Has anyone read "Alice: Princess Andrew of Greece" by Hugo Vickers?

[hopein08]

I'm on my second go-round with it and it is an absolutely amazing book. For those who haven't, I definitely recommend it. It is about the mother of Prince Philip (husband of Queen Elizabeth) who was a German princess, a Greek princess, diagnosed as schizophrenic, treated by Freud, thought she was the bride of Christ, started hospitals in Greece during the Balkan Wars, started soup kitchens in Greece during World War II, hid a Jewish family while being constantly harrassed by the Nazis, started a religious order, and is buried at Yad Vashem.

But, if you've read it and want to talk about it, I love it so I'd love to talk about it.

[happyslug]

1. Some more n here from Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Alice_of_Battenberg

[nealmhughes]

2. I've read about her, but not her bio. Queen Marie of Romania was my last royal bio,

and that was for a WWI in Romania seminar paper. Now I know all about her! She advertised products in the US papers and magazines.

Princess Alice died very old, didn't she?

[hopein08]

3. Yes, she was born in 1885 and died in 1967

at Buckingham Palace.

[cmkramer]

7. Queen Marie was a pip!

Even today, she'd be considered quite a character. But then the Romanian royal family was pretty much a tabloid story waiting to happen.

I've read the Anne Edwards biography and several other royalty books in which she's featured. I remember a book by Theo Aronson called "Grandmmama of Europe" which is about the various grandchildren of Queen Victoria.

[Matilda]

4. Yes, I have it - she was a very interesting woman.

And if anyone wants to know where Prince Andrew got his looks, look at photos of his grandmother.
The rest of the family are pure Windsor (God help them), but he's quite different.

[cmkramer]

5. Princess Alice was once called "the prettiest princess in Europe".

I've read that she lost her hearing when she was a child but still learned to speak 4 languages.

[hopein08]

6. The book I mentioned in the OP said that she was probably partly deaf from birth...

She had an operation or two to try and correct it but nothing worked. It also said that she could hear some things. But primarily she taught herself to lip-read in those four languages and that is how she got through life...lip-reading! There is also an anectdote in the book about her time in Greece during World War II that relates to her deafness. After telling the top German general that the only thing he could do for her was get his troops out of Greece, she was brought in front of the Gestapo numerous times for questioning. She often pretended to be more deaf (and, in effect, dumb) than she really was and the Gestapo stopped questioning her because they couldn't get anything out of her.