A glamorous life in exile; who is Princess Katherine of Greece, as London property listed for £39.5m

A curious property in Belgravia has been listed on the property market for £39.5 million ($43.3 million USD); that might not seem like a big deal given how lucrative an area Belgravia is. But according to Tatler, there is some interesting royal history linked to the property on Eaton Square; history that includes Prince Philip and his Greek ties.

Tatler reports that the property boasts six bedrooms, palatial reception rooms and a gymnasium across six floors, but the history that the property has is one steeped in royal abdications and exile. So who was Princess Katherine of Greece and what are her links to the current Monarchy?

Known in the United Kingdom as Lady Katherine Brandram, the princess was born on May 4 1913 to King Constantine I of Greece and Princess Sophia of Prussia in the Royal Palace in Athens. She was born only a few weeks after the assassination of her grandfather, King George I of Greece, by Greek troops that had captured much of Greek Macedonia during the First Balkan War on March 13 1913. 

British royal lineage was already in her blood, as Princess Katherine was related to King George V through her paternal grandfather’s nephew and her maternal grandmother's nephew. The King of the United Kingdom would become one of her godparents alongside Olga Constantinovna (the Dowager Queen of Greece), Alexandra (the Dowager Queen of the United Kingdom), German Emperor Wilhelm II and both The Greek Navy and The Greek Army - represented by both the Minister of Marine and Minister of War respectively.

When the February Revolution took place in 1917, leading to the fall of the Russian Monarchy, then King Constantine I had run out of supporters within the annals of the Entente opposed to his removal from the throne, the king abdicated on June 11 1917, with his second-born son Alexander becoming king in his place. The Allied Powers were opposed to Constantine's first born son George becoming king, as he had served in the German army before the war and like his father was thought to be a Germanophile.

Princess Katherine moved to Sicily with her family after Constantine’s abdication, exile to Switzerland, return to take over the throne from Alexander after his death and second abduction in 1922. After Constantine’s death in 1923, she moved with her mother to Villa Sparta in Florence, where Katherine took up painting. It would be ten years later than Katherine would begin her first flirtations with living in the British Isles, studying at a boarding school at Broadstairs and then North Foreland Lodge.

She would return to Villa Sparta after her mother’s death in 1932, taking care of her sister Helen in Sophie’s absence, but still finding the time to become a bridesmaid at the royal wedding of  Princess Marina, to Prince George in 1934. You may know the other bridesmaid who was in attendance; the future Queen Elizabeth II; you may also know Katherine’s first cousin, one Philip Mountbatten, who would marry in 1947 to become Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Princess Katherine returned to Greece in 1939 and joined the Greek Red Cross when the Second World War broke out in 1939, before having to once again leave her country of birth once the Axis forces successfully invaded Greece in 1940. She fled to South Africa without any knowledge of what befell her sister Helen across the four years working as a nurse in the country before deciding to return to the United Kingdom in 1946, around the same time that her first cousin became secretly engaged to then Queen Elizabeth II.

This brings us to how the Belgravia estate comes into play; during her sail back to the United Kingdom on the RMS Ascania, she met Major Richard Campbell Brandram MC - an officer in the British Royal Artillery. Such was the whirlwind romance the both had while travelling back to Albion that the pair became engaged three weeks after arriving in England. Though much like her first cousin and fellow bridesmaid before, public knowledge of the royal engagement came a short time later.

On 25 August 1947, King George VI granted her the rank and title of a duke's daughter and she became known as Lady Katherine Brandram, her perhaps more well known title in the United Kingdom, and after her marriage to Major Brandram lived for a period of time at a property in Eaton Square, Belgravia. A six bedroom, front garden facing property in Belgravia with palatial reception rooms - the gyms didn’t appear until a refurbishment was undertaken by Nicky Haslam in 2003.

She died on 11 October 2007, being buried on the grounds of the Tatoi Palace in Greece; her death marked the end of all female-line direct descendants of Frederick III, German Emperor and Victoria, Princess Royal. So for the princely sum of £39.5 million, you get more than a property close to commuter links should you decide to put in an offer for the property - you also get a piece of history steeped in the Royal lineage of a number of bloodlines across Europe.