EDEN CONFIDENTIAL: How drink doomed Princess's love affair with Richard Burton

Daily Mail​

9 hours ago

Born in a palace, she speaks five languages, has been married three times – once to a former prime minister – numbers Dynasty star Catherine Oxenberg among her children and invariably has tea with her cousin, King Charles, whenever she's in England.
But it was her love affair with Richard Burton, five decades ago, which propelled Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia to global attention – an episode about which she has remained silent ever since. Until now, that is.
Speaking from Belgrade, where she has lived since 2002, Princess Elizabeth tells me that she can now look back on that time with some amusement. But the details, which appear in her memoir, newly published in Serbian, offer a harrowing glimpse of a man obliterating his talent and health with alcohol.
The Princess had first set eyes on Burton at the height of his powers, years before they met socially.
'He was playing Hamlet. He sat on the stage, dressed in black,' she tells me, remembering how she had been transfixed – by his 'blue eyes… shining' and by his voice. 'It was mesmerising. Absolutely extraordinary.'
That might have been the last she saw of him, had it not been for a dinner given by David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Lord Harlech. Burton and Taylor were among the guests.
'Richard got very drunk and threw up in the champagne bucket,' Elizabeth, who was then married to her second husband, British financier Neil Balfour, recalls.
This might have served as a warning. But it did not. The Princess found Burton – the son of a Welsh-speaking miner from Glamorgan – as mesmerising as before. Weeks after his divorce from Taylor, they announced their engagement.
But the Princess soon learned that Taylor hadn't bidden farewell to Burton. 'She used to call me Elisheva – the Hebrew version of my name,' recalls Elizabeth.
Burton's drinking was infinitely more challenging. 'I had to put him in a clinic in Switzerland. He was so drunk that I thought he was going to die. I called up the ambulance and got them to drug him and drag him off. He was surrounded by a lot of ugly male nurses which didn't please him at all.'
He recovered sufficiently to fly to Nice to work on a film. At his insistence, a part for his Princess was written into the script. But it was a hopeless gesture. 'He was drinking all the time. We had to go through fourteen takes for him to get his lines right – which were a matter of five words.'
Elizabeth flew back to London, putting an end to their engagement. The film, Jackpot, was never finished. But it seems that, at 89, Elizabeth may star in a film of her own.
'They've written a script [based on my memoir],' explains the Princess, who is now seeking an English publisher – a quest which, I trust, will not be too much of a struggle...
Interview by Marcus Scriven
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Very fair.
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Keep it to yourself, but...
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