Young Prince Philip: His Turbulent Early Life

Prince Philip will be 90 years old in 2011. We have grown so used to seeing him 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. Published to coincide with his 90th birthday, YOUNG PRINCE PHILIP will tell the story of the first, more interesting, 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.