NATIONAL TREASURE
He always said his job, first, second, and last, was to support the Queen and 72 years later he’s still doing it
AS PRINCE PHILIP marks his 99th birthday today at a low-key lunch with the Queen at Windsor Castle, where they are in lockdown together, he won’t be too sorry about missing out on the grand celebration he might have had. He may be the longest living royal consort in British history, and his children may regret not being able to give him a hug, as Prince Charles confessed last week, but the Duke of Edinburgh is not a man to enjoy being fussed over. Although he has apparently accepted that next year, for his centenary, he is just going to have to put up with it.
Philip retired from public duties in 2017 and from driving last year after crashing his Land Rover into a car, but his carriage driving horses are still on standby, should he feel the urge to frighten his family and pick up the reins post lockdown.
He was still putting his horses through their paces occasionally early last year, though he has not been seen with them in 2020. But it is perhaps testament to the Duke’s attitude to his staff that the female groom employed to care for them is still employed, even though the chances of him ever taking part in the sport again are slim.
“He keeps the groom there out of a sense of loyalty and duty,” a regular visitor to Windsor says. It’s a loyalty that has won him many admirers down the years. A case in point is a story that emerged a few years ago of him helping out a police officer standing guard near his room one night.
A colleague rang to tip off the officer that an inspector with a fearsome reputation was on his way to check up on him.
“Be careful. He’s a right b ***** d,” the caller said, not realising he had accidentally rung the Duke’s bedroom.
PHILIP is said to have put down the phone, walked out on to the landing and informed the guard that the inspector was on the way, adding: “He’s a right b ***** d, apparently.”
It’s well known that he does not suffer fools gladly and, as a Royal Navy veteran, expects a certain amount of respect for seniority, but that has never interfered with his sense of humour.
In February 2014, I was in Aldershot to cover him watching a football match between guardsmen and non-commissioned officers at the headquarters of the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards.
As he stood chatting to a group of sergeants, a chubby soldier who was struggling was substituted and stood at the side of the pitch, bent over double, trying to summon enough energy to walk off.
“Are you all right?” Philip asked. “No, I’m f **** d,” the soldier said, still bent over, unaware who had asked him the question.
Mortified officers immediately formulated plans to discipline the offender. But Philip laughed his head off and was still chuckling five minutes later as the soldier realised what he’d done and sheepishly crept off the pitch.
Of course, he has a fair bit of experience himself of saying the wrong thing to the wrong person, although most of his gaffes were just clumsy attempts to put people at ease and inject a bit of humour.
But sometime around the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee year in 2012, the high water mark of the second Elizabethan Age, we began to see him as a national treasure whose waspish remarks were enjoyed by journalists and public alike.
His reputation took a battering again in January last year after that awful car crash near Sandringham. But now, as he enters his 100th year, we can put into context the amazing contribution he has made to the nation over his long years of service. The Duke gave up a promising naval career in 1951 to devote his life to supporting his wife, as the health of her father, King George VI, deteriorated. He was born royal himself, a member of both the Greek and Danish royal families, but he had a nomadic upbringing after his family were forced to flee their Corfu home in 1922.
Philip had a difficult childhood. He grew up penniless and his parents, Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice of Battenberg, split up. But he was saved when he enrolled in Dartmouth Naval College, thanks to the influence of his uncle Louis Mountbatten. It was there, as an 18-year-old cadet, that he was asked to chaperone the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth during a royal visit in 1939. He flirted shamelessly, they stayed in touch and the resulting romance led to their marriage eight years later.
Meanwhile, Philip served with distinction in the Royal Navy during the Second World War on ships in the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, and the Pacific. At the Battle of Cape Matapan in March 1941, he was mentioned in dispatches for spotting an unexpected enemy vessel.
On a drab day in November 1947, he and Princess Elizabeth walked down the aisle, lighting up ration-hit and bomb-damaged Britain and creating one of the century’s greatest marriages.
Always the head of the family at home, for the next 70 years he played a subordinate role in public, usually walking one step behind his wife with arms folded behind his back. Throughout most of those years, he
was one of the busiest royals annually, clocking up more than 22,000 solo engagements, 5,000 speeches, and representing more than 750 charities or other bodies as their patron, and making 637 official visits to 143 countries. His first solo engagement, according to Buckingham Palace, was on March 2, 1948, when at the age of 26 he presented prizes at the London Federation of Boys’ Clubs Boxing Finals at the Royal Albert Hall.
When the Queen acceded to the throne in 1952, he was thrown in at the deep end with no real training for the job. At a time when most men were the main breadwinners, he found himself searching for a role. “There were plenty of people telling me what not to do,” he recalled in a conversation with his biographer Gyles Brandreth. “I had to try to support the Queen without getting in the way.”
He accompanied her on engagements around the world and took on his own patronages, often focusing on issues that interested him personally, such as science and technology, conservation, and nature. Behind the scenes, he also proved to be an arch-moderniser of the monarchy, encouraging his wife to sweep away outmoded traditions such as debutantes’ balls at Buckingham Palace.
Among his greatest achievements has been helping to transform the lives of millions of youngsters through his Duke of Edinburgh’s Awards, encouraging adventurous activities for 14 to 24-year-olds. Inspired by his time at Gordonstoun school and its headmaster Dr Kurt Hahn, he created in 1956 a scheme that has given millions of young people across 144 nations the chance to gain bronze, silver and gold awards. It has not, however, changed his view of young people. At a Buckingham Palace event to mark the 50th anniversary of the scheme in 2006, I asked him if he had noticed great changes in young people in that time. I was expecting him to talk about how the modern generation was less hardy and adventurous, perhaps more mollycoddled but he replied: “Not really.They’re still ignorant.”
He has witnessed world history in the making and met just about anyone who was anyone over the past seven decades, from astronauts to presidents, prime ministers, record-breaking sports legends, and Hollywood stars.
At a Buckingham Palace reception to launch the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, Philip asked a young woman near me. “Where are you from?”
“Tanzania,” she replied. “Oh, I liberated Tanzania,” he said drily.
Sure enough, old newsreel footage shows the Duke representing the Queen at the then nation of Tanganyika’s independence celebrations in December, 1961.
Throughout it all, he has tried to remain loyal to the Queen. His first ever private secretary, Michael Parker, a friend from the Navy, once revealed: “He told me the first day he offered me my job that his job, first, second and last, was never to let her down.”
Seventy-two years later, he’s still doing that job.