The Sunday Times bestseller

A 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 Times



Married 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.