Yes Jocasta, and we don't even need to wonder if they are still in the current Royal Family - they have been proven within the last couple of generations.

King George V ( reigned 1910 - 1936 ) had 5 sons - Edward VIII, George VI, Henry, Duke of Gloucester, George, Duke of Kent and Prince John .

Prince John, the youngest son, was kept out of the public eye for the whole of his short life. He was known to be an epileptic, but details of his illness have never been made public. As it happens, a dramatisation of his life and times, "The Lost Prince" is currently being aired at prime time on BBC TV in the UK. The Palace are reputed to be displeased about the whole thing.

The Duke of Gloucester, uncle to the present queen, had two sons, Prince William of Gloucester, and Prince Richard of Gloucester. Prince Richard is the current Duke of Gloucester. Prince William of Gloucester died in the 1970s when he was flying a light aircraft which crashed. However he had already been diagnosed as suffering from porphyria - a direct link back to the madness of George III.

As regards Prince Phillip. Although he does at times seem to be suffering from a strange variety of Tourette's Syndrome - whereby he has a compulsion to pass racist comments anytime he sees someone of non-caucasian appearence, I do think that you have to rememnber that he is very much a product of his time and his class. Brought up in the tough regime of Gordonstoun School, and the Royal Navy, he's a man who was used to having his own way, to being obeyed. It can't have been easy for him having what was , on his part, an arranged marriage forced upon him by his Uncle, Earl Mountbatten, finding that he is constrained by protocol to walk three paces behind her, and finding that his children cannot even use his surname.Not that Mountbatten, strictly speaking, IS his original surname - which is something more like Schleswig - Holstein- Sonderburg - Glucksberg . But that, as they say, is another story -