George and Marina cover art

George and Marina

Duke and Duchess of Kent

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

George and Marina

By: Christopher Warwick
Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £14.99

Buy Now for £14.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

For eight brief years, before he was tragically killed in a mysterious air crash during the Second World War, Prince George, Duke of Kent, son of King George V and Queen Mary, and his beautiful wife, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark, were the British monarchy's - indeed, high society's - most glamorous royal couple; and as golden royal icons, they are still remembered. As a young man voraciously addicted to drugs and sex with men as much as women, marriage and parenthood for the impetuously wayward playboy prince, with his nightclubbing lifestyle and intimate liaisons, was seen as the only stabilizing influence. Enter the stylish and sophisticated Princess Marina, the cultured, artistic, and multilingual youngest daughter of Prince Nicholas of Greece and his Russian-born wife, Grand Duchess Yelena Vladimirovna. As Duke and Duchess of Kent, George and Marina were the Crown's most glittering representatives, not least in the aftermath of the abdication of George's adored elder brother, the briefly reigned King Edward VIII, the man not only with whom he had shared both home and high-flying lifestyles but who had helped cure him of his addiction to morphine and cocaine.

©2016 Christopher Warwick (P)2017 Tantor Entertainment & Celebrities Europe Politicians Politics & Activism Royalty Marriage King Celebrity Greece

Listeners also enjoyed...

 A Royal Life cover art
Henry ‘Chips’ Channon: The Diaries (Volume 1) cover art
Three Times a Countess cover art
Daughter of Empire cover art
King's Counsellor cover art
Cecil Beaton cover art
Elizabeth cover art
The Final Curtsey cover art
The Queen and Prince Philip cover art
Charles and Camilla cover art
Game of Crowns cover art
The Victoria Letters: The Official Companion to the ITV Victoria Series cover art
Bertie: A Life of Edward VII cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
Every time there was a person, their lineage and connections were explained. Took away from the story. Also, seemed to skid over the juicy stuff. A sanitised read.

Lots of name dropping

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Didn't know a lot about the Kents. Filled all the gaps. Not sensationalised and seemed balanced.

Good overview of the Kents

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Reads like a cuttings job. Odd delivery. One doesn’t get to know them well, apart from Marina’s childhood and exile(s).

No real insight into royal golden couple

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The story of George and Marina is a fairy tale one that mirrors a period of history when the public were kept in the dark about most things royal. George would be destroyed these days by the Twitterati. He was bi sexual and she loved him dearly. This is a very staid re-telling of their lives. They were both wonderful characters, and his death full of mystery, but you would hardly know it from this book.

Wonderful woman but story told in the dullest way.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
There is room for far more exploration of the royal and media archives, in Britain, Greece and elsewhere. Unfortunately, although ‘George and Marina’ starts fairly well, it peters out. More depth of character is needed, rather than reliance on ‘are they true?/ aren’t they cliches about Princess Marina, her rather addicted husband, George, her Danish/Greek/Russian background and any personal relationships she had.
I like the rather affected reading style, but feel let down by the silence at the end. Could an interview with Princess Alexandra nor have been done? Many such questions remain unanswered.

I think the title of this biography needs to be inverted: Marina and George. After all, it is more about her than about him.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Mainly, I found it boring and learned very little. It all felt surface deep and the narrator did nothing to enliven the dull text. For all that they were the bright young things in the 1930s there isn't a sparkle left 80 years later. If the author had dug deeper, challenged beliefs and behaviour then we might have got to the core of this couple but we didn't.

Dull, plodding and surface deep

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.