Sunday 3 March 2013

Prince George Wedding

Daily Mirror dated Friday November 30th 1934
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Prince George Edward Alexander Edmund, Duke of Kent was the younger brother of Edward who became Edward VIII, Albert who became George VI and Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester.
His bride was Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark who was a first cousin to the future Duke of Edinburgh. Her father was cousin to Czar Nicholas II of Russia. “Why Greece and Denmark?” I hear you ask. ‘Twas because her Grandfather George I of Greece was actually Danish and was elected to the position of King of Greece by the Greek National Assembly.
The marriage lasted until George was killed in a RAF Short Sunderland flying boat on it’s way to Iceland in 1942. Marina died in 1968 of a brain tumour.


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Prince George was the black sheep of George V’s Royal Family. He was bi-sexual and addicted to cocaine. Before and after his marriage he had a string of affairs that included novelist Barbara Cartland, musical actress Jessie Mathews, the son of the Argentine ambassador, future Russian spy Anthony Blunt and, it is rumoured, Noel Coward. He was blackmailed by a male prostitute and had at least one illegitimate son.
George's interest in Jazz music was portrayed in the recent Stephen Poliakoff TV production ‘Dancing on the Edge’.

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Wedding or no wedding, life goes on then as now - tobacco smugglers, rail crossing deaths, hand-bag snatching, a bus crash, factory blaze, a Judge who could face the afternoon session and a gas leak.

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This piece about the son of Sir Hector Murray Macneal certainly doesn’t tell the whole story. The boy, Carroll Livingstone Wainwright Jr, was in fact Sir Hector’s stepson and had been born in America. His mother married Sir Hector in America and for the first two years the family, including Carroll’s older brother and sister, travelled America and Canada. In November 1934 they left the eldest boy in school in New York and moved to Bermuda. This was when Carroll stowed away on the ship Queen of Bermuda on route for New York where he was reunited with his real father and his grandparents.
I don’t know what happened after that but in 1981 the United States Trust Company of New York elected to their board a Carroll Livingston Wainwright Jr who was a partner in the law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy who apparently was in the Havard Law School Class of 1951.

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On December 8th 1934, a regular London to Brisbane Air-Mail service began using the Imperial Airways’ C Class Empire Flying Boats from the UK to Karachi then Indian Trans-Continental aircraft to Singapore and finally Qantas planes to Australia. The journey of 12,700 miles was the world’s longest air route and took around 12 days.

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The Jane’s Journal comic strip was started in 1932 by Norman Pett in the Daily Mirror and lasted, although renamed 'Jane' until 1959.

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Although proposed 10 years earlier in the Cadogan Report, corporal punishment in UK prisons as part of a criminal’s sentence was not abolished until September 1948. It continued to be used as punishment for prisoners who injured prison officers up until 1962 and was officially abolished in 1967.

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In just less than 5 years Britain’s efforts to re-arm against German re-arming turned out to be prudent but inadequate. By 1950 we were indeed into another and probably more deadly arms race as the Cold War saw the West stockpiling nuclear weapons against the threat of Soviet nuclear attack. 

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This was not the infamous anti-Semitic 1940 German version of the 'Jew Suss' but a more sympathetic treatment filmed in England. It was known as 'Power' in the USA.

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No television - just good old fashioned steam radio. The BBC, broadcasting National and Regional programmes, was obviously under the strict dictatorship of John Reith. Classical recitals, light orchestral music and informative talks were the order of the day. You would have had to tune into Warsaw to find any of that scandalous Jazz music. 

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Records? Big round things that revolved at 78 rpm with a hole in the middle. It can’t be a co-incidence that this advert appears on the Radio page with the tag line “Hear what you like – when you like”. I have Rex 8252 Primo Scala’s ‘Isle of Capri’ in a cupboard somewhere. I must dig it out. 






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