Alice: Princess Andrew of Greece FROM OUR EDITORS
When Great Britain's Princess Alice married Prince Andrew of Greece in 1903, she entered a life full of strife and tragedy. Her German family was forced into exile when an uncle was dethroned, and her husband was nearly executed as a result of a royal power play. At the age of 45, she was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and sent to a sanatorium. Would she be able to recover?
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"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 great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, and 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 married Russian royalty came to savage ends, and soon afterward Alice's own husband was nearly executed as a political scapegoat." The middle years of her life, which should have followed a conventional and fulfilling path, did the opposite. She suffered from a serious religious crisis and at the age of forty-five was removed from her family and placed in a sanatorium in Switzerland, where she was pronounced a paranoid schizophrenic. As her stay in the clinic became prolonged, there was a time when it seemed she might never walk free again. How she achieved her recovery is just one of the remarkable aspects of her story.
SYNOPSIS
In this first US edition, an expert on the British royal family traces the life (1885- 1969) of Prince Philip's deaf mother (and Prince Charles' grandmother) through marriage into the Greek royal family, political jeopardy as also a German royal, religious crisis, and good works as a Greek Orthodox nun. Includes photos, family trees, and details of her final burial in Jerusalem. First published in 2000 in the UK by Hamish Hamilton Ltd. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
A chain-smoking, nearly deaf princess who ministered to the sick in Greek hospitals and soup kitchens, was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic at age 45, fancied herself a nun and sheltered a Jewish family during the Holocaust (for which she was posthumously given the title Righteous among the Nations, an honor Oskar Schindler also received), Alice is a biographer's dream. Born under the watchful eye of her great-grandmother Queen Victoria in Windsor Castle in 1885, Alice married a Greek prince who was actually Danish, German and Russian. And while she was devoted to Greece, she and her royal in-laws were never fully accepted by their adopted subjects. At age 84, she died in Buckingham Palace, where she lived at the end of her life at the behest of her youngest child and only son, Prince Philip, and his wife, Queen Elizabeth. This is the first biography of Alice, and it's hard to imagine anyone doing a better or more comprehensive job than Vickers, an authority on Europe's royals whose previous subjects include the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. By crafting the perfect blend of juicy gossip and historical details, Vickers makes it abundantly clear why Alice deserves to be known as more than just the queen's mother-in-law. Among the more memorable images he captures: the ill-fated Czar Nicholas of Russia, who was married to Alice's Aunt Alix, pelting his niece with a bag of rice and a shoe at her 1903 wedding. Never one to shrink from a challenge, Alice caught the shoe and used it to hit her uncle on the head. 16 pages b&w photos not seen by PW. (Mar.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Vickers's portrait of Princess Alice of Greece reveals a woman whose life was both tragic and courageous. A great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria and mother to Prince Phillip of Great Britain, Alice had relatives in most of the royal houses of Europe. But despite such grand connections, her life wasn't easy. She witnessed firsthand the brutality of the First and Second Balkan Wars (1912-13) and World War I, and eventually she and her husband, Prince Andrew of Greece, were forced to live in exile, beginning an "extraordinary nomadic existence." Such trying circumstances eventually sent her over the edge, and she was committed to a sanitarium, but through sheer determination she recovered. Vickers emphasizes Alice's many virtuous characteristics, such as her profound spirituality and giving nature. She received the Royal Red Cross for her nursing activities during the Balkan Wars, and later in life she adopted a simple nun's habit and founded a sisterhood whose mission was to "go out into the world to nurse." Although Vickers spends too much time on unnecessary detail, for example citing nearly every case of influenza Alice contracted, this biography of a relatively unknown and complex princess is worth telling. Isabel Coates, Canada Customs & Revenue Agency, Ont. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Booknews
In this first US edition, an expert on the British royal family traces the life (1885- 1969) of Prince Philip's deaf mother (and Prince Charles' grandmother) through marriage into the Greek royal family, political jeopardy as also a German royal, religious crisis, and good works as a Greek Orthodox nun. Includes photos, family trees, and details of her final burial in Jerusalem. First published in 2000 in the UK by Hamish Hamilton Ltd. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Kirkus Reviews
A well-crafted life of the late mother-in-law of the present queen of England.
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