The Royal refugees

Britain provided a convenient bolthole for many European monarchs as the Nazis marched across the continent... with some diplomatically ticklish consequences

- By Christopher Wilson

HOMELESS king dropped in once a week to collect his laundry. Another exiled monarch sat motionless in the Palace gardens day after day, stunned by the destruction of her country.

Other kings brought their wives, while one preferred to bring his mistress. This was wartime Buckingham Palace - unofficial. Just a step away, Queen Camilla's great-grandmother sat sipping champagne and boasting of her miraculous escape from the enemy. While quietly, imperceptibly, lesser royals jockeyed for position in the post-war pecking order.

The palace was a second home to them all. Or almost all - one monarch was turned away because of his outrageously criminal activities. Meantime safe in her country retreat, the almost-criminal Queen Mary, mother of the king, broke wartime regulations with impunity. We all know the story of the royals at war the bombs, the Queen looking the East End in the eye, King George valiantly overcoming his stutter to address the nation.

But in the roar and dust of the Blitz many events went unnoticed, and remain virtually unknown to this day. With the invasion of Europe crowned heads fled their countries to the sanctuary of London, gathering under the protective umbrella of their fellow-monarch King George VI.

King Peter of Yugoslavia, a mere kid of 17 when his country was overrun, had the disadvantage of having a gun-toting busybody, Queen Maria, for a mother. So intensely was Maria disliked that, though long-established in London with her lesbian lover Rosemary Cresswell, she was never invited to the Palace. It wasn't her sexuality which barred her but her loud mouth.