Dismissed by one bluff observer as cultivated, effeminate, and smelling too strongly of perfume, the Duke of Kent was unarguably the most interesting, intelligent and cultivated member of his generation of the Royal Family. He took a strong interest in the arts and interior decoration, avocations he shared with Queen Mary but no other member of his family.
Both before and after his marriage, Kent had a long string of affairs with both men and women. The better known of his partners included the African-American cabaret singer
Florence Mills, banking heiress
Poppy Baring, socialite
Margaret Whigham (later Duchess of Argyll), musical star
Jessie Matthews and actor
Noel Coward, with whom he carried on a 19-year affair. Love letters from the Duke to Coward are believed to have been stolen from Coward's house in 1942. There is some suggestion that the duke had an affair with
Indira Raje, the
Maharani of
Cooch Behar (1892–1968), in the late 1920s, according to British historian
Lucy Moore.
The Duke of Kent is also said to have been addicted to drugs (notably
morphine and
cocaine) — a weakness which his brother the Prince of Wales was deputed to cure him of during the latter part of the 1920s — and reportedly was blackmailed by a
male prostitute to whom he wrote intimate letters. Another of his reported homosexual affairs was with his distant cousin
Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia; homosexual spy and art historian
Anthony Blunt was reputedly another lover. The Duke was known to have attempted to court
Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. She spurned the overture and married
Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Bisterfeld instead.
In addition to his legitimate children, the Duke is said to have had a son by
Kiki Preston (née Alice Gwynne) (1898–1946), an American socialite whom he reportedly shared in a ménage à trois with
Jorge Ferrara, the bisexual son of the Argentine ambassador to the Court of St. James's. Known as "the girl with the silver syringe", drug addict Preston, a cousin of railroad heiress
Gloria Vanderbilt, was married first to Horace R.B. Allen and then, in 1925, to banker Jerome Preston. She died after jumping out of a window of the
Stanhope Hotel in
New York City, although much evidence has been shown to suggest that he had her pushed, possibly though his position in the
masonic lodge. According to the memoirs of a friend,
Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, Prince George's brother the
Duke of Windsor believed that the son was
Michael Canfield (1926–1969), the adopted son of American publisher
Cass Canfield and the first husband of
Lee Radziwill (sister of
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis).
Much of this history was outlined in the documentary film
The Queen's Lost Uncle mentioned above. The Duke's
bisexuality and drug addictions were explored in "African Nights", a 2004 play written by American playwright
Jeffrey Corrick.
