Young Prince Philip (eBook)

A revelatory and racy biography of the early life of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

We have grown so used to seeing Prince Philip as a loyal, dutiful and occasionally bad-tempered old man that it is easy to forget what a strange and intriguing life he led when he was younger. 'Young Prince Philip' tells the story of the first, hugely intriguing, half of his life.

In this fast-paced and highly entertaining biography, Philip Eade will focus on those aspects of the Prince's early life that are most compelling: his father's dramatic flight from revolutionary Greece, the subsequent madness of his deaf mother and prolonged absences of his feckless father, his school days in Nazi Germany, his relationship with his four sisters, all married to Germans, one to an officer in the SS, his rather breezy courtship and marriage to the most eligible girl in the world, and his alleged infidelities and membership of raffish circles during the 1950s and '60s.

Written with great verve, 'Young Prince Philip' will be less reverential in tone than the traditional royal biography but no less meticulously researched and authoritative.

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The Sunday Times bestsellerA Radio 4 Book of the Week, June 2021'Highly readable ... deserves to take its place among the first rank of modern royal biographies' Daily Mail'The narrative is as suspenseful as any thriller. Truly, an excellent read' Lynn Barber, Sunday TimesMarried for over seventy years to the most famous woman in the world, Prince Philip was the longest-serving royal consort in British history. Yet his origins have remained curiously shrouded in obscurity.In the first book to focus exclusively on his life before the coronation, acclaimed biographer Philip Eade uncovers the extraordinary story of the prince's turbulent upbringing in Greece, France and Nazi Germany, during which his mother spent five years in a secure psychiatric clinic and his father left him to be brought up by his Mountbatten relations in England just when he needed him most.Remarkably the young prince emerged from this unsettled background a character of singular vitality and dash - self-confident, capable, famously opinionated and devastatingly handsome. Girls fell at his feet, and the princess who was to become his wife was smitten from the age of thirteen.Yet alongside the considerable charm and intelligence, the prince was also prone to volcanic outbursts and to putting his foot in it. Detractors perceived in his behaviour emotional shortcomings, a legacy of his traumatic childhood, which would have profound consequences for his family and the future of the monarchy.Containing new material from interviews, archives and film footage, this revelatory biography is the most complete and compelling account yet of his storm-tossed early life.