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Prince Alexander of Teck 1894.
Alexander Augustus Frederick William
Alfred George, Prince of Teck was born
in Kensington Palace on 14th April
1874. His father was Prince Francis,
Duke of Teck, and his mother Mary
Adelaide, a granddaughter of George
III and cousin of Queen Victoria. His
parents were inveterate spenders and fled
their debtors in the UK for two years,
leaving the young prince at Eton. When
they returned in 1885, his mother, rather
unkindly known as ‘fat Mary’, devoted her life to charitable causes and was a patron of Dr Barnardo’s. His sister, Mary, married the future King George V in 1893 and, the following year, Alexander was commissioned from Sandhurst into the 7th Hussars.
In action as a subaltern in the Second Matabele War in what is now Zimbabwe, he was promoted to captain in 1900 and commanded a squadron of his regiment in the Boer War, for which he was awarded the DSO in 1901. Married in 1904 and promoted to major in 1911, he spent the early part of the Great War commanding 2nd Life Guards in France. Promoted to acting brigadier, he then served as the head of mission to the Belgian Army, for which he was invested as a CMG.
During the war, anti-German sentiment led to the king changing the name of the royal family from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor. Similarly, the Tecks renounced all their German titles and took the family name of Cambridge. In 1917, Alexander Cambridge was created Earl of Athlone by the king in recognition of his war service. At the end of hostilities, the earl resumed his close association with Middlesex Hospital and chaired a committee studying the needs of doctors, which resulted in the establishment of post-graduate schools for medical education and research, such as the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
In December 1923, the king promoted Alexander to major-general and made him governor-general of the Union of South Africa. Almost immediately, a general election saw James Herzog’s National Party take power. Herzog, a republican, presided over a rise in nationalism and calls for secession from the British Empire. However, the earl
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