Young prince philip (HarperCollins Publishers)

A revelatory and racy biography of the early life of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip. We have grown so used to seeing Prince Philip as a loyal, dutiful and occasionally bad-tempered old man that it is easy to forget what a strange and intriguing life he led when he was younger. 'Young Prince Philip' tells the story of the first, hugely intriguing, half of his life. In this fast-paced and highly entertaining biography, Philip Eade will focus on those aspects of the Prince's early life that are most compelling: his father's dramatic flight from revolutionary Greece; the subsequent madness of his deaf mother and prolonged absences of his feckless father; his school days in Nazi Germany; his relationship with his four sisters, all married to Germans, one to an officer in the SS; his rather breezy courtship and marriage to the most eligible girl in the world; and his alleged infidelities and membership of raffish circles during the 1950s and '60s. Written with great verve, 'Young Prince Philip' will be less reverential in tone than the traditional royal biography but no less meticulously researched and authoritative.