Life in Exile
The royal family settled in England, first at The Ritz in London, followed by a brief stay in the Sunninghill/south Ascot area in Berkshire in 1941 (near where Zog's nieces had been at school in Ascot). In 1941 they moved to Parmoor House, Parmoor, near Frieth in Buckinghamshire with some staff of the court living in locations around Lane End.
In 1946, King Zog and most of his family left England and went to live in Egypt at the behest of King Farouk, who was overthrown in 1952. The family left for France in 1955. In 1951, Zog bought the Knollwood estate in Muttontown, New York. The sixty-room estate was never occupied and Zog sold the estate in 1955.
He made his final home in France, where he died at the Hôpital Foch, Suresnes, Hauts-de-Seine on 9 April 1961, aged 65, after being seriously ill for some time. He was survived by his wife and son, and is buried at the Thiais Cemetery in Paris. On his death, his son Leka was pronounced H.M. King Leka of the Albanians by the exiled Albanian community.
His widow, Queen Geraldine, died of natural causes in 2002 at the age of 87 in a military hospital in Tirana, Albania. Albania's communist rulers abolished the monarchy in 1946, but, even in exile, the royal family insisted that Leka Zogu was Albania's legitimate ruler until his death on 30 November 2011.
Read more about this topic: Zog Of Albania
Famous quotes containing the words life in, life and/or exile:
“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort—to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires—and expires, too soon, too soon—before life itself.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.”
—Gail Sheehy (20th century)
“The bond between a man and his profession is similar to that which ties him to his country; it is just as complex, often ambivalent, and in general it is understood completely only when it is broken: by exile or emigration in the case of one’s country, by retirement in the case of a trade or profession.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)