Prince George, Duke of Kent

George was born at 7:35 pm on 20 December 1902 at York Cottage on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, England. His father was the Prince of Wales (later King George V), the only surviving son of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. His mother was the Princess of Wales, later Queen Mary, the eldest child and only daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Teck. At the time of his birth, he was fifth in the line of succession to the throne, following his father and three older brothers: Edward, Albert, and Henry. He was baptised in the Private Chapel at Windsor Castle on 26 January 1903 by Francis Paget, the Bishop of Oxford. His godparents were King Edward VII (his paternal grandfather); Prince Valdemar of Denmark (his paternal granduncle, represented by Prince Carl of Denmark, his paternal uncle and first cousin once removed); Prince Louis of Battenberg (husband of his father's cousin); Queen Alexandra (his paternal grandmother); Empress Dowager Maria Feodorovna (his paternal grandaunt, represented by Princess Victoria of the United Kingdom, his paternal aunt); and Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein (his paternal grandaunt). ==Education and career==

and Prince Henry on Time magazine's cover, 8 August 1927 George received his early education from a tutor and later followed his elder brother, Henry, to St Peter's Court, a preparatory school at Broadstairs, Kent. At the age of 13, like his elder brothersthe Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) and Albert, (later George VI)he entered naval college, first at Osborne and subsequently at Dartmouth. He was promoted to sub-lieutenant on 15 February 1924 and to lieutenant on 15 February 1926. He remained on active service in the Royal Navy until March 1929, serving on and later on the flagship of the Atlantic Fleet (renamed the Home Fleet in 1932), . After leaving the navy, he briefly held posts at the Foreign Office and later the Home Office, becoming the first member of the royal family to work as a civil servant. and to captain on 1 January 1937. From January to April 1931, George and his elder brother, the Prince of Wales, undertook an 18,000‑mile tour of South America. Their outward voyage was on the ocean liner . In Buenos Aires they opened a British Empire Exhibition. They continued from the Río de la Plata to Rio de Janeiro on the liner and returned from Brazil to Europe on the liner , landing at Lisbon. The princes travelled back via Paris and an Imperial Airways flight from Paris–Le Bourget Airport that landed specially in Windsor Great Park. On 23 June 1936, George was appointed a personal aide-de-camp to his eldest brother, the new king, Edward VIII. Following Edward's abdication, he was appointed a personal naval aide-de-camp to his elder brother, now George VI. On 12 March 1937, he was commissioned as a colonel in the British Army and as a group captain in the Royal Air Force (RAF). He was also appointed Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Fusiliers from the same date. In October 1938, George was appointed Governor-General of Australia in succession to Lord Gowrie, with effect from November 1939. On 11 September 1939, however, it was announced that, owing to the outbreak of the Second World War, the appointment would be postponed. On 8 June 1939, he was promoted to rear admiral in the Royal Navy, major-general in the British Army, and air vice-marshal in the Royal Air Force. At the start of the Second World War, he returned to active naval service with the rank of rear admiral, serving briefly in the Intelligence Division of the Admiralty. He was patron of the Society for Nautical Research between 1926 and 1942. ==Personal life==

Marriage and children On 9 October 1934, in anticipation of his forthcoming marriage to his second cousin, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, he was created Duke of Kent, Earl of St Andrews, and Baron Downpatrick. The couple married on 29 November at Westminster Abbey. This was followed by a Greek ceremony in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace, which was converted into an Orthodox chapel for the liturgy. They had three children: • Prince Edward, Duke of Kent (born 9 October 1935). He married Katharine Worsley on 8 June 1961. They had three children. • Princess Alexandra, The Hon. Lady Ogilvy (born 25 December 1936). She married the Hon. Angus Ogilvy, son of David Ogilvy, 12th Earl of Airlie, and Lady Alexandra Coke, on 24 April 1963. They had two children. • Prince Michael of Kent (born 4 July 1942). He married Baroness Marie Christine von Reibnitz on 30 June 1978. They have two children. Relationships George was rumoured to have had affairs with the musical star Jessie Matthews, the writer Cecil Roberts, and Noël Coward, a suggestion which Coward's long-term partner, Graham Payn, denied. During his marriage, he was also said to have had an affair with Margaret Whigham, later Margaret Campbell, Duchess of Argyll, although there is no firm evidence for this claim. His first significant relationship was with Gladys Jean Combe, younger daughter of Captain Christian Combe of the Royal Horse Guards and Lady Jane Combe, daughter of George Conyngham, 3rd Marquess Conyngham. Known as "the girl with the silver syringe" because of her heroin addiction, Preston – a cousin of the heiress Gloria Vanderbilt – was married first to Horace R. B. Allen and later, in 1925, to the banker Jerome Preston. She died in 1946 after jumping from a window of the Stanhope Hotel in New York City. George was also linked to a ménage à trois involving Preston and José Uriburu, the bisexual son of the Argentine ambassador to the United Kingdom, José Uriburu Tezanos. He was further said to have fathered a son with Preston. According to the memoirs of Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, George's brother Edward VIII believed that the child was Michael Temple Canfield (1926–1969), the adopted son of the American publisher Cass Canfield and the first husband of Lee Radziwill, sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. After being sent by the King to the Far East, George began a relationship in Singapore in 1926 with Leila Devitt, a hostess and wife of a commodities magnate who was 10 years his senior. ==RAF career==

As a young man, George became convinced that the future lay in aviation. It quickly became his chief enthusiasm, and in 1929 he earned his pilot's licence. He was the first member of the royal family to cross the Atlantic Ocean by air. Before his flying career, he had entered the Royal Navy and received intelligence training while stationed at Rosyth. In March 1937, he was granted a commission in the Royal Air Force as a group captain. He was appointed Honorary Air Commodore of No. 500 (County of Kent) Squadron, Auxiliary Air Force, in August 1938. He was promoted to air vice-marshal in June 1939, alongside corresponding promotions to flag and general officer rank in the Royal Navy and British Army. ensuring he would not be senior to more experienced officers. On 28 July 1941, he assumed the rank of air commodore in the Welfare Section of the RAF Inspector General's Staff. In this role, he undertook official visits to RAF stations to support wartime morale. ==Freemasonry==

George was initiated into freemasonry on 12 April 1928 in Navy Lodge No. 2612. He served as master of Navy Lodge in 1931, and was also a member of Prince of Wales's Lodge No. 259 and Royal Alpha Lodge No. 16, of which he became master in 1940. He was appointed senior grand warden of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1933, and served as provincial grand master from 1934 until he was elected grand master of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1939, a position he held until his death in 1942. ==Death==

On 25 August 1942, George and 14 others took off in RAF Short Sunderland flying boat W4026 from Invergordon, Ross and Cromarty, for a non‑operational flight to Iceland. The aircraft crashed on Eagle's Rock, a hillside near Dunbeath, Caithness, Scotland. George and all but one of those on board were killed. He was 39 years old. His death in RAF service marked the first time in more than 450 years that a member of the royal family had died on active service. George's body was interred initially in the Royal Vault of St George's Chapel, Windsor; in 1968 he was reburied in the Royal Burial Ground, Frogmore, directly behind Queen Victorias mausoleum. His elder son, six-year-old Edward, succeeded him as Duke of Kent. Marina, his wife, had given birth to their third child, Michael, only seven weeks before George's death. His will was sealed in Llandudno in 1943, and his estate was valued at £157,735 (equivalent to £ in ). One RAF crew member survived the crash: Flight Sergeant Andrew Jack, the Sunderland's rear gunner. Jack's niece has claimed that he told his brother that George had been at the controls of the aircraft, that Jack had dragged him from the pilot's seat after the crash, and that there was an additional person on board whose identity has never been revealed. ==In popular culture==

, 1934 George's early life is dramatised in Stephen Poliakoff's television serial The Lost Prince (2003), a biography of his younger brother John. In the production, the teenage Prince 'Georgie' is portrayed as sensitive, intelligent, artistic, and unusually sympathetic to John's difficulties. He is shown as detesting his time at the Royal Naval College and as having a strained relationship with his austere father. In May 2008, the BBC aired the Radio 4 comedy Hut 33, Series 2, Episode 1, titled "The Royal Visit". The main guest character in the episode is the Duke of Kent, played by Michael Fenton-Stevens. Set at Bletchley Park, the programme depicts a team of codebreakers instructed to conceal the nature of their work during an impromptu royal visit. Within the episode's comic narrative, the Duke is described as a Nazi spy and is portrayed as promiscuous and bisexual, attempting to obtain sexual favours from a male member of staff, while a female character recalls a previous liaison with him. Much of George's later life was outlined in the documentary film ''The Queen's Lost Uncle. He also appears as a recurring character in the revival of Upstairs, Downstairs'' (2010–2012), portrayed by Blake Ritson. In the series, he is depicted as a caring brother, anxious about the direction taken by his family, later as an appeaser of the German regime, and as a supportive friend of Hallam Holland. ==Honours and arms==

Appointments Military ;Canada • Colonel-in-Chief, The Essex and Kent Scottish (1937 – 1942) ;New Zealand • Colonel-in-Chief, Corps of New Zealand Engineers (1938) ;United Kingdom • Colonel-in-Chief, Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment (1935) • Colonel-in-Chief, Royal Fusiliers (1937) Arms Around the time of his elder brother Prince Henry's twenty-first birthday, Prince George was granted the use of the Royal Arms, differenced by a label argent of three points, each bearing an anchor azure. ==Ancestry==