exile here, here
anti-Semitism here
what ifs here
blame for First World War here
Wilhelmshafen here
Wilhelmshohe here
Wilson, Woodrow here
Windsor Castle here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
Winter Palace, St Petersburg here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here
World, The here
Wurttemberg here
Xenia, Princess here, here, here, here, here
York here
York Cottage here
Yorkshire Evening Post here
Yorkshire Post here
Young, Mrs George here
Yurovsky, Yakov here
Yusupov, Prince here, here, here, here, here, here
A Note on the Author
Deborah Cadbury is the author of eight acclaimed books including Chocolate Wars, The Dinosaur Hunters, The Lost King of France, Seven Wonders of the Industrial World, for which her accompanying BBC series received a BAFTA nomination, and Princes at War. Before turning to writing full-time she worked for thirty years as a BBC TV producer and executive producer, and has won numerous international awards including an Emmy. She lives in London.
Also available by Deborah Cadbury
Princes at War
The British Royal Family’s Private Battle
in the Second World War
In 1936, the monarchy faced the greatest threats to its survival in the modern era – the crisis of abdication and the menace of Nazism. The fate of the country rested in the hands of George V’s sorely unequipped sons: Edward VIII abandoned his throne to marry divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson; Prince Henry preferred the sporting life of a country squire; the glamorous and hedonistic Prince George, Duke of Kent, was considered a wild card; and stammering George VI felt himself woefully unprepared for the demanding role of King.
As Hitler’s Third Reich tore up the boundaries of Europe and Britain braced itself for war, the new king struggled to manage internal divisions within the royal family. Drawing on many new sources including from the Royal Archives, Princes at War goes behind the palace doors to tell the thrilling drama of Britain at war.
‘Impeccably researched, and written with all the brio and understanding of a major historical novel’
David Kynaston
‘Deborah Cadbury combines the family drama against the backdrop of the war with terrific narrative verve’
Daisy Goodwin, The Times
http://www.bloomsbury.com/author/deborah-cadbury
Click here to order
Picture Credits
Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and five of their nine children. Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1846 (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017)
Queen Victoria’s family and guests (The Royal Garden Party at Chiswick). After Louis-William Desanges, c. 1876–9 (Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017)
Victoria, Princess Royal (‘Vicky’). Thomas Richard Williams, 21 November 1856 (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017)
The assassination of Alexander II of Russia, 1881 (Wikimedia Commons)
Queen Victoria at the time of her Golden Jubilee. Alexander Bassano, 1882 (Pictures from History/Alexander Bassano/Bridgeman Images)
Prince Albert Victor, known as ‘Eddy’. British School, 1891–1910 (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017)
Princess Alix of Hesse. Carl Backofen, 1893 (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017)
Princess Elisabeth of Hesse. Hayman Selig Mendelssohn, 1887 (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017)
Prince George, Duke of York. Unknown photographer, c. 1890s (Getty Images/Popperfoto)
Princess Marie of Edinburgh. Eduard Uhlenhuth, November 1890 (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017)
Nicholas, the Tsarevich of Russia, and Prince George, photographed together in 1893 when Nicholas came to Britain for George’s wedding (Getty Images/Hulton Archive/Stringer)
Princess Victoria Mary (May) of Teck. Byrne & Co., c. 1886 (Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017)
Restaurant Véry, boulevard Magenta, Paris (Wikimedia Commons)
Cover of Le Petit Journal showing an explosion at the opera house in Barcelona, 1893 (World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo)
Cover of Le Petit Journal showing the assassination of the French president, Carnot, by the Italian anarchist Sante Caserio in Lyon, 1894 (Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo)
Image from Hartmann the Anarchist, 1892 (Paul Fearn/Alamy Stock Photo)
Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, June 1897 (Getty Images/Hulton Archive/Stringer)
Queen Victoria’s funeral, 2 February 1901 (Getty Images/Hulton Archive/Stringer)
Bloody Sunday, St Petersburg, 22 January 1905 (Getty Images/Heritage Images)
The remains of Grand Duke Sergei’s carriage after his assassination in 1905 (Wikimedia Commons)
Princess Ena’s wedding, Madrid, 1906 (Getty Images/ullstein bild)
First World War soldiers (Getty Images/Frank Hurley/Hulton Archive/Stringer)
Plates Section
Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and five of their nine children. Prince Albert saw the future marriages of their children as a way of spreading British liberal values and facilitating the peace of Europe.
Queen Victoria’s large family and their guests at a garden party in Chiswick Park in 1875, painted by Louis-William Desanges. ‘The royal mob’, as the queen called her family, secured her position as Europe’s great matriarch.
Victoria and Albert’s oldest daughter, Victoria or ‘Vicky’, on her sixteenth birthday, when she was already engaged to the second heir to the Prussian throne.
The assassination of Alexander II of Russia in 1881 marked the birth of a modern form of political terrorism.
Queen Victoria’s prestige increased with Britain’s rising imperial and industrial supremacy until she came to occupy a unique position apparently unequalled by any other sovereign, and was universally known simply as ‘the queen’.
As second in line to the throne, Queen Victoria’s oldest British grandson, Prince Albert Victor or ‘Eddy’, was seen by many as ‘first prize’ in the marriage stakes. The truth was rather different.
Princess Alix of Hesse was courted by future heirs to the British and Russian thrones.
Princess Elisabeth of Hesse inspired strong feelings in the future Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Prince George, Duke of York, was in no hurry to marry.
Spirited Princess Marie of Edinburgh or ‘Missy’ had many admirers, including, allegedly, a young Winston Churchill.
Nicholas, the Tsarevich of Russia (sitting), with his first cousin, Prince George in 1893. They looked so similar that they were sometimes mistaken for twins, but were to have very different lives.
Princess Victoria Mary or ‘May’ of Teck, photographed c. 1886, was a rank outsider in the royal marriage stakes.
Princess May and her family went to see the charred remains of Restaurant Véry in Boulevard Magenta, Paris, shortly after an anarchist attack in April 1892.
An anarchist attack at the Liceu Opera House in Barcelona in November 1893.
The assassination of the French President, Sadi Carnot, by an Italian anarchist in June 1894.
In a fictional account by Edward Douglas Fawcett in 1892, Hartmann the Anarchist and his crew destroy London in a ‘tempest of dynamite’.
The high summer of royalty: Queen Victoria arrives at St Paul’s Cathedral for her magnificent Diamond Jubilee celebrations in June 1897.
Crowds watched in silence as their great queen made her final journey through packed London streets to her funeral on 2 February 1901.
Bloody Sunday in St Petersburg, 22 January 1905, led to the first Russian Revolution.
The remains of Grand D
uke Sergei’s carriage after his assassination in 1905.
Anarchist terror caught up with Queen Victoria’s youngest grandchild, Princess Ena, on her wedding day in Madrid in 1906, when a bomb was thrown at the bridal carriage.
During the First World War, ten million people died and twenty million more were injured. Four empires – the Russian, German, Austrian and Ottoman – were swept away, and three of Queen Victoria’s grandchildren lost their thrones.
First published in Great Britain 2017
This electronic edition published in 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
© Deborah Cadbury 2017
Family tree by Phillip Beresford
Maps © John Gilkes, 2017
Deborah Cadbury has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
Photographs are from the author’s personal collection except where credited otherwise.
Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements constitute an extension of this copyright page.
The moral right of the author has been asserted
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