Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy Biography

Princess Alexandra was born as Alexandra Helen Elizabeth Olga Christabel on December 25, 1936 in Belgrave Square, London, England to Prince George, Duke of Kent and Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark. Her father was the fourth son of King George V and Queen Mary, while her mother was the youngest daughter of Prince Nicholas of Greece and Denmark and Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna of Russia.

She received the stylized prefix Her Royal Highness as a male-line granddaughter of the British monarch and was sixth in the line of succession to the British throne at the time of her birth. She was baptized in the Private Chapel of Buckingham Palace, on February 9, 1937, in the presence of her godparents King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, and the Earl of Athlone.

While most of her childhood was spent at her family's country house, Coppins, in Buckinghamshire, she lived at Badminton with her grandmother, Queen Mary, the widow of George V, during World War II. Her father, who served in the Royal Air Force, was killed in an airplane crash in Caithness, Scotland, on August 25, 1942, when she was only five.

She was the first British princess to have attended a boarding school, Heathfield School near Ascot. She later studied in Paris and also trained at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Princess Alexandra was married to The Hon. Angus James Bruce Ogilvy, the second son of David Ogilvy, 12th Earl of Airlie and Lady Alexandra Coke, at Westminster Abbey on April 24, 1963. The wedding ceremony, officiated by Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey, was broadcast worldwide on television and was watched by an estimated 200 million people.

The pair lived in the Thatched House Lodge in Richmond Park in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames in London, England, where they welcomed two children: son James and daughter Marina. Because her husband declined the Queen's offer to be created an earl upon marriage, their children carry no titles, but after Ogilvy was knighted in 1988, she assumed the style of The Hon. Lady Ogilvy.

She also has four grandchildren, two each from her two children, but it caused a rift between her and her daughter Marina after the latter became pregnant before marriage. Princess Alexandra had suggested that she either married her companion or had an abortion, but when she refused, Marina’s trust fund and monthly allowance were cut off, which she revealed to a tabloid.

Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy is one of the most active members of the royal family who carried out extensive program of engagements in support of the Queen starting in the late 1950s. The Alexandra Waltz was composed by radio announcer Russ Tyson and television musical director Clyde Collins to commemorate her extensive tour of Australia in 1959, when the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane was also named.

Two years later, during her trip to Hong Kong, she visited Aberdeen Fish Market, Lok Ma Chau police station and So Uk Estate, a public housing complex. While she returned to Australia for a private holiday in 1967, she also carried out engagements in Canberra and Melbourne during the visit.

She acted as the Queen’s representative when Nigeria gained its independence from the United Kingdom on 1 October 1960 and opened the first Parliament on October 3. In later years, she made overseas tours to Canada, Italy, Oman, Hungary, Norway, Japan, Thailand, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands.

She launched the New Zealand Leander-class frigate HMNZS Waikato at Harland and Wolff, Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1965. She went on to open the Victoria to Brixton section of London Underground's Victoria line on 23 July 1971.

The Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex, which was opened by her on April 27, 1965, was named in her honor. Recently in September 2019, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust to be part of the government's new health infrastructure program to build a new hospital.

She was the first Chancellor of the University of Mauritius and was Chancellor of Lancaster University from its foundation in 1964 until 2004, when she relinquished the post and was awarded an honorary Music degree. She was an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, Faculty of Anæsthetists of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and the Royal College of Physicians.

She is a patron of the Blackie Foundation Trust, a charity dedicated to the promotion of research and education in homoeopathy and a patron of the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals. She is also a patron at the English National Opera, the London Philharmonic Choir, the Florence Nightingale Foundation, the not-for-profit housing association Anchor, the charity Independent Age, and St Christopher's Hospice in Sydenham, England.

She further patronizes Core, a National charity in London, the Nature in Art Trust, and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), which is the oldest drama school in the English-speaking world. She has sponsored the Royal Alexandra Children's Hospital in Brighton since 1954 and is the royal patron of the charity, Children and Families Across Borders (CFAB).

In November 2016, one month before Princess Alexandra’s 80th birthday, Queen Elizabeth II held a reception at Buckingham Palace in honor of the work of Alexandra's charities. Previously, during the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012, the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama in London, which is under her patronage, received its royal style.

Princess Alexandra was named after her paternal great-grandmother, Queen Alexandra; her grandmother, Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna of Russia; her maternal aunts, Countess Elizabeth of Törring-Jettenbach and Princess Olga of Yugoslavia; and after the Christmas Day. She was last to be born under the tradition of having the Home Secretary present to verify the birth of potential heirs to the throne and then-Home Secretary John Simon was present at her birth.