A life in the spotlight,
ON A MILESTONE DAY FOR PRINCE PHILIP, HIS BIOGRAPHER GYLES BRANDRETH RECALLS AN UNSTUFFY, HANDS- ON CHARACTER CRACKLING WITH ENERGY
Wednesday marked the end of an era. Prince Philip, 96, t he longestserving royal consort in history, undertook his final solo public engagement. It was 70 years since he became Duke of Edinburgh upon his marriage to Princess Elizabeth in November 1947, and 64 years since he succeeded his l ate f ather- i n- l aw, King George VI, as Captain General of the Royal Marines in June 1953.
Being on parade, taking the salute, fundraising — that has been his life for seven decades, as consort to the sovereign and founder, fellow, patron, president, chairman, or member of at least 837 organizations; as well as Captain General, Colonel or Colonel- in- Chief, Field Marshal, Admiral, and Air Commodore 42 times over.
It has been a strange life and not what he expected. If George VI had lived to the age the Queen is now, 91, Prince Philip wouldn’t have become the sovereign’s consort until he was 65. He could have pursued his own career. In 1939, he graduated from the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, top of his year. During the Second World War, he was mentioned in dispatches for his part in the Battle of Cape Mapatan. Lord Lewin (Chief of the Defence Staff at the time of the Falklands conflict), who served as a midshipman with the Prince in the 1940s, told me that “without question” had he stayed in the Navy he would have gone “right to the top.”
“No,” said Philip firmly, when I put Lewin’s suggestion to him. “Given the way of the British press, I wouldn’t have got very far. Every promotion would have been seen as me being treated as a special case.”
In the event, it was not to be. George VI died aged only 56 in February 1952 “and that effectively brought my naval career to an end.” Was it a disappointment? “You have to make compromises. That’s life. I accepted it. I tried to make the best of it.”
That is what he has been doi ng ever since. “When King George died,” I once asked him, “did you know what to expect?” “No,” he replied. “There were plenty of people telling me what not to do. ‘ You mustn’t interfere with this. Keep out.’ I had to try to support the Queen as best I could, without getting in the way.
“I did my own thing. I got involved in organizations where I thought I could be useful. The Federation of London Boys’ Clubs, the Royal Yachting Association, the MCC ( Marylebone Cricket Club). Of course, so long as they were going all right, there wasn’t much for me to do. But if an organization was going bankrupt or had some crisis, then I’d help. The fundraising never stops.”
I got to know him 40 years ago, when I became a volunteer fundraiser for the National Playing Fields Association, the first national charity he took on after his marriage.
What struck me most was how unstuffy and hands- on he was. He crackled with energy. He cut through the flannel. He stuck to the details. “Who are we meeting and what are they good for?” Greeting a crowd of potential donors at a Buckingham Palace reception he would quip, “Welcome to the shearing shed!” He was always on top of his brief, consistently funny, persistently challenging (“We don’t have to agree about everything all the time, do we?”), occasionally irascible ( mostly with photographers), and frequently politically incorrect — although I never once heard him make an even faintly homophobic or racist remark. On the contrary, I recall a private dinner where a friend of his was telling a joke with racist undertones, and the Duke cut him off mid- sentence. He can be quite frightening.
Napoleon Bonaparte used to say that if you want to understand a man, you have got to remember what the world was like in the year he turned 21.
Philip turned 21 in 1942, at the height of the Second World War. Two of his grandchildren, Princes William and Harry, have recently spoken publicly about the emotional effect on them of their mother’s death, 20 years ago. The Duke’s childhood was also blighted. His parents split up before he was 10. His mother suffered a breakdown and was incarcerated in an asylum in Switzerland, while his father moved to the south of France. As a teenager, Philip rarely saw them and endured a peripatetic existence travelling between his sisters’ homes in Germany, and relations in England. He never complains about it. He never talks about it. You wouldn’t expect him to. He reflects his generation, just as his grandsons (who turned 21 in the Noughties) reflect theirs.
The Duke of Edinburgh does not wear his heart on his sleeve, nor does he show his emotions in public. There is no photograph anywhere to be found of him and the Queen holding hands. At his wife’s Coronation, he made a commitment to be her “liegeman for life” and he has stuck by it, unfailingly. As the Queen once said, “He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years.”
If you asked him for his key achievements, beyond the support he has given to the Queen, he would shrug his shoulders and wave his hand dismissively. If he is reading this (he does not, as a rule, read anything about himself ), he would be pleased and surprised if we found space to mention his years of commitment to the World Wide Fund for Nature and the International Equestrian Federation, his initiative in setting up the Commonwealth Study Conferences and his long- standing commitment to science and technology ( the creation of the National Fellowship in Engineering is just one of his unacknowledged successes). He is a quite remarkable man who has spent a lifetime trying to make a positive, practical, pragmatic contribution to the life of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.
And alongside the specific projects that, one hopes, have given him the satisfaction of a job well done, his chief achievement, I think, is to have endured it all; to have survived seven decades of royal flummery, parades, processions, receiving lines, receptions, lunches, dinners ( each one a little different; each one essentially the same) — upwards of 23,000 official engagements in the U. K., and more than 620 visits to 143 countries overseas. He has measured out his life in handshakes and banter designed ( as he has put it) “to break the ice” and consequently occasionally leading to those “gaffes” so gleefully reported.
And now it is over, will he miss it? He won’t miss the Royal Variety Performance. He won’t miss the media attention. “I am not going to write an autobiography,” he told me. “I don’t spend a l ot of time l ooking back.” He will have more time to read ( history, biography, very little fiction); he will keep up his carriage driving ( he is only 96 after all); he will visit family and friends — “the ones who are still alive,” he says wryly.
He won’t disappear from public view altogether. He will still be on parade when he thinks the Queen would like it. At the age of 96, one can’t ignore the fact that he will die eventually, but I reckon it won’t be for a few years yet. I have a hunch that he won’t go until the Queen does. He is conscious of his duty — and he is stubborn that way.
YOU HAVE TO MAKE COMPROMISES. THAT’S LIFE. I ACCEPTED IT.