After the Second World War, war crimes prosecutors charged two of King George VI's closest German relatives with 'crimes against humanity'. American soldiers discovered top-secret documents at Marburg Castle that exposed treacherous family double-dealing inside the Royal Family. Two of the King's brothers had flirted dangerously with the Nazi regime in duplicitous games of secret diplomacy.

To avert a potential public relations catastrophe, George VI hid incriminating papers and, with Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt's help, whitewashed history to protect his family. Three of Philip Mountbatten's sisters were banned from Westminster Abbey and the wedding of their brother to Princess Elizabeth because their husbands were senior Nazi officers.

This dilemma was Queen Victoria's fatal legacy: she had hoped to secure peace in Europe through a network of royal marriages, but her plan backfired with two world wars.

Tea With Hitler is a family saga of duty, courage, wilful blindness and criminality, revealing the tragic fate of a Saxe-Coburg princess murdered as part of the Nazi euthanasia programme and the story of Queen Victoria's Jewish great-grand-daughter, rescued by her British relatives.

A revelatory look at how the British royal family became divided by two world wars

About the Author
Dean Palmer has worked in television as a producer and executive producer for the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Sony Pictures and NBC-Universal. He is the author of The Queen and Mrs Thatcher (THP, 2015).


Book Information
ISBN 9780750995641
Author Dean Palmer
Format Hardback
Imprint The History Press Ltd
Publisher The History Press Ltd