Prince George, Duke of Kent

The better known of his lovers included cabaret singer Florence Mills, banking heiress Poppy Baring, socialite Margaret Whigham (later Duchess of Argyll and involved in a notoriously scandalous divorce case), Barbara Cartland (who believed him to be the father of her daughter Raine McCorquodale) and musical star Jessie Matthews. There were "strong rumors" that he had an affair with Noël Coward. The security services "reported that Coward and Kent had been seen parading together through the streets of London, dressed and made up as women, and had once been arrested by the police for suspected prostitution", a relationship which Coward's long-term boyfriend, Graham Payn, denied.

The Duke of Kent is said to have been addicted to drugs (notably morphine and cocaine) – a weakness which his brother the Prince of Wales was deputed to cure him of during the latter part of the 1920s – and reportedly was blackmailed by a male prostitute to whom he wrote intimate letters. Another of his reported sexual liaisons was with his distant cousin Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia; art historian Anthony Blunt was reputedly another intimate. The duke courted Crown Princess Juliana of the Netherlands without success.

In addition to his legitimate children, the duke is said to have had a son by Kiki Preston (née Alice Gwynne, 1898–1946), an American socialite whom he reportedly shared in a ménage à trois with Jorge Ferrara, the bisexual son of the Argentine ambassador to the Court of St James's. Read Less