FULL FEATURE: Prince John, Loved, Not ‘Lost’

Some years ago a film aired on television called ‘The Lost Prince.’ Even Ridley Scott would have been more minded with accuracy. Actually, all that had ever been released, I think, was three documents concerning the Prince so far as the Royal Family was concerned. And so the void was filled with nonsense. We all know my thoughts on the hatchet job perpetuated on King George V and Queen Mary, claiming that they were terrible parents. It’s balls. I wrote at length on it a few years ago, but the story of Prince John wasn’t something I planned to cover in huge detail. Then, this happened. The Royal Archives approached the late Queen and asked, perhaps, if the time had come to release everything, so that the Story of Prince John could be covered properly. She said yes, for which I will be eternally grateful. What follows is not the story of a lost prince at all, but of one who was loved deeply by almost his entire extended family (there’s a villain, read on) and by those who lived and worked in proximity to him…

Prince John Charles Francis, the sixth, last child of George V and Queen Mary, was born at Sandringham in a blistering hot week in July 1905. The King diligently recorded in his diary that his wife had begun to have pains at lunchtime and that three and a half hours later, their little boy had come into the world weighing a healthy 8lbs. The Prince of Wales, as he then was, was very disappointed, because he had been desperate for another daughter. He thought they had enough boys and he wanted a sister for Princess Mary, but Queen Alexandra did her best to buck him up. “I feel it is a disappointment to you as you wanted a little girl so much, which would also have been so nice, for dear little Mary, but never mind.” The Prince had quickly surmounted this setback and spent the next fortnight with his family. He divided his time between sitting in the garden, close at hand whilst his healthy new baby slept in the shade cast by nearby trees; but mostly he doted on his wife; barely leaving her side, reading to her, taking her meals up himself. Finally, after nearly two weeks, the Prince had left her long enough to play a round of golf. “Now that I have five sons I feel that I have a great responsibility, may God bless them and may they grow up to be of some use to our great Empire.”