to Malta with her husband although she made several visits to the island while Philip was stationed there.
113: The original Broadway stars of South Pacific were Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza, not Enzo Pinza. When the musical opened in London in the fall of 1951, Emil de Becque was played by Wilbur Burns, not Ezio Pinza. This means the King and Queen and Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh did not see Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza, but Mary Martin and Wilbur Evans.
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