The Queen was head Edinburgh was very
IT was November 14, 1948, and the nation was in a state of jubilation. Almost a year had passed since the wedding of the dashing young Naval officer Philip Mountbatten and the beautiful Princess Elizabeth and the couple were celebrating the birth of their first child. Charles Philip Arthur George had made his way into the world at Buckingham Palace, the first royal birth since the 17th century that was not witnessed by a government minister.
The fountains in Trafalgar Square turned blue to signify it was a boy. Mother and son were both doing well.And the father? He was playing squash. But there were very few fathers in delivery rooms, back then.
It was the beginning of Philip’s life as a family man and if it seemed a novelty, then well it might do, given his own extraordinary childhood.Abandoned by both parents, effectively homeless from the age of nine, he led a peripatetic existence, bundled between various relations to whom he was packed off during the holidays.
The only constant was Gordonstoun, the tough Scottish boarding school, where he thrived. He went on to send all three of his sons there, with rather more mixed results. But his motives were both clear and laudatory: any son of his should grow up to be a manly man, in his own mould.
“I want Charles to be a man’s man,” was a very oft-repeated phrase. Prince Charles, though, loathed the school. “Colditz in kilts,” he once said.
The desire to turn boys into men led him to give Prince Charles a cricket bat for his first birthday but in the years to come there were reports that tensions grew as Charles turned out to be a far more sensitive boy than his father.
It should be noted that from the very fulsome and touching tributes the Prince paid to his father this week, those tensions are clearly long gone.Anne, now the Princess Royal, was born two years later: she grew up to be tough, uncompromising and a brilliant sportswomen. Out of the four children, it is ironic that the only girl is the one whose character is said most closely to resemble her father’s. She was also sent to boarding school, in her case Benenden, before turning into an Olympic-class eventer. Prince Philip clearly revelled in it. “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested,” he once remarked.
In 1952, when Charles was four and Anne two, the Queen ascended the throne. Much has been made of the macho side to Philip’s character, but with the hugely increased demands on his wife’s time, his actual behaviour in those early days pointed to
characteristics that would now be seen as denoting a new man.
Elizabeth II was busy reigning, so it was Philip who played with the children before bedtime, with games such as hide and seek inWindsor Castle.
And critics of his fathering methods should read the following: on the Royal Yacht Britannia, with the young Charles and
Anne, he would get the crew to take frozen trout from the freezer. He would then get the children to dangle rods from their portholes. Down below, the crew would quietly attach the fish to the rods and the unsuspecting children would haul in their “catch”: it was years before they realised you did not catch frozen fish from the sea.
A decade was to elapse before Prince Andrew was born in 1960, followed four years later by Prince Edward, both of whom were also sent to tough old Gordonstoun. Only Andrew thrived there.
It is commonly accepted that they both received more quality time with their
‘His motives were clear and laudatory: Any son of his should grow up to be a manly man, in his own mould’