Alice: Princess Andrew of Greece

This book focuses on every royal person within the extended family of Princess Alice of Battenburg. A very thick volume, it gives detail on birth, dates, relationships, and histories of several dozen relatives around Alice. The information on Alice herself is superficial due to her destroying most of her papers so the author had to interview people around her to obtain it.
Alice was not deaf, but hard of hearing and was able to learn two languages early in life. Her family had her tutored so education with other deaf children was not evident. Her family had a tradition of social service and altruism, so it was not surprising that Alice devoted herself to humane endeavors after being institutionalized during a period of religious involvement when she experienced visions. One wonders if her confinement was more due to family embarrassment than psychiatric need or because of lack of medical options in those times. This resulted in separation from her family, her daughters and son, (the future Prince Philip, husband of Queen Elizabeth of England) estrangement from her playboy husband, raising of her son by relatives and missing the weddings of all her daughters. However, after her release from the institution, Alice was honored in Israel for hiding Jewish friends in her home just yards from Gestapo headquarters. When questioned by the Germans, she pretended not to understand due to her hearing. In later life she took the garb and discipline of a nun and founded her own convent, answering an inner call to service. Her declining years were spent in England living with her family. After her death, she was buried there until her body was moved to Israel for internment in the Mount of Olives as was her wish.

Being a collector of books on Queen Victoria and her descendents, I've read quite a few. I've never read anything by Hugo Vickers before. I have to say I was pretty disappointed. I understand that the sources of information must have made it difficult for Mr. Vickers to come up with a story that could flow, but I agree with another reviewer who said that a lot of it is no more than a list of events. The first few chapters in particular seem to be just a spewing of random facts, put down in no particular order, leaping and hopping all over Europe through various families. Characters in the book are often not clearly identified. As someone pretty familiar with Queen Victoria and her family, I knew who they all were but I kept thinking that someone who didn't would have a very tough time figuring out who's who. While the family charts at the back help, with there being so many of them, often sharing the same names, it's not easy to find one name and then work out how that person relates to others. The footnotes were helpful in some cases, but often pertained to people who were far from important to the flow of the Princess' story and really didn't need the elaboration. Also, the pictures were quite disappointing. I love looking at pictures of that huge and fascinating family and find it amazing that with all the royal resources at his disposal, these were the best he could manage.

Having said all that, I will give Mr. Vickers the credit for helping me get to know the life of a Princess I knew very little about before. A lot of WHAT she did is here. WHY she did it - her thought processes, emotions and motivations remain somewhat obscure to me. I understand to a degree why that is; she didn't give an interview for the book! Yet the whole thing left me with a nagging feeling that someone else could have taken the same facts, the same sources and resources, and come up with a much better book.

Regarding the Princess herself, I think it's quite possible that at least some of her supposed mental illness was in fact a very real and valid exploration of spirituality that at times went off the rails. Today she would not be judged or treated anywhere near as harshly. A hard person to understand in her entirety, I don't feel this book offered all that much insight.

As an irrelevant aside, her life shows something I see over and over with UK and related royal families - a tendency to constantly, endlessly travel! Some of the chapters in this book seem to just be a list of trips that Alice took: to visit, to vacation, to attend family events like weddings, funerals and sickbeds, and apparently just to not sit in one place for more than a few weeks. I suppose when you're royalty and you have other people making your travel plans and booking your transportation, taking off for a few weeks or a few days to another country is no big thing. They never seem to stop.

Bottom line for me, this was a small hole in my book collection that I'm glad to have filled. I now have knowledge about a descendent of Queen Victoria I didn't have before. However, I'm also glad I paid so little for it because although there are lots of facts to learn, it's not great reading.

Alice,Princess Andrew of Greece is the story of a fascinating,

not well known royal.

Born into the Battenburg Family of Germany,Queen Victoria

witnessed the birth of her great-grandaughter.Alice,was discovered to be deaf,but her mother taught her to read lips.

The deafness did not appear to handicap her.In her girlhood

she was extremely intelligent,and considered one of the young

beautiful princesses of her time.

In 1903 she married Prince Andrea of Greece(hence becoming

Princess Andrew.)The women in Europe,unlike England,took the

name of their husband when they married.

Alice was devoted to her godmother,Ella,Grand Duchess of

Russia.She imitated her charitable works and was a nurse

during the Balkan Wars(1913),that preceeded World War I.

It was here she first manifested her mania.Not sleeping for

three days and singlehandedly building Operating Theaters

in the midst of the War.

The Princess had four daughters and one son,the current

Prince Phillip of England.

In the 1920's she was unable to care for her chidren.Due

to the death's of many close relatives,Tsarina Alix of

Russia,Aunt Ella,it is believed her illness became worse

and she lost touch with reality.

The biography drags a little here,but I think it is because

she was in treatment seven years.

In her later years she believed she was an Orthodox Nun.

Without,a country,the present Queen Elizabeth allowed her

to live quietly in England.

If you read this book,first consult the geneology lists in

the back of the book.Apparently,the Queen and Prince Philip

are fourth cousins,both descendants of Queen Victoria.

Despite her illness,Alice is a Princess who gave much to

others,and deserves to be remembered.History will not

forget this woman,who helped during the Holocaust and

saved lives.She along with Oskar Schlinder is remembered

in Israel as one of the Righteous.

I bought this book on book review recommendations. Guess I should stop doing that. It could be an interesting book (like 'Eleanor of Aquitaine'). However, this book is a tedious read of unconnected detail that you have to keep looking back at the appendices to get your historical balance. It is a struggle to get through the whole thing.

Though a bit heavy on some of the details this book is an extremely fascinating look at Princess Alice, mother of Prince Philip, consort to Queen Elizabeth. She was a dynamic and very interesting woman of humble means who ended up dedicating the majority of her life to the service of others. Very good read.

I found this book extremely interesting. I watched on Foxtel, ( The Queens Mother in Law ) & was anxious to read the full story of this most interesting lady. The author was meticulous in his research of all the Royals from the 1800s until The death of Alice in 1969. at Buckingham Palace.
Alice had a sad background, virtually being shut out of the family for many years during her time incarcerated in a mental Asylum. How she lived the remainder of her life, mainly spent helping the needy, risking her life hiding a Jewish family during the war.
She then founded her own Religious order to help those in need, & from that time wore the long grey Nuns habit, at the same time chain smoking ( Woodbine cigarettes ) She was a real character. At the end of her life all she had left in her will was 3 dressing gowns. She died in Buckingham Palace where she had lived with her family for the last 2 years of her life.
Read this book, it opens your eyes to life in the backgrounds of most of European Royalty.

Princess Alice's claim to fame in our current times is that she is the mother of Prince Philip - Duke of Edinburgh, consort to Queen Elizabeth II. However, she also was a Princess of Greece and like the woman who inspired her (Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia - her aunt), she also did a lot for her adopted country Greece inspite of the uncertainity of the Greek royal family (they went in and out of exile many times).
The narrative is dignified. Although it flattens in a couple of places it pulls through largely in part because of the remarkable story it tries to tell.
All in all, it is a wonderful story of a remarkable woman. This book opened a door to all the other wonderful people who make up her family. Each and everyone of them with their own remarkable lives. I would also recommend by [[ASIN:0786706783 Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia]] by Hugo Mager for anyone who is interested about how Pricess Alice was inspired by her aunt.

I was really looking forward to getting home and reading this book when I bought it but felt a little let down. It didn't grip me at all. The story of Princess Alice is so lovely but the writing was rather stilted and not at all what I expected. It seemed to be more of a series of facts than an in-depth look at what was going on in Alice's life. Events came and went without a sense of continuity. Having said that, there were occasional interesting anecdotes but there were few and far between. Having been so looking forward to reading it, I felt little cheated.

[[ASIN:0955985307 Most Beautiful Princess]]

It probably is appropriate to speak of a "royal family," that is the group of people who are both reignng and in exile and who are related either to Queen Victoria and/or King Christian IX of Denmark. She was the grandmother of Europe and he its father in law. Some of these people thoroughly enjoy the perks of the job, the jewels, the castles, and the societal deference. Others chafe at the restraints that society imposes and suffer as a result. Hugo Vicker's biography of Princess Alice of Greece deals with a member of that impressive collection of interbred royalty who chafed and overcome the disadvantages that only high birth can impose.

Who was Princess Alice and how does she rate a biography? First of all, she was the mother of Prince Phillip, the sister of Lord Louis Mountbatten and Queen Louise of Sweden and (like all members of the "royal family") a descendent of Queen Victoria through her second daughter Alice (for whom she was named). Alice's two aunts Ella and Alix, married into the Russian royal family, the former was a grand duchess, the latter changed her name to Alexandria and was the last empress of Russia. Alice herself married into the Greek royal family, which wasn't Greek as much as it was Danish, Constantine I was the grandson of Christian IX.

Alice was a witness to many of the problems faced by royalty in the 20th century. The Greek populace was constantly sending its royal family into exile as late as the 1960s. Where she really found herself was during the Balkan Wars where Alice won renown as the organizer of efficient and effective hospitals. She had organizing skills and despite being the wife of fourth son was respected within Greek society.

The Greek royal family's difficulties with the 20th century began with rise of the charismatic Elefherios Venzielos to the position of Prime Minister. Where Venzielos saw the future as made for a greater Greece (with Allied intervention to defeat the rival Turks). King Constatine attempted to maintain Greece's neutrality. Given what happened in nearby Romania, Constantine was probably correct to try and avoid conflict. This led to Venzielos forcing the king and most of the royal family into exile. Constantine managed to return, but was sent again in exile following the defeat of the Greek forces during the Greco-Turkish war of 1919-22 as was Venzielos.

During the years of exile, Alice saw her marriage and her sanity dissolve and given the account by Hugo Vickers, it is not hard to see how this happened. How anyone could keep their mental equanimity given the array of deadly dull social engagements with dull relatives and politicians is a mystery. Alice spent the 1920s in and out of mental asylums, not exactly the snake pit that less well-heeled members of society might have enjoyed, but constraining at times. During this period, Alice underwent a religious crisis where she (in the words of Queen Mary) went as mad as her Aunt Alexandria following a whole hearted embrace of Orthodoxy. Although Alice's conversion was troubling to some members of her family, it was a way of gaining a more satisfactory life.

Two of Alice's daughters married minor German nobility and they spent the war as wives of SS officers. Alice on the other hand, who had made her way back to Greece, hid Jews in somewhat Spartan accommodation. Alice had to cope with hereditary deafness and whenever questioned would pretend not to understand the questions presented to her by the Nazi occupation officials. She could answer back when the occasion demanded. When asked by one German officer if he could do anything for her (she was one of the few members of the Greek royal family to remain in Athens during World War II), she replied: Yes, you can get your army out of my country."

The break up of Alice's family in the 1920s led to a number of difficulties for her son Phillip whose education and expenses were overseen by his Uncle Louis Mountbatten who married a spectacularly wealthy woman. Edwina Mountbatten's fortune also provided Alice with a measure of comfort. Queen Louise stored her family possessions as Alice seemed to lose all interest in worldly considerations. Alice organized a series of hospitals and an order of Greek Orthodox nuns to function as a nursing order. When she appeared for the coronation of her daughter in law, Elizabeth II, she appeared wearing a gray habit of her order of nuns. Alice's mother, Princess Victoria, took a dim view of Alice's spiritual quest: "What can you say about a nun who smokes and plays canasta?" In the end increased physical frailty and the exile, yet again of the Greek royal family in the 1960s, led to Alice spending her declining years in residence in Buckingham Palace. Her last wish to be interred in the convent of Saint Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem was eventually honored, nearly twenty years after her death. Today she is remembered as "Rightous Among Nations" at the Israeli Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem.

Hugo Vickers was given access to a number of documents dealing with Alice's life and time. Although handicapped by high birth, a husband and family who did not understand her, and incidents of mental illness, the portrait that emerges is of a woman who managed to find fulfillment despite these difficulties. This is a very interesting work, at times reminiscent of Harold Acton's history of the last of the Medicis, but hardly the typical book on a member of the royals.

This book picked up a little more steam after the mid-point, but for the most part it was pretty boring. It was also terribly biased, which could be expected, since Prince Philip asked the author to write this book.

Alice lived during some of the most interesting times in world history, and yet I found myself pushing myself through this book. I'd probably have stopped reading it if I didn't have a little quirk about always finishing whatever book I start, no matter how badly written or boring it is.

I'm afraid the simple fact of the matter is that, from reading this book, I have to conclude that there was really nothing special about Alice, Princess Andrew, except that she was Prince Philip's mother (and she hardly ever saw him, so they weren't even close). I'm sure that's not the case -- I'm sure there were plenty of interesting things about her, and she lived during some of the most interesting times in world history. But this book fails to bring any of that excitement out. So maybe it's Vickers' fault . . . or maybe there was too much oversight by the Royal Family. Hard to say, but this book is only worth a read if you are a real dyed in the wool fan of royalty.