The Duchess of Kent

by Helen Cathcart

A captivating biography of Katharine, Duchess of Kent.

Ideal for readers of Hugo Vickers, Anne de Courcy, Theo Aronson and Christopher Warwick.

In this detailed biographical study of Katharine, Duchess of Kent, Helen Cathcart tells an enchanting story of a Yorkshire soldier squire’s daughter who grew up to become an admired and popular member of the Royal Family.

In this intimate and illuminating account, Cathcart charts the first forty years of the Duchess’s life, from her birth during a snowstorm at the family home, Hovingham Hall, and wartime childhood through to schooldays at Castle Howard and early career working in a children’s home.

We also learn of her first meeting with Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent and of the affectionate friendship that matured into a royal romance.

In The Duchess of Kent we follow the Duchess from Hovingham Hall and Coppins to Hong Kong and Germany as an Army officer’s wife. We discover the deep veins of community service in her family, and the author reveals the source of the Duchess of Kent’s wide popularity.

Praise for Helen
‘Wide acclaim as a royal biographer … objective, uninhibited and penetrating’ – Sunday Express
‘Helen Cathcart writes about royalty as if she were one of them’ – The Daily Mail
‘The doyenne of royal biographers’ – The Daily Telegraph
‘A tireless chronicler of royalty’ – The Guardian

Genres: Biography

245 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 1, 2022

About the author

Helen Cathcart was a prolific writer about the Royal Family, who enjoyed enormous success with her books in the 1960s and 1970s. These emerged with regularity, sold well and were largely enjoyed (if not always at Buckingham Palace). One mystery surrounded the author – she was never seen. Occasionally journalists visited her agent, Harold Albert at his cottage near Liphook, and suspected that Helen Cathcart did not exist. Invariably they left less convinced. Only when Harold Albert died was it revealed – in an obituary written by Hugo Vickers – that Harold Albert and Helen Cathcart were one and the same.

Hugo Vickers explains that the story of Harold Albert himself was considerably more interesting than anything that Helen Cathcart herself wrote. He had a grim early life, his father deserting his mother when he was a child, he was entirely self-educated and became in time a prolific and successful journalist, personally interviewing both Hitler and Mussolini before the war. He wrote a successful novel, Café People. In the war he was imprisoned in Wormwood Scrubs as a conscientious objector and then he created Helen Cathcart. In his later life he ghosted the biography of Prince Philip written by Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia and he wrote the books.

Reviews

[Geoff Harding · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now historically correct. Need an update.