Latest news with #PrincePhilip
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- General
- Daily Mail
The princess who 'regularly set fire' to her room in Buckingham Palace, according to a royal insider
There have been several fires at the Royal palaces in recent memory. The Royals were left devastated when Windsor Castle was seriously damaged by a fire in 1992, contributing to what the late Queen referred to as her annus horribilis. Then in 2002 a number of artworks were damaged in Buckingham Palace after a small fire broke out in the East Gallery. But one elderly member of the Royal Family gained a reputation for regularly (and accidentally) causing the blazes in the late 1960s. According to royal biographer Tom Quinn in his book Yes Ma'am – which lifts the curtain on the life of the men and women who serve the Royal Family – Prince Philip 's mother Princess Alice 'regularly' set fire to her own apartment in Buckingham Palace. Agnes Cooke, who worked in the royal kitchen for a number of years, told Quinn that Alice's love of cigarettes was behind her fiery habit. She said: 'Well, there was a lady in waiting who was very friendly with Philip's mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, when Alice was living at Buckingham Palace, and they used to smoke cigarettes together in Alice's apartment – so much so that they regularly set fire to it. 'And despite being very grand indeed – a member of one of Britain's oldest and most aristocratic families – this particular lady in waiting used to wander about with a cigarette stuck behind her ear, like a coal miner or a carpenter.' Princess Alice's life is one of the most remarkable in the history of the Royal Family. She was born Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Mary on 25 February 1885 at Windsor Castle in the presence of her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. Shortly after her birth it was discovered that Alice was congenitally deaf but could speak clearly and lip read in several languages. While at the Coronation of King Edward VII in 1902, she met and fell in love with Prince Andrew, a younger son of the King of Greece – a year later the couple were wed. Alice married into the Greek Royal Family at a tumultuous time with the family exiled from the country in 1921, the same year Prince Philip was born. By 1930 she was hearing voices and believed she was having intimate relationships with Jesus and other religious figures. She was diagnosed as schizophrenic before being treated by Sigmund Freud at a clinic in Berlin. When Charles' grandmother was released from the the sanatorium in 1932, she drifted between modest German B&Bs before she eventually returned to Athens following the restoration of the Greek monarchy. Alice then found herself stranded in Nazi-occupied Greece throughout WW2. Princess Alice with her husband Prince Andrew of Greece. While at the Coronation of King Edward VII in 1902, she met and fell in love with Andrew, a younger son of the King of Greece – a year later the couple were wed Due to her links to Germany, with her cousin serving as German ambassador to Greece until the start of the occupation, the Nazi soldiers wrongly assumed Alice was sympathetic to their cause. Instead when a general asked Alice if there was anything he could do for her, she bravely responded: 'You can take your troops out of my country.' During the war, she was instrumental in aiding the escape from Greece of several Jews. Alice even hid the Cohen's, Jewish family, on the top floor of her home, just yards away from Gestapo headquarters. When the Gestapo became suspicious and questioned the Princess, she used her deafness as an excuse not to answer their questions and prevented them from entering her property. Following the war, diamonds were used from Alice's tiara so Philip could present a ring to Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen. Alice sold the rest of her jewels to create her own religious order, the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, in 1949, becoming a nun. When the future King Charles III was born in 1948, Alice was living on the remote Greek island of Tinos. She went on to build a convent and orphanage in a poor suburb of Athens. The royal remained in Greece until 1967, when there was a Greek military coup. Alice refused to leave the country until Prince Philip sent a plane and a special request from the Queen to bring her home. She spent the final years of her life living at Buckingham Palace with her son and daughter-in-law before she died in December 1969, aged 84. She is buried in a crypt at Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives.
Telegraph
3 days ago
- General
- Telegraph
How I came to spend a day on the farm with Prince William
Nearly six years ago, I spent a day out in the Duchy of Cornwall with Prince William. Then, he was Duke of Cambridge and in the role of the apprentice: his father was the 24th Duke of Cornwall while Queen Elizabeth II was still alive, and William was learning the ropes before one day taking it over. Regularly since, I have thought back to that day out in Somerset, and wondered how the new 25th Dukedom was going. So, last summer I asked Kensington Palace if I could make a return visit to see progress in action, and was surprised to learn they would be open to it. As with all things royal, it has taken some time to align diaries. Before I went, I reminded myself of William the apprentice. He had been endearingly modest about his experience, calling himself a country boy at heart who would take the best of the approaches of his father, the then-Prince Charles, and grandfather, Prince Philip, when it came to farming and rural life, to find his own way. 'I want to learn,' was the mantra back then. 'I'll try my best.' Now, of course, everything has changed. Prince William is now the 25th Duke, with the Duchy of Cornwall estate funding his household and taking up a largely unseen but important part of his day-to-day working life. On September 8 2022, when his father became King, William found himself head of a 128,494-acre estate, with net assets of £1.1 billion and a surplus of £23.6 million at his disposal to shape the Duchy in line with his own vision. The Duchy remains poorly understood by the public, and difficult to explain, with its headline figures about money belying the amount of work constantly ticking over on the ground. My day out with Prince William in early May of this year, a return to Newton St Loe in Somerset, was illuminating – once, that is, the Prince's much-delayed train finally arrived and he'd had a restorative sip of Duchy English sparkling wine. Instead of a prince following in the footsteps of his father, William was happily installed in the role of Duchy leader, eager to set out the changes he has already made and his vision to do more. While before there was watching and learning, now there is a prince whose watchwords are 'modernising', 'reforming', placing 'people' at the centre of his Duchy's work. The seeds of his early ideas are starting to come to fruition. In December 2021, we ran a front page story that he wanted to use Duchy land to house the homeless. In February 2024, he confirmed he would, with an innovative pilot scheme in the Newquay suburb of Nansledan. The Prince sees the Duchy, he says, as a new opportunity to extend his existing philanthropy work into its mostly rural locations. While his vision is sometimes difficult to translate via press release, and the estate is too vast to capture in an ordinary royal engagement, hearing directly from William is the most convincing sell imaginable. He is, as those around him say, a man on a mission. Farmers wax lyrical about the support they've received from the Duchy over the years, and senior members of staff seem – in many hours of interviews, only a fraction of which could fit into the article – fired up by William's zeal. He is passionate about 'turning the tanker', as he put it; relentlessly asking tenants what they needed from him and figuring out how quickly to make it happen. It was nice, too, to see him relaxed – on duty but not full public duty, joking with his team and chatting to anyone he passed. There has been a lot on his shoulders recently, with major illness in the family, and the Duchy is as pleasant a place as any to clear one's head. 'I've got the interest and the passion,' he said in 2019. 'The countryside is deep in my heart.' Now, in 2025, he is finally getting the time and space to prove it.
Forbes
23-05-2025
- Forbes
Searching For A British Princess Buried On Jerusalem's Mount Of Olives
Britain's Prince William visits the grave of his great-grandmother Princess Alice of Battenberg ... More during a visit to the Mary Magdalene Church, in east Jerusalem, on June 28, 2018. (Photo by SEBASTIAN SCHEINER/POOL/AFP via Getty Images) On a sunny day in Jerusalem, I decided to go looking for a princess. Not just any princess, but Princess Alice of Battenberg, also known as Royal Highness Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark, grandmother of King Charles III. Alice was also named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust center, for saving a Jewish family. Royal watchers know her as the mother of the late Prince Phillip, as shown in an episode of the popular British TV show The Crown. How did the British-born Princess end up on the Mount of Olives, outside the Garden of Gethsemane, under the seven golden domes of a Russian Orthodox church? We drove the narrow roads of East Jerusalem to find out. The Mount of Olives is an appropriate place for a princess to be buried. King David named it as a site for prayer and would prostrate himself there. The local olive trees have long furnished the oil used to anoint kings and high priests. At his coronation, King Charles III of England was anointed with olive oil from the Monastery of Mary Magdalene, where his grandmother is buried. The Mount of Olives, across a valley from Jerusalem's walls, has been a Jewish graveyard for 3,000 years. The view towards the walls of the old city, the Dome of the Rock and the Tower of David, is literally to die for. No wonder with over 150,000 graves, locals call it 'the most expensive real estate in Jerusalem.' Mount of Olives View in Jerusalem city scape, Israel. But Princess Alice is not buried amongst the stone crypts on the hillside. Instead, she resides within the Monastery of Mary Magdalene, a beautiful Russian Orthodox church. Princess Alice lived a long and difficult life with courage and conviction. A great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, she was born in Britain's Windsor Castle in 1885. She was related to most of Europe's royal families. Yet that did not guarantee an easy life. She was born profoundly deaf but learned lip-reading by age eight. She also learned to sign, and was fluent in English, German, French and later, Greek. At 17 she met Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark at the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902. She married him a year later. The Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene, where the tomb of Princess Anne now resides, was built in 1888. Known for its distinctive golden onion domes it was built in memory of the Russian Czar's mother, Empress Maria Alexandrovna. In 1908 Princess Alice visited Russia and met with her aunt Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna. Alice was impressed with the plans of the Duchess to found a religious order of nurses. After her own conversion to Orthodoxy in 1928, Alice worked with the poor and gave away most of her possessions. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, is shown in a reunion ... More with his mother, Princess Alice of Greece. Princess Alice, widow of Prince Andrew of Greece is living a semi-cloistered life as a nun on the Aegean Island of Tinos, where she has formed an order of deaconesses. She wears a habit similar to that of the Greek Orthodox religious orders. In 1918, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna were killed by the Bolsheviks after the Russian Revolution. Duchess Feodorovna's remains were ultimately buried at Monastery of Mary Magdalene. At the end of her life, Princess Alice would ask to be buried in Jerusalem next to her aunt. Princess Alice had four daughters and Phillip, who was born in Greece in 1921. However, shortly after his birth, defeat in the Greek Turkish war resulted in Alice's husband Prince Andrew being charged with treason. Well aware of the murders of their cousins the Romanovs, the family fled in a Royal Navy ship in 1922, with Phillip hidden in a fruit box. The family lived briefly in Paris, but Philip was sent to live in England for boarding school. Princess Alice had a breakdown, claiming she was receiving divine messages and had healing powers. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, she was forcibly removed from her family and committed to a Swiss sanatorium in 1930, She was treated by Sigmund Freud, who insisted Alice had a sex addiction and needed to have her ovaries X-rayed. Alice was eventually released in 1932, but the family had dissolved. The daughters were married off to German noblemen. Prince Andrew had gone to live on the French Rivera with a countess. Princess Alice returned to Greece alone in 1938. When Axis forces took over Greece in 1941, she worked with the Red Cross and organized soup kitchens and shelters. Because her daughters had married Germans, the Nazis presumed she was pro-German. But when a German general asked what he could do for her, she said, 'You could leave my country.' Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, visits the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Museum on September 7, ... More 2007 in Jerusalem, Israel. During the Second World War, Prince Edward's grandmother Princess Alice of Battenberg sheltered Jewish refugees, for which she is recognised with a symbolic tree as 'Righteous Among the Nations' at Yad Vashem. (Photo by Mati Milstein/British Embassy via Getty Images) During the German occupation, more than 85% of the 77,000 Jews living in Greece were murdered. Princess Alice had long known the family of Haimaki Cohen, a Jew and former member of Parliament. In 1941, they fled to then Italian-controlled Athens. But in 1943, the Germans occupied Athens and began deporting Jews. Rachel Cohen, her daughter and son were unable to escape. When Princess Alice heard about their situation, she offered to shelter the family. The Germans were suspicious. When Alice was questioned by the Gestapo, she pretended not to understand their questions due to her deafness until they left. The Cohens were successfully hidden until liberation in 1944. Princess Alice survived the war, attending Phillip's wedding to Elizabeth in 1947. At Elizabeth's coronation in 1953, she wore a gray nun's habit. The royal family insisted she leave Greece again after a coup overthrow the government in 1967. She died in Great Britain in 1969 and was buried in Windsor Castle. But before her death she had asked to be buried near her Aunt Elizabeth. In 1988, her remains were moved to the Church of Mary Magdalen. In 1993 Yad Vashem bestowed the title of Righteous Among the Nations on Princess Alice. A year later, her children, Prince Philip and Princess George of Hanover, traveled to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to plant a tree in her honor. Prince Philip said, "I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special. She was a person with deep religious faith and she would have considered it to be a totally human action to fellow human beings in distress." In 2018 her great-grandson Prince William visited her crypt, on the first official Royal visit to Israel. Finding Princess Alice and getting in to see her can be tricky. Many tours will take you to the church and many holy sites nearby. One can also hire a taxi for the day. There is little parking in the area so drop-off and pick-up should be coordinated. Landscape view of Mary Magdalene Church on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Several websites state that the church is open to visitors only on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM. However, we were told that it is open to visitors throughout the week. To view Princess Anne's tomb, you must request that the tomb area be opened. On our visit, after circling around on the narrow, dusty roads, we found an entrance. Father Roman, a distinguished figure with curly black hair and floor-sweeping black cassock, let us in. We walked through the garden tended by the nuns and into the beautiful church. After marveling at the glittering artifacts inside, he brought us outside again. He opened a door to Princess Alice's crypt. It was like a journey to the past, with photographs of the Romanovs and other royal families. Princess Alice lay in a simple coffin, finally at peace. circa 1910: Alice, Princess of Greece, (1885 - 1969), the wife of Prince Andrew of Greece, (1882 - ... More 1944), and mother of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Born Princess Alice of Battenberg, she was a great grand-daughter of Queen Victoria. (Photo by) We stayed a moment, alone with our thoughts. But before we left, we had an only-in-Israel moment. I asked Father Roman how long he had been in charge of the church. 'Six years,' he said. 'Is that when you came from Russia?' I asked, visualizing him stepping off an Aeroflot jet. 'No, I grew up here. I served in the IDF Givati Brigade.' Open-mouthed, our guide, a Jerusalem deputy mayor, and Father Roman started swapping army stories.
Medscape
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Medscape
Dance Diplomacy: Breaking Down Barriers
This transcript has been edited for clarity. Hello. I'm David Kerr, professor of cancer medicine at the University of Oxford. Those of you who listen to me on Medscape will know that I recently did a video on the benefits of drumming, such as its rhythmic beauty, the fact that it induces exercise and a collaborative community, and so on. For this video, I'd like to talk about dance diplomacy. That's a term made up by my friend, who's a professor of radiation biology at Harvard. The history of dance diplomacy, in some negative ways, goes back to Salome, the Dance of the Seven Veils, and the execution of John the Baptist, but much more recently there's been a positive spin on it. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, Britain and America were worried that Ghana, a great West African nation, would leave their commonwealth and fall under the influence of the Soviet Union. This was seen as a bad thing, potentially, the Soviet Union having a foothold in Africa in those heady, difficult days. Up stepped Queen Elizabeth II, in a mission to persuade the Ghanaian president, Kwame Nkrumah, not to leave the partnership of nations, which she so cherished. If there is one thing that the Queen felt perhaps most strongly about, it was the commonwealth and its maintenance, a duty that she followed through on until her death. During the regal visit, she was accompanied by Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. During a visit to the capital city, Accra — another great city I love visiting — the Queen was photographed dancing very happily with the Ghanaian leader at a time when, in the United States, Black people in America were still denied the right to had a fantastic ripple effect, not only across the Commonwealth, but across the world, seeing these two heads of state dancing happily. Other iconic dances include Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher at a White House dinner held in her honor, in 1986. Again, the year before that, with the involvement of First Lady Nancy Reagan, John Travolta was persuaded to ask Princess Diana to dance. This was an extraordinarily iconic dance that rippled throughout the world at a time when Princess Diana was doing some fantastic work on HIV/AIDS. Some very memorable other images came from that meeting. Dancing is good for you. We know that. It's to do with rhythm. It's the same sense of community, collaboration, exercise, memory, and muscle memory. I love Scottish country dancing, including The Dashing White Sergeant and Strip the Willow. It's a fantastic way of really getting things going to the rhythm, often of a pipe band, which is another interest of mine. My dance diplomacy stemmed a couple of years ago when Beatrice Addai, a fantastic breast cancer surgeon from Ghana, chaired The Lancet Oncology's Commission on Cancer Control in Sub-Saharan Africa. We decided to launch the commission report — a rather important piece of work, I think — in Ghana. It went well. We went north, to the garden city of Kumasi, where Beatrice has her hospital and she's done an enormous amount to raise awareness around breast cancer and its treatment. In the video that accompanies this, you'll see me make a complete dysrhythmic fool of myself doing dad dancing with some of the breast cancer survivors and their families, who knew how to shake a rug. I look a complete imbecile, but it was fun, it broke barriers down, and the ladies liked it very much indeed. It became a thing, every part of our tour around various other elements of the Ghanaian cancer system. I was known as Dancing Dave. I was persuaded repeatedly to get out front and to shake an incredibly inelegant rug. Why are we talking about this story? It's dance diplomacy. It's about people expecting someone like me — a stuffy, Oxford professor; aging, cancer professional-type person — to be rigid, distant, reserved. The sort of scientist that one would expect, but showing a glimpse of that sort of human side. This helps to break those barriers down, in an 'all of humanity in it together' sort of way. Have a look at the videos. Have a good laugh. Undoubtedly you will. You'll see some other of my friends and colleagues there. Think how you might not dance your way through diplomacy, but what other tactics you might employ to break down barriers between us and the patients and families that we care for, to show us as being similarly human and similarly aligned. Have a look. I'd be very interested in anything you have to say about it. Thanks for listening and watching, as always. I'm very pleased to receive any of your comments. For the time being, Medscapers, over and out.
The Courier
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Courier
Nostalgic photos capture life at Dundee's Whitfield High School from 70s to 90s
These time warp photographs capture life at Whitfield High School in Dundee from the 1970s to the 1990s. The name disappeared from the education scene in 1996. The Whitfield High site at Berwick Drive was renamed Braeview Academy. But the former stomping grounds for generations of pupils will be confined to history when the school closes for good at the end of term. It will be knocked down before the opening of Greenfield Academy. The new £100m campus is a merger between Braeview and Craigie High School. Before the old school meets the wrecking ball, we have dug these photographs out of cold storage to celebrate the lasting memories made at Whitfield High. The school stands on a 28-acre site to the north of the Whitfield housing estate. It cost £2.25m to build. It was still being completed when it opened to S1-S3 pupils in August 1976. First year pupils in the common room at Whitfield High School in August 1976. It was officially opened a year later. Education convener Elizabeth Carnegy did the honours in November 1977. Assistant rector George Young sits alongside pupils from the Whitfield High School Community Council during a meeting in August 1977. Whitfield High was one of the few schools in Scotland to work a five day period. Pupils giving the thumbs-up in front of a minibus in September 1978. It was needed. The school roll increased from 600 to 1,250. Whitfield High pupils made a demo tape at Sound Logic Studio in Seagate as part of a project organised by Yvonne Cook of the College of Commerce. Allison McKenzie, Brenda Cormack, Jane Fitzpatrick, Yvonne Cook, Lesley Anderson, Linda Humphreys and Linda Kenneth joined Grant McDonald and Rick Harris at the mixing desk. Music played a big part in the life of the school. This troupe of characters are pictured with speech and drama teacher Sheila Allan and bagpipe teacher Ian Duncan ahead of a variety concert in October 1981. Prince Philip was in the city to meet 600 Duke of Edinburgh's Award scheme participants at Whitfield High School in July 1982. The duke's personal standard can be seen flying on the flag pole. Prince Philip signs the Whitfield High visitors' book. He watched a display of swimming and lifesaving in the pool and various athletic activities in the gym including weightlifting and judo. Among the pupils in 1983 was Eddie Mair. He became a broadcaster and journalist with BBC Scotland. A reception was held in February 1983 for the Whitfield High School senior hockey squad which won the Scottish Indoor Hockey Championships. They were presented with the Keiller Cup. Whitfield High annual athletics championship attracted 200 spectators and 100 participants on the playing fields in June 1983. It was sponsored by Barratt's. The firm was building a housing estate just over the school fence. These girls were cheering on their Murroes House members at the sports day. The other houses were Powrie, Claypotts and Ballumbie. Whitfield High School magazine team at the word processor in December 1983. The magazine was called the Juggler and Waffler. Among the team was future Dundee West MSP Joe FitzPatrick. Pastor Tony Pokorny gave a talk to pupils at the school in October 1985. He was a former Nazi youth movement leader. He became a minister and went on to found the Austrian Bible Society. Whitfield High School Pipe Band perform in the City Square in June 1986. Toes were tapping and heads turning as the pipers played for about two hours. Whitfield High School Brass Band performed at Texas Homecare store in November 1986 during a small tour of Dundee. They were raising money for Guide Dogs for the Blind. Whitfield High School FP Hockey Club received new strips in March 1987. They were presented by farmer Graham McLean from Ballumbie. The Wellgate Centre was given an up-tempo swing in June 1987 when the Whitfield High School Brass Band performed for Guide Dogs for the Blind. Other pupils circulated among shoppers collecting donations. Whitfield High pupil Paul Hastie released Carols for Christmas in December 1987. The 14-year-old's tape was selling well in school. His voice was compared with that of boy soprano Aled Jones. Whitfield High pupils took part in a Musician of the Year competition in June 1988. The competition was divided into two categories – S1-S3 and S4-S6. The competition started in 1986 when music teacher Jimmy Tonner and his assistant Frances Riddell each donated a trophy to the music department. A photograph of the first prefects at Whitfield High in August 1989. They were given a badge to wear on their school tie. Whitfield High pupils were making headlines in February 1992. The pupils produced their own newspaper as part of a competition organised by Comic Relief and they led with a story about the regeneration of Whitfield. They also managed to interview Dundee United manager Jim McLean. The cross-country team and road running team celebrated success in March 1993. Rector Peter Murphy was also the manager and coach. He was in post from 1976-1993. The Whitfield High production of Grease was performed in June 1993. The music was brought to life by the school band. The production had a three-night run and all concerned had a blast. Members of Whitfield and Linlathen High School Jazz Orchestra posing for the camera at Bell Street Music Centre in June 1994. The photograph was a sign of things to come. Whitfield High merged with Linlathen High in August 1996. First the name disappeared. Now the building follows. What's left are memories—fading, but firm.
