He was ‘Gorgeous Georgie’ – the pin-up prince of hearts who wooed the ladies throughout the Roaring Twenties.
And she was Kiki – known as The Girl with the Silver Syringe – a woman who was crazy, evil and dangerous to know. She was also the love of his life.
Tall, brunette, shapely and uninhibited, Alice Gwynne came from the legendary Vanderbilt family, the equivalent of American royalty. Living in Paris, she became part of the wild crowd that gathered at Ada ‘Bricktop’ Smith’s jazz club in the Pigalle district.
Prince George – son of King George V and younger brother of Edward VIII and George VI – arrived in the city after he and the Royal Navy parted ways. George claimed he was forced to leave his lieutenant’s post because he suffered from seasickness.
The admirals saw things differently. They were also sickened by George’s bad behavior and general disregard for the rules.
Soon the wayward monarch would be forced to take on a much more mundane role – inspecting factories in industrial England – but for a few weeks he was given the chance to relax and enjoy himself, away from the disapproving eyes and ears from his father.
There was a strong American contingent in 1920s Paris made up of artists, models and writers – and from this bohemian audience he chose Alice Preston. She had recently been given a nickname due to her resemblance to model Kiki de Montparnasse, companion of the poet Jean Cocteau and a notorious drug addict.
Prince George in a sub-lieutenant’s uniform. He spent fourteen years in the Navy
Tall, brunette, shapely and uninhibited, Alice Gwynne came from the legendary Vanderbilt family, the equivalent of American royalty
Prince George, the Duke of Kent in San Francisco, California in 1928
Her husband Jerome Preston was independently wealthy and, like his wife, a partygoer – described as “untamed” by one who met him.
Like her Montparnasse namesake, Kiki Preston became addicted to drugs – and introduced Prince George.
Not long after they became lovers, the prince was sent home. He couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her. “Come to London,” George begged. And to London Kiki went.
It soon became known that the royal family was using cocaine and morphine, which were provided to him by his girlfriend. She was visited by representatives of the king and told in no uncertain terms to leave Britain – and not to return.
George was taken to the country home of his older brother, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII and Duke of Windsor), which was adjacent to the Windsor estate. Under his watchful eye, George got off drugs.
He received a final warning from his father – telling him to find a suitable wife. In a surprisingly short time he chose Princess Marina of Greece, who for years had unsuccessfully tipped her hat to the Prince of Wales.
Shortly after their engagement was announced, Prince George and his fiancée, Princess Marina of Greece, posed for the post in the garden of Prince Paul of Yugoslavia.
George was told to find a suitable wife. He is pictured on the far right with his fiancée, Princess Marina of Greece, and his brother, the Prince of Wales, second from the left, in 1932
Prince George married Princess Marina of Greece on November 29, 1934 at Westminster Abbey
They married in 1934. But for George, Kiki Preston remained the love of his life.
Following the smart set from Paris to the warmer climes of Africa, Kiki and her husband Jerome built a house on the shores of Lake Naivasha in the heart of Kenya’s Happy Valley. Among their new friends were Josslyn Hay, the 22nd Earl of Erroll, the five-time divorced Lady Idina Sackville, drug dealer Frank Greswolde Williams and the socialite and later murder suspect Alice de Janzé.
Kiki’s drug use had now become shameless, she openly injected herself at parties and happily lived up to her nickname ‘The Girl with the Silver Syringe’. Meanwhile, back in London, Prince George had settled into his marriage, which turned out to be a surprising success.
It was rumored that Kiki had given birth to George’s child during their time together. In 1926, a boy named Antoine Karslake – later known as Michael Canfield – was secretly born in Bern, Switzerland, and adopted by a publisher in New York.
The two never lost touch. When war broke out in 1939, Kiki returned to her home in New York, while George donned an RAF uniform. And when the prince visited President Roosevelt at his residence in New York in 1941, he found the opportunity to contact his forbidden love.
Together they devised a plan to help George’s brother-in-law, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia – the former regent of the Balkan state who had been interned by the Allies on suspicion of Nazi collaboration and placed under house arrest in Kenya.
The house where Paul was imprisoned on Lake Naivasha was in such poor condition that it was feared he would commit suicide. So George and Kiki arranged for him to be transferred to nearby Preston’s, the lake house they still owned, where the prince and his wife, Princess Olga, spent the rest of the war in comfort.
A year after that meeting in New York, George was dead – killed in a mysterious plane crash in Scotland, the circumstances of which have never been fully explained. It was a crushing blow for Kiki, who, after becoming a widow in 1937, was now in a New York hotel with her mother.
Alice ‘Kiki’ Preston, third from right, at Palm Springs Desert Inn celebrating the release of The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938
Josslyn Hay, later Earl of Erroll, and his wife, the former Lady Idina Sackville. Five times married Idina rose to fame as part of the Happy Valley set
George died in a mysterious plane crash in Scotland, the circumstances of which have never been fully explained. It was a crushing blow for Kiki
In January 1941, her boyfriend, the Earl of Erroll, had been murdered in the famous – and still unsolved – White Mischief case. Shortly afterwards, her friend Alice de Janzé shot herself dead in Kenya.
Her grief was compounded by the death of her son Ethan Allen, 25, who was killed during the Normandy landings on D-Day.
On December 23, 1946, Kiki threw herself from the fifth floor of the Stanhope Hotel in New York and died at the age of 48.