Prince Philip’s ‘old Mama’ left a poignant letter to her son shortly prior to her death – 55 years ago today.
She wrote to her ‘dearest Philip’ and told him to ‘be brave’ before she passed away at Buckingham Palace on December 5, 1969.
The heart-breaking letter read: ‘Dearest Philip, Be brave, and remember I will never leave you, and you will always find me when you need me most. All my devoted love, your old Mama.’
However, the mother and son did not always have a steady relationship and Philip did not see her for seven after she was sent to a sanatorium when he was nine.
Princess Alice of Greece, dressed in her habit, with her son, Prince Philip, in 1957
Princess Alice with her husband Prince Andrew – a younger son of the King of Greece
Princess Alice was born in February, 1885, at Windsor Castle in the presence of her great-grandmother, Victoria, and was raised as an English princess.
Her parents, Louis, Prince of Battenberg, and Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, were German.
Alice was one of four, the others being sister Louise, brother Louis and George. Louise later became Queen of Sweden.
When she was a young child, Alice was diagnosed as congenitally deaf, however, could speak clearly and became a fluent lip reader.
She married into the Greek royal family when she wed Prince Andrew in 1903 – a younger son of the King of Greece – and became Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark.
By 1914, the couple had four daughters – Princesses Margarita, Theodora, Cecilie and Sophie – and a revolution was brewing in Greece, where she was living at the time.
Philip was born in 1921 and shortly afterwards the Greek royal family were exiled following the abdication of King Constantine I of Greece, who was forced out in 1917.
While Philip was just a toddler, his family fled to Paris on a British warship.
Once in France, they lived on handouts from relatives. The stressful period caused strain on Alice, whose ardent religious beliefs had slowly become more eccentric over the years.
After going through a tumultuous few years, Alice suffered a nervous breakdown in 1930.
She began hearing voices and believed she was having intimate relationships with Jesus and other religious figures.
The late Queen Elizabeth’s mother-in-law pictured in 1965
Princess Alice, who died 55 years ago today, photographed in her younger years
The princess was sent away to a a sanatorium when Philip was just nine years old. He was taken out for a picnic with his grandmother and when he returned, his mother had gone.
She was diagnosed as schizophrenic before being treated by Sigmund Freud at a clinic in Berlin.
Under the advice of the renowned psychoanalyst, her ovaries were blasted with X-rays, which were said to cure her of her frustrated sexual desires.
This treatment is believed to have prompted early menopause. There is also no evidence that Alice herself was consulted about this, or consented to the procedure.
Following the treatment, she was admitted to a Swiss sanatorium where she remained imprisoned for two and a half years.
During his childhood, Philip was sent to boarding school in England and Scotland.
He was bounced from relative to relative during the holidays, including his uncle Lord Mountbatten.
Philip’s father, Prince Andrew, meanwhile effectively abandoned his wife to go live on the French Rivera with his mistress, despite never getting divorced.
He died in 1944 in Monaco.
When Alice was eventually released from the sanatorium in 1932, she drifted between modest German B&Bs.
Philip did not reunite with his mother until he was 16 years old in 1937 at the funeral of his sister Cecilie, who had died in a plane crash.
Alice with her husband, Andrew, pictured together in 1922
Alice sitting in a car while her husband stands next to the vehicle in Athens in January, 1921
Alice wanted Philip to return to Athens with her, following the restoration of the Greek monarchy in 1935. But Philip already had his future etched out in the Royal Navy, so his mother was left alone in Greece.
By 1941, Alice was stranded in Nazi-occupied Greece.
Her brother, Lord Mountbatten, sent her food parcels which she handed out to those in need.
During the war, she hid a Jewish family on the top floor of her home, just yards away from Gestapo headquarters.
When the Gestapo became suspicious and questioned the Princess, she used her deafness as an excuse not to answer their questions.
‘I suspect that it never occurred to her that her action was in any way special,’ Prince Philip said when visiting her grave in 1994.
‘She was a person with deep religious faith and she would have considered it to be a totally human action to fellow human beings in distress.’
Alfred Haimaki Cohen reached out to Alice for help sheltering his wife and children.
His daughter, Evy Cohen, previously credited the princess for her family still being alive.
She told The Sun: ‘Princess Alice’s story of incredible courage must keep being told in her memory.’
Her father Alfred was a prominent member of the community of 8,000 Jewish people in Athens, who came across Alice’s lady-in-waiting and sought help from Nazi persecution.
The royal quickly offered the family refuge on the top floor of her house, only yards from Gestapo headquarters.
Alice talking to Countess Mountbatten of Burma at St Paul’s Cathedral in 1953
Alice’s four daughters – Princesses Cecilia, Margarita, Sophie and Theodora in 1922
After the war, Philip proposed to Princess Elizabeth with a ring containing diamonds from his mother’s tiara.
Alice sold the rest of her jewels to create her own religious order, the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, in 1949, and became a nun.
She went on to build a convent and orphanage in a poor suburb of Athens.
Alice still kept in touch with her family and when Philip’s niece, Princess Dorothea, married Prince Friedrich in 1959, she attended was pictured kissing the bride’s cheek on the big day.
The Daily Mail reported at the time: ‘Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Greece, was among the first arrivals. With her came her daughters, Princess Sophie, Princess Theodora, and Princess Margarita.’
Alice remained in Greece until 1967, where there was a Greek military coup. Alice refused to leave the country until Prince Philip sent a plane and a special request from the Queen to bring her home.
She spent the final years of her life living at Buckingham Palace with her son and daughter-in-law.
Hugh Vickers wrote in Alice: Princess Andrew of Greece, how the mother and son ‘were too alike to agree on everything’.
He told how Princess Anne recalled she would ‘see her father march out of her grandmother’s room, throwing irritable remarks over his shoulder’.
Alice, who spent the final 20 years of her life as a nun, was originally laid to rest in a vault in St George’s Chapel in Windsor.
Her dying wish was to be buried with her family in Jerusalem.
After the British Royal Family carried out ‘delicate negotiations with the Jordanian royal family’ the princess’s desire was fulfilled in 1988 – 19 years after her death.
Philip grilling with his daughter, Princess Anne, pictured in 1970
Prince William during a visit to the Church of St Mary Magdalene to pay his respects at the tomb of his great-grandmother in June 2018
‘Her burial place, the magnificent golden-domed church of St Mary Magdalene, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, is in East Jerusalem – one of the most sensitive spots in the Middle East,’ the Daily Mail reported at the time.
Prince William visited her tomb in 2018 on the final day of his tour of the Middle East.
William was greeted by Archimandrite Roman, Father Roman, the head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, and Abbess Elizabeth.
He was taken his great-grandmother’s crypt, where he laid flowers on her sarcophagus, picked from the garden of Philip Hall, Britain’s Consulate General in Jerusalem.