Fit for duty
As newspapers around the world print photographs illustrating the late Duke of Edinburgh’s extraordinary — and extraordinarily long — life, it is striking just how little he had changed.
Whether in his Navy uniform as a dashing young officer, in fine tailoring working and parenting in middle age or, in recent years, as wise patriarch to a family that included four children, eight grandchildren and a growing brood of great-grandchildren, the Duke might have aged, but physically he remained upright, lean and strong.
Piccadilly tailors Kent & Haste, who made garments for the 6ft (1.83m)-tall Duke for more than half a century, once confirmed his physical constancy by noting that they barely had to alter a stitch over the years.
“He was a 31in waist when I first measured him, and he’s now only a 34,” John Kent told The Telegraph in 2017. “That’s incredible. I’ve never had to let out any of his clothes.” Another tailor claimed the Duke was still able to fit into his wedding day uniform some seven decades after he first wore it.
As with so many aspects of his life, consistency and discipline were key to the Duke’s diet and fitness regime, and it never let him down. In later years, as concerns about his health became more frequent, his name tended to appear alongside the word “unaided”. Astonishingly, to the end — even three months short of his 100th birthday — he never required the use of a stick or frame.
Much has already been written about how the Duke’s values — particularly selfdeprecation and service — embodied a generation that made Britain great. But having stayed in such fine fettle, there is a case to be made for him acting as ambassador for the leanest, fittest generation of Britons, too.
Born in the 1920s and valiant contributors to the war effort, this cohort built health and fitness habits that lasted a lifetime, often allowing them to be active well into their 90s. Just look at the late Captain Sir Tom Moore: a fellow serviceman born a year earlier than
the Duke in 1920, and able to walk 100 laps of his garden (not to mention the gruelling media rounds that followed) at the end of his 100th year.
Life expectancy across Europe is deteriorating. Despite advances in medicine, nutrition and exercise, recent data from Public Health England showed the biggest fall in Britain since World War II, and the coronavirus pandemic was only one factor in that. It means that the average life expectancy at birth for men in 2020 dropped by 1.3 years to 78.7, and by 0.9 years for women to 82.7, compared to 2019 — the largest decline since 1939-40.
It’s possible, then, that the Duke’s generation really will end up our fittest ever. Long before the eruption of the sprawling, often contradictory, “wellness industry”, his cohort simply identified the basics and stuck to them. We could all learn a thing or two.