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oard ship was a nightmare of home-sickness and sea-sickness until finally the King
gave in; Prince George became a civil servant, working first for the Foreign Office, then
for the Home Office in the unlikely role of Inspector of Factories. Once back on dry
land, Prince George threw himself with enthusiasm into London night-life. He moved
into York House with David and the two of them became inseparable. Apart from his
brother, Prince George’s closest friends tended to be cultivated homosexuals like Prince
Paul of Yugoslavia and Chips Channon. There were rumours about a ‘boy in Paris’ to
whom Prince George had written compromising letters and of a liaison with Noel
Coward. But Prince George was also actively interested in women; among his mistresses
were the black singer Florence Mills and a string of society girls, notably Lois Sturt and
Poppy Baring. He went through a brief period of drug addiction in the late 1920s after a
trip to Kenya with his brother David when an American lover, Kiki Whitney Preston,
introduced him to cocaine and morphine. He was saved by David, who sent him to a
country house staffed by nurses to wean him from his addiction. Tall, dark, with sensual
good looks, Prince George was also extremely good company.
Prince George’s rackety bachelor life officially came to an end in August 1934 when
he proposed to his friend Prince Paul of Yugoslavia’s sister-in-law, Princess Marina of
Greece. Princess Marina was a cousin, the daughter of Prince Nicholas of the royal house
of Greece, descendants of Queen Alexandra’s favourite brother, Willy. On her mother’s
side her blood was purple rather than merely blue: she was descended from the Russian
imperial family, the Romanovs. Princess Marina was the perfect choice for an aesthete
like Prince George, exquisitely beautiful, tall, dark, slim, with the exotic cheekbones of
her Russian imperial ancestry. She was chic and sophisticated, having run a boutique in
Paris and lived a peripatetic international life since 1922, when the royal family were –
not for the first or last time – expelled from Greece. She and Prince George shared the
same taste in people, which was not at all the same as the mainstream royal family
represented by the Yorks. Their friends were amusing and talented, men like Cecil
Beaton and Noël Coward; Prince Paul and his wife, Marina’s sister, Olga, and her other
sister Elizabeth, ‘Woolly’, married to Count Carl zu Toerring-Jettenbach; and a string of
princely German and Greek relations, including the family of the young Prince Philip of
Greece, Princess Elizabeth’s future husband.
Princess Marina’s chic beauty made her an instant hit with the British public. ‘Don’t
let them change you,’ an admirer shouted as she drove with Prince George from Victoria
Station, where she had arrived from her home in September 1934. ‘It’s all so lovely and
happy that I can hardly believe it,’ Prince George wrote to Prince Paul. ‘Everyone is so
delighted with her – the crowd especially – ‘cos when she arrived at Victoria Station they
expected a dowdy princess – such as unfortunately my family are but when they saw
this lovely chic creature – they could hardly believe it…’ 9
Prince George and Princess Marina were married on 29 November at Westminster
Abbey; Elizabeth and her cousin, Lady Mary Cambridge (granddaughter of Queen
Mary’s brother, Adolphus, Marquess of Cambridge), were the two bridesmaids. Among
the guests in the Abbey, sitting in some of the best seats, were Mr and Mrs Ernest