All language subtitles for Ch4.The.Queens.Mother.in.Law.PDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

The Bellevue Sanatorium
For The Insane, Switzerland.

On 27th July, 1932,

a female inmate slipped
through an open window

and made a getaway.

In the local town,
she boarded a train

heading for the border
with Germany, and freedom.

But just on the point of escape,
she was apprehended.

For the authorities,
it was just another day

managing the strange inmates
of the local asylum.

But this woman was
no ordinary inmate.

This woman was
Prince Philip's mother.

We all know about the Queen Mum,

so outgoing, so well-publicised,

so loving of publicity, in fact.

We forget there was
another Queen Mum,

very eccentric, but also
incredibly strong willed.

Unlike the Queen Mum,

Prince Philip's mother
was born a princess,

but turned her back on royal life.

You didn't think of Aunt Alice
as a cosy, old aunt.

You thought of her as somebody
rather unique, actually.

She was locked away
in mental hospitals

and subjected to experimental
treatments by psychiatrists,

including Sigmund Freud.

Nobody wanted to talk about it
and it was regarded as rather...

hushed up.

But she overcame mental illness
and physical disability

to become an unlikely hero
of World War II.

This is the strange and remarkable
story of Prince Philip's mother,

Princess Alice, one of the royal
family's best kept secrets.

Princess Alice Battenberg's start in
life couldn't have been more royal.

Born at Windsor Castle in 1885,

she was a great-granddaughter
of Queen Victoria.

Although her parents
were more German than British,

Alice was raised
as an English princess.

But from childhood, she was set
apart from the rest of her family

by a profound disability.

She was stone deaf

and my grandmother realised that
she had to just get used to coping

with her disability herself.

She said to the family, "Look,

"if Alice doesn't hear
and understand what you have said,

"it's quite important
not to repeat it,

"so that she learns
to stand on her own feet."

Her mother's tough love worked.

By the age of 18,
Alice could not only speak clearly,

but also lip read
in three languages.

And in 1902, at the coronation
celebrations of King Edward VII,

she met and fell in love
with the glamorous Prince Andrew,

youngest son of King George I
of Greece.

She was...

dotty about him,
absolutely mad for him.

Really, really deeply in love.

He was very entertaining

and very charming

and she fell hook, line and sinker.

After their wedding in 1903,

Alice set up home with her husband
in her newly-adopted country.

At the royal family's palace
in Athens, Alice settled into

her allotted role
as a princess and mother.

In ten years,
she produced four daughters...

..and even managed to win over

an increasingly
anti-monarchist Greek public.

The Greek idyll didn't last.

In marrying Prince Andrew,
Alice had hitched herself

to the most unstable
royal family in Europe.

In 1912, a brutal war broke out
between the Greeks

and their bitter rivals, the Turks.

Determined to make herself useful,

Alice left her children
and headed straight for the front,

organising a series of desperately
needed battlefield hospitals.

She got really stuck in.

She was there in the front

for months on end, often
working through the night,

in very, very primitive conditions,

dealing with people who were
being shot up all around her,

losing limbs, and she was there,
literally, wrapping the bandages.

She was hands-on.

"God. What things we saw.

"Shattered arms, legs and heads.

"Such awful sights.

"Cast-off bandages knee-high.

"The corridor full of blood."

This was just the start
of ten traumatic years

for Alice and her family.

The First World War triggered
a decade of conflict in Greece

between pro
and anti-royalist forces.

In 1922,
Republican troops entered Athens.

Alice's brother-in-law,
the king, fled the country.

But her husband, Prince Andrew,
was arrested and put on trial

by a revolutionary court.

It was all so awful.

My aunt did have a very difficult
time because, of course,

there was a definite threat
that my uncle, Andrew,

might have ended up

being executed for not
being on the right side.

They must have come under
a great deal of pressure.

To add to her worries, Alice had
just given birth to a fifth child.

In June 1921, Prince Philip
was delivered on the kitchen table

of Alice's country home.

Philip was born sixth in-line

to the increasingly beleaguered
Greek throne.

But the child was blissfully
oblivious to the crisis

engulfing his family.

"Philip sits with bare legs
on the hard road

"and crawls on it without
minding the stones.

"He laughs all day long.

"I have never seen
such a cheerful baby."

But there was no time
for celebrations.

In December 1922,

Philip's father, Prince Andrew,

was convicted of disloyalty

by the revolutionary authorities

and faced a death sentence.

When Prince Andrew was granted
a last-minute stay of execution,

the family seized
their opportunity to flee.

With the baby Prince Philip
stowed in an orange crate

as a makeshift cot,

Alice and her family
boarded a British warship

and sailed into a humiliating exile.

Alice's life as a conventional
royal princess was over.

In 1923, Princess Alice
and her family,

including the 18-month-old
Prince Philip,

arrived in Paris as refugees.

In their flight from Greece,
Alice and her husband

had not only lost their fortune,
but also much of their purpose.

I talked to Prince Philip about this
and he said to me,

"My recollection of the 1920s
in Paris was that we were

"a very happy family
and it was a very good time."

And indeed, if you talk to witnesses,
they'll talk about

their bucket-and-spade holidays
at the seaside,

they'll talk about their father,

Prince Andrew, being there and being
very charming, very amusing.

But there was strain.

These fleeting images, rediscovered
during the making of this film

and seen here for the first
time on television,

offer a unique glimpse
into Prince Philip's family

at the time of their exile
in Paris in the 1920s.

In front of the camera,
Philip's father, his sister...

..and his mother,
put on a brave face.

But beneath the surface,

the pressures of exile
were beginning to tell.

While Prince Andrew
brooded on his fate,

Philip's mother was left isolated
and emotionally vulnerable.

For her, it was very,
very frustrating

when big family groups,
which often happened...

We'd be 20 around the table,
and then of course she was lost.

You know, she couldn't
see people's lips,

and suddenly, somebody
would start roaring with laughter

at the end of the table and she'd
think it was a joke about her...

..which, of course, it never was.

Trapped in her silent world,

dark thoughts began
to pray on Alice's mind.

In 1928, aged 43,

she announced a sudden conversion
to the Greek Orthodox Church.

But increasingly, her religious
beliefs were anything but orthodox.

Princess Alice seems to have become
increasingly religious,

very, very preoccupied
with the spiritual.

She began to tell people
that she had a very intimate

relationship with Jesus Christ.

She used sexual language

and spoke about flirtations
with Jesus Christ and so forth.

She ultimately came to believe
that she had a photograph,

signed by Jesus Christ and what
we see in Princess Alice is what

sometimes can be called religious
delusions, not ordinary religiosity.

'My poor Alice is in quite
an abnormal state.

'She has visions of Christ

'and has told that she'll soon have
a message to deliver to the world.

'She wanders about the house praying.

'I think she has anaemia of the brain
from too much contemplation.'

In desperation,
Alice's family turned

to the fashionable
new science of psychiatry.

'The sanatorium,

'the first psycholytic intramural
sanatorium founded and directed

by Ernst Simmel, who has contributed
enormously to the literature.

In February 1930, Alice was
persuaded to leave her son, Philip,

and check in to an experimental
psychiatric clinic near Berlin,

run by the pioneering
Dr Ernst Simmel.

We're standing in front
of the sanatorium of Tegel,

which was built as a special
psycholytic hospital in April 1927.

It was a new idea, to treat patients
so severely mentally ill,

that they couldn't visit
the doctors in their offices

or in the institutes.

There were people with
obsessive compulsive neurosis

and also addictions of different
kinds - alcohol, cocaine and so on.

And therefore, Simmel tried to
treat patients which other places

couldn't successfully treat.

Princess Alice of Greece
now found herself in the company

of some of Europe's most disturbed
psychiatric patients.

One person who remembers the Tegel
is Victor Ross, whose mother

worked at the hospital at the time
Princess Alice was a patient.

I would have been 12 or 13,
something like that.

I wasn't inside the building
very often.

It was... Parts of it were out of
bounds to me for obvious reasons.

I spent most of my time in the park

but I certainly saw people
having epileptic fits.

I certainly saw people
who shouted and cursed and spat.

Pretty, I mean, crazy people.

I remember they used to roll
on the grass

and say, "I'm getting better,
I'm getting better.

"Every day I'm getting better.

"I'm better today than yesterday.

"I'll be better tomorrow."

Well, I was not convinced.

Previously sealed medical files
from that Tegel reveal that Simmel

diagnosed Princess Alice
with paranoid schizophrenia.

She had begun to hear voices

and believed herself to be not only
married but also physically involved

with Christ and with other
religious figures, including Buddha.

In his search for the origins
of Alice's illness,

Simmel discovered an important clue.

One of Princess Alice's ladies in
waiting had told him, privately,

off the record,
that the Princess Alice

had a very, very deep passion
for an Englishman

back in the mid 1920s,
which she had never consummated.

And Simmel suggested that
there was something about her

romantic history, her erotic history,
that had got repressed or dammed up

or complicated in some way.

Alice would never disclose
the identity of her mystery love,

but Dr Simmel believed
the Princess's frustrated desires

were an important factor
in her breakdown.

Princess Alice, we must remember,

was born to the Royal Family in 1885,

at a time when women's bodies
were encased in corsets

and women weren't really encouraged
to have a sexuality

beyond a procreative
marital sexuality,

certainly not in her milieu.

And I think we must remember
how shocking it would have been,

not only to
her relatives and friends,

but to herself, to have perhaps
an erotic attraction towards someone

other than her husband and not quite
know what to do with these feelings.

Seeking advice for how
to treat his royal patient,

Dr Simmel now turned to a famous
colleague and mentor.

The visitors' book for the Tegel
clinic reveals that in 1930,

Sigmund Freud, the father
of psychoanalysis himself,

visited the Tegel and personally
reviewed Princess Alice's case.

His recommendations were shocking
and controversial.

Extraordinarily,
Freud recommended that Princess Alice

might be given X-rays to her ovaries.

Now, when I first read this
in the published case notes

I was really very, very shocked
indeed because his entire psychology

is based on non-biological
treatments, non-medical treatments.

Get them to talk, the talking cure.

Not to give X-rays.

So this prescription for Princess
Alice is really very anomalous

and very perplexing indeed.

The explanation for Freud's unusual
advice lies in his connection

with a Viennese scientist
who specialised in the study

of hormones and sexuality.

In the 1920s, Eugen Steinach

performed a series
of radical experiments,

including transplanting
the testicles of gay men

in order to,
"cure their condition".

Steiner also speculated that
X-rays could be used

to accelerate the menopause,
triggering hormonal changes

that could cure mental illness.

At the time when Alice
came to the hospital,

they were discussing - especially
Freud and Simmel - whether

hormones could help for breakout of
schizophrenia and severe psychosis.

And in the case of Princess Alice,

his advice was to make
an X-ray of the gonads,

to accelerate her menopause so
that it would cool down her libido

and her sexual excitement.

Today, we'd laugh about it
but nevertheless,

the endocrinology and the hormones,
studies began at that time.

In March 1930, the 45-year-old
Prince Alice was escorted

to a treatment room and her
reproductive organs subjected

to a concentrated stream of X-rays.

There's no evidence that she was
consulted about her treatment

or consented to it,
or that it produced any improvement

in her health.

Soon afterwards,
Princess Alice discharged herself

and returned to her family,
declaring herself fit and well.

Alice's mother disagreed.

'Her illusions are still firmly
rooted, her face has altered

'and her expression, especially
in the eyes, is altered, too.

'When she's enjoying being among us,
I feel a brute,

'and then again I clearly realise
the need of her going away.'

She did behave quite strangely
and in those days, again,

it sounds awful to say it but if
people behaved in a strange manner,

then what people did was remove
them from their family's situation

and put them in some sort
of a clinic

where it didn't matter
what they did.

On 2nd May 1930, while
the eight-year-old Prince Philip

was taken out for the day,
Alice received an unexpected visit.

I mean, the most awful thing is
that pretty much one day,

her mother takes Prince Philip
off for a picnic

and by the time he comes home,
his mother is gone

and it's literally a car and men in
white coats coming to take her away.

Philip's mother was forcibly
bundled into a car

and given a powerful sedative,
concealed inside an orange.

Shortly after midnight,
Alice crossed the border

into Switzerland and arrived
at the Bellevue sanatorium.

Prince Philip's mother was no longer
just a patient, but a prisoner.

Nobody wanted to talk about it

and it was regarded
as rather hushed up

and not very well treated
or understood.

So I think my aunt would have
suffered very much.

It was difficult to talk
to other people about it

because they were embarrassed
or ashamed

and all the nonsense
but in those days, of course,

it was something
to be kept very quiet about.

The Bellevue was an exclusive
Swiss sanatorium

that catered for the mentally ill
amongst Europe's richest families.

But it could offer little in the way
of effective treatment.

For the next two and a half years,
Alice was detained at the Bellevue.

Protesting her sanity,
she demanded her freedom

and even made a daring
escape attempt.

But Alice had not only lost
her liberty,

she had also been abandoned
by her husband.

Well, Prince Andrew was not at all
supportive, I don't think.

I think by the time Princess Alice
went into the nursing home

at Kreuzlingen, he had fundamentally
had enough and I personally believe

that he renounced any responsibility
for his wife at that point.

Well, I mean, he went
and lived in the South of France

and had mistresses
and he was no support to anybody.

Although they would never divorce,
the marriage was over.

And Alice hadn't only lost
her husband.

While she was under lock and key,
in the space of little over a year,

all four of her daughters
married German princes.

They lock her away
and it was a terrible time for her.

She isn't able to go to all
the weddings,

she doesn't get word of them.

She becomes an isolated,
lonely figure.

But the hardest separation of all
was from her youngest child,

Prince Philip.

In his mother's absence,

Philip was packed off to boarding
schools in England

and during the holidays, farmed out
to members of the extended family...

..including his uncle,
Lord Mountbatten.

He was a lovely cousin
to have around, he really was.

But it was a very difficult
childhood for him

and the time of the holidays,
he never actually knew

where he was going to go
when he started the holidays.

I mean I supposed was told, yes,
shortly before,

but there wasn't the feeling
of having a definite home

like all children have.

One of the Royal Family once said
Prince Philip was like a dog

always looking for a basket

and that characterised
his early life.

He was always being shuffled
from pillar to post,

from one minute to the other.

And was a kid of 11 or 12,
to have your mother suddenly

abducted from you,
being told she was mad,

and, at the same time, your father

is vanishing off
with a mistress somewhere,

it's not really surprising
he's got a pretty tough exterior.

Talking about Prince Philip
not having one special home

but having a series of different
family homes all his life, really,

as a young man, I think this
puts it rather clearly here.

Where he came to stay with us
in our little cottage,

where he signs Philip...

..and he wrote under address,
"No fixed abode!"

Which really says it all.

On September 23, 1932,

the doors of the Bellevue
psychiatric hospital swung open.

And for the first time
in two and a half years,

Prince Philip's mother was free.

Alice
had been demanding her release

ever since her arrival
at the Bellevue.

And she'd been shocked to discover
that she was detained

not on the authority of doctors
but of her own family.

Princess Alice didn't realise
it was her mother really

who had taken the responsibility
to put her in.

I think the answer is
she was extremely angry

when she found out,
because she didn't know that.

I can understand totally
how she would have felt betrayed.

I don't think she ever forgave
her mother for that, actually.

As the worst of Alice's
symptoms receded,

her mother finally agreed
to authorise her release.

Alice now determined
to turn her back on the family

that she felt had let down.

It must be obvious
to you and the whole family

as well as myself, that
I should not take up my former life.

For five years
Prince Philip's mother disappeared.

She became a nomad,
drifting around Germany

and lodging in a succession
of modest boarding houses.

But one person remembers her.

Almut Reuter was 11 years old
when an unusual guest

checked into the B&B hostel
run by her parents here in Cologne.

But the new resident
on Bachemer Strasse

wasn't quite what the landlady
and her daughter expected.

Alice was emerging
from her breakdown

with her intense
religious faith intact.

But as she regained her health,

her thoughts also returned
to her teenage son.

It would take a tragedy to bring
Alice and Philip back together.

In 1937, Alice's daughter, Cecile,

was killed in an air crash along
with her husband and three children.

At the funeral in Nazi Germany,
Alice was reunited with the family

for the first time in seven years.

And in the Princess, the family
recognised the Alice of old.

I think that the death of her
daughter Cecile was a real shock,

and seemed to sort of make her
feel once again that actually

she was needed and she should
be there to help her family.

Suddenly there she was again.

By the late 1930s,

Alice's three surviving daughters
were all married.

Their husband's
offices in Hitler's military.

But there was one of her children
whose future was still undecided.

Her son, Prince Philip.

In November 1938, with the
Greek monarchy restored to power,

Alice returned to Athens
for the first time since her exile.

And she wanted Philip
to be part of her new life.

"Dear Philip, I have taken
a small flat just for you and me.

"I found some furniture stored away
which I have not seen since 1917.

"I'm so looking forward
to your living in our flat."

But there was a difficulty.

During his mother's absence,

Philip had been growing up under
the wing of his ambitious uncle,

Lord Mountbatten.

He saw a bright future for Prince
Philip in Britain's Royal Navy.

For Prince Philip, it must have been
difficult when his mother reappeared.

She felt he should be a Prince of
Greece and get to know Athens better,

as there was a chance that
one day he might be King of Greece,

and that's what she had in mind.

And they didn't see that at all.

The 17-year-old Philip
had to choose

between an uncertain future
in Greece with his mother

and a promising naval career
in Britain.

I don't think the family were keen
that he go and live with his mother.

They would have felt that she
hadn't been around all those years.

A lot of people didn't
take her seriously,

they thought she was
just off on another of her kind of,

you know, fanciful idea trips.

It was a bit sad for her really
because again, she had not known

her son while he was growing up, and
by then, in a sense, it was too late.

In 1940, Adolf Hitler's armies
conquered Europe.

And in April 1941, the swastika
was raised over the Acropolis.

Alice now found herself alone
in Nazi-occupied Greece.

Her son fighting
in Britain's Royal Navy.

Britain now stood alone
against the Nazis.

Elizabeth, the future queen mother,

did her bit for the war effort,
visiting bombed-out Londoners.

But in occupied Athens,

Prince Philip's mother offered help
of a more practical kind.

She set to work
in a soup kitchen for the needy.

Then the food ran out.

Athens began to starve.

I do remember my father
being so worried about her,

because there she was
stuck in Athens,

great deprivation, very little food.

So my father was always
on the lookout

for any possibility of sending her
a food parcel or money.

Two or three times
there was an opportunity,

he heard of somebody who would
be able to get it through to her.

And so he sends it.

And was so exasperated
because she immediately gave it away.

And at the dining room table
or something he'd say,

"Ah, Alice is driving me dotty,
you know.

"I managed to send Commander
so-and-so,

"he's taking a package and
they're smuggling it through to her.

"What has she done? Given it away."

Every time he sent her something.

But Alice's greatest
act of charity was still to come.

In 1943, Nazi authorities in Greece

began the deportation of Jews
to death camps.

In the city of Salonika,
60,000 Jews were rounded up.

But a few escaped
and fled south to Athens.

Amongst them were the Cohens,

one of the country's
most prominent Jewish families

and old friends
of the Greek royal family.

When word of the Cohen's plight
reached Princess Alice,

she faced a terrible decision.

They were just passing
the residence of Princess Alice.

At the moment they passed,
at the very moment they passed,

a door opened and a lady in waiting
of Princess Alice came out.

She said to Tilde,
"We are looking for you,

we are looking for you
since yesterday, and Princess Alice

wants absolutely to see you
because she is ready to hide you."

And it was a miracle.

For more than a year,
Alice concealed the Cohens

on the top floor of her residence
in central Athens.

Discovery would have meant
certain death for them

and grave danger for Alice.

All the people who had hidden Jews,
it was at the risk of their own life.

She came every day.

She took tea with them and she
became very, very good friend.

The resourceful princess

even managed to turn
her disability into a weapon.

One day the Gestapo came

and they wanted to know
who lived in the residence.

Princess Alice didn't answer.

She said that she was deaf,
and she was deaf.

She had no fear.

She was very, very courageous.

Without her, without any doubt
they would have perished.

They would have perished completely.

And perished in...

In a very monstrous way.

Yes.

She has been...

She has been the angel of the family.

In 1944, Athens was liberated.

And with war over,

Alice was free to visit her son
for an important family occasion.

(TV ANNOUNCER) At Northolt Aerodrome,

our cameraman
meets Princess Alice of Greece.

The Princess is the mother
of Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten,

formerly Prince Philip of Greece.

While Princess Alice
had been stuck in Athens,

her son had fallen in love
with another Princess.

Princess Elizabeth
and Lieutenant Mountbatten

will never forget July 10th, 1947.

With his engagement
to the future Queen,

Philip's future
was decided once and for all.

(ANNOUNCER) Their Majesties the King
and Queen were followed by Queen Mary

and Princess Andrew of Greece,
the bridegroom's mother.

Alice had been prevented
from attending the weddings

of her four daughters.

This one she was not going to miss.

But there were some
who raised an eyebrow

at the bridegroom's
unconventional mother.

There were quite
a few people at court

who had reservations about him
because of his family.

Who was he? Where did he come from?

And in the run-up to
his engagement to Princess Elizabeth,

he was staying at Windsor Castle.

He was being shown around the castle
by a rather patronising courtier

who was giving him a rundown
of the history of the castle.

Prince Philip interrupted
the courtier and said,

"Yes, thank you very much,
I do know - my mother was born here."

Princess Alice of Greece, great
granddaughter of Queen Victoria,

was back under the roof
of the British Royal Family.

But the mother-in-law
to the future Queen

wasn't satisfied
to slip into a life of royal luxury.

As soon as the wedding was over,
she disappeared.

Prince Philip's 63-year-old mother

was about to unveil
her biggest shock yet.

In June 1953, the eyes of the world
were on London.

Heads of state and royals
from around the world

had gathered for the most glittering
state occasion

in living memory -
to see Queen Elizabeth crowned

with Prince Philip at her side.

(CROWD) God save the Queen!

God save The Queen.

But amongst the ermine,
the jewels and the gold braid,

there was one figure
who stood out from the rest.

Watch the coronation

and the camera, of course,

concentrates on the Royal party.

But behind comes another
solitary figure.

A nun in grey,

walking through the abbey.

Who is it?

Believe it or not,
it's Princess Alice.

The Duke of Edinburgh's mum.

# Mendel's Hallelujah Chorus

While the Royal Family had been
preparing for the coronation,

Princess Alice
had been hard at work,

founding her very own
religious order.

She called it The Sisterhood
of Martha and Mary.

In the poor suburb of Athens
where she built a convent

and an orphanage, still in use
as a community centre today,

Alice is still remembered.

When Princess Alice came to live
in our neighbourhood,

we thought that she was a princess
like the others, with the rich life.

When we see a woman very simple,

we changed our minds.
We saw that she was a nun.

It was very strange,

because you would have never known
a princess nun.

Alice's latest incarnation
was no sudden whim.

Ever since her frontline nursing
experience in the Balkan Wars,

she'd been drawn
to a life of service.

25 years after being locked up

for her unorthodox religious ideas,

Alice had finally found her calling.

She invited me to go
and stay in Athens

and she lived in a tiny apartment,

trying to catch novices
to enter her order.

She did it very seriously.

The young Greek girls
were very obedient.

There was one awful moment

that she was actually going
to inspect a hospital

and a nun was driving.

And Alice suddenly says,
"Left! Left here."

So, of course.
"Left here," she orders.

The wheel is turned,
left they go, into a blank wall.

They were both carried to
the hospital on wooden stretchers.

To fund her project, Alice had sold
off the last of her Royal jewellery

collection, much to the
dismay of family members.

Her religious fervour
continued to baffle.

My grandmother was a bit
sceptical about it.

I do remember her saying,

"Whoever heard of an abbess
who smoked and played canasta?"

But if some of the Royal Family
found it hard to take

Alice's faith seriously, to the poor
of Athens, she was a godsend.

I was an orphan and she embraced me
and kissed my head.

I was very proud.

From that moment, she called me,
"My little neighbour."

That woman could read your heart.

I must tell you something,
I try not to cry.

She gave me an idea.

I must offer something

as this woman offers.

And after many years, I went to the
Red Cross and became a volunteer.

In 1967, history repeated itself.

The Greek Royal Family was expelled
from Athens by a military coup.

Prince Philip's fiercely independent
mother refused to budge.

It took an aeroplane sent by Philip
and a special request

from the Queen herself to bring her
home to the land of her birth.

Alice moved into a small room
in Buckingham Palace.

After a lifetime separated

by madness, war and family politics,

Philip and his mother
were together at last.

So there was this strange granny

rattling round the Palace.

She insisted, apparently,
on calling him Bubbikins,

which had been her pet name
for him when he was a child.

They say that at Buckingham Palace,

you could always tell when she was
coming along the corridor,

because of the whiff
of woodbines in the air.

The idea of the Duke of Edinburgh's
mum walking the corridors

of Buckingham Palace,
dressed as a nun,

sucking on a woodbine.
It's wonderful, isn't it?

Just two years after being
reunited with her son,

Princess Alice died
at Buckingham Palace

on 5th December 1969.

Her only worldly possessions
were three dressing gowns.

Shortly before her death,
Alice wrote a farewell to her son.

'Dearest Philip.

'Be brave and remember

'I will never leave you.

'And you will always find me
when you need me most.

'All my devoted love,
your old Mama.'

But Prince Philip's mother

had one final surprise in store.

She told her family that she wanted
to be buried on the Mount of Olives.

Someone said, "Well, how are we going
to get there to visit the grave?"

She wouldn't even take the bus.

It would take two decades
for Prince Philip

to carry out his mother's
final wish.

In 1988, after years of negotiations

between church authorities,

Princess Alice's coffin
was flown to Jerusalem

and interred in the Orthodox
church on the Mount of Olives.

REPORTER: 'It was the first time
any member of the Royal Family

'has been to the state of Israel.'

Shortly afterwards, her son made

a pilgrimage to her grave

and accepted the highest possible
honour on her behalf

from the Jewish nation
for her courageous actions

during the Second World War.

She was a person
with a deep religious faith

and she would have considered it
to be a perfectly natural,

human reaction to
fellow beings in distress.

This is the place

where the remains of
Princess Alice are kept.

Here, across the valley,
just opposite where we're standing,

this is where the great judgement
is going to be

and all the three religions try

to be buried in this area.

That's why she's lying here
under our church

and I guess God had something
to do with it as well.

In the end, God is responsible
for everything,

so he probably arranged it. God.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd