Meet Princess Alice: The Royals’ Greatest Secret

It’s Saturday night, a time for shiny floor shows as we all let our hair down after a long week at work.

Well, glitz and glamour are what’s offer on some channels anyway; those looking for them are well-served by Strictly Come Dancing, The Hit List and Michael McIntyre’s The Wheel on BBC One, while ITV weighs in with It’ll Be Alright on the Night and The Jonathan Ross Show.

But for those hoping for something cerebral, Channel 5 is the place to be. Yes, you did read that correctly. It may have gained a reputation in its early years for its saucy series and cheap-and-cheerful approach to programme-making, but there are genuinely some intriguing documentaries to be found on the station these days.

Saturday nights have become a haven for royal-themed shows, with insights into what the family gets up to at Christmas and the Queen’s art collection popping up in recent weeks.

Tonight’s offering focuses on a figure who is probably, as the title suggests, something of a mystery to many.

In fact, you could mistake her for another Princess Alice, Queen Victoria’s second daughter. She was another extraordinary woman who was known for her empathy, cared for her father during his last illness, was friends with Florence Nightingale and passed away, aged 35, after contracting diphtheria from her son whom she’d been nursing; perhaps there’s something in the name.

The two Alices were, of course, related. The Princess Channel 5 is concerned about was the granddaughter of ‘the other’ Alice.

She was born deaf (but eventually learnt to read lips in four different languages) at Windsor Castle in 1885, with her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, in attendance; her mother, also Victoria, was the monarch’s eldest daughter and was married to Prince Louis of Battenberg. As a result, young Alice spent her early years in Britain, Germany and on the Mediterranean.

She had three younger siblings; the youngest, Louis, is the most memorable today – he became Earl Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India and a mentor to the current Prince of Wales.

Alice married Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark in 1903, and the couple went on to have five children. However, her life from that point was filled with crises, including being forced into exile with the rest of the Greek royal family following the abdication of her brother-in-law in 1917.

Her mental health suffered and Alice was diagnosed with schizophrenia. She was subsequently given electroshock treatment and received therapy from Sigmund Freud. Nevertheless, like her grandmother, she still dedicated herself to helping others – while living in Athens she worked for the Red Cross during the Second World War, organised nursing support for the poor and shelters for orphaned and lost children, and harboured Jewish refugees.

After the war she founded an order of Greek Orthodox nursing nuns and eventually moved into Buckingham Palace with her son and daughter-in-law, the Queen, before passing away at the age of 84 in 1969.

An episode of Netflix’s smash-hit drama The Crown was dedicated to Princess Alice’s story. After looking at her life in more detail, an entire series might have been more fitting.

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