MICHAEL OF ROMANIA. THE KING AND THE COUNTRY
by Ivor Porter
Sutton Publishing
Hard cover, 234 x 156mm, 352 pages, 16 b&w illustrations
ISBN: 0750938471
Book No: S38471
Price: £20.00
You can purchase this book from Hatchard’s bookshop, 187 Piccadilly, London, W1J 9LE, Tel. 020 7439 9921
Also available online from www.amazon.co.uk or
www.suttonpublishing.co.uk
This is the first biography of King Michael of Romania for many years. Based on royal archives, Queen Helen’s unpublished diaries, sources in Romania, and interviews with King Michael, Queen Anna and Crown Princess Margarita, it integrates the story of Michael with that of the country which he once ruled, and which he once tried to save. Michael was the only constitutional monarch to have led his people in person during the Second World War. After refusing to be a puppet to give legitimacy to the regime Hitler had set up in Romania, personally protesting against Jewish massacres, he led a coup d’etat against the Germans which shortened the war and postponed the communist dictatorship of his country. For three years, from 1944-7, with the Soviet army in occupation, the Western Allies unable to help, and the two main democratic parties virtually destroyed, he hung on grimly to some degree of constitutional democracy until Stalin showed his hand. Exiled after the war for fifty years, Michael continued to be regarded with affection and support by the Romanian people. When he returned in 1996 he told them, as no communist leader would dare to do, ‘I love you. Don’t forget that.
Ivor Porter was brought up in the Lake District and educated at Barrow-in-Furness Grammar School and Leeds University. In 1939 he was sent to Romania as a British Council lecturer at Bucharest University but was transferred to the British Legation soon after the war broke out. The Legation withdrew in February 1941 when it became clear that Romania would become an ally of Germany.
He was recruited by SOE and became one of a three-man delegation led by Colonel Gardyne de Chastelain sent into Romania in December 1943 to persuade the Resistance to break with the Germans at any cost. They were dropped in thick mist too far from the target, were arrested, imprisoned and released on the night of King Michael’s coup d’état of 23 August 1944.
Ivor Porter joined the Foreign Office in May 1946. and served in Washington, India, Cyprus, the delegation to NATO in Paris and was Ambassador in West Africa and the Geneva Arms Control Committee. Since retirement he has revived his interest in Romania and in 1989 published Operation Autonomous: with SOE in wartime Romania.
In 1961 he married Katerina Cholerton. They have a son and daughter, live in London and usually spend part of the year at their house in Provence.
