The sun on his face, a rug on his lap, and last precious days with his Lilibet
In tender detail, the duke’s final weeks as he neared 100
FOR the Queen there was one saving grace: that she and Prince Philip were together at the end. After more than seven decades of their lives entwined in both love and duty, this may be the smallest of consolations.
His austerely decorated bedroom overlooking the East Terrace at Windsor Castle was still linked by the dressing room that gives on to his wife’s more comfortably furnished suite.
But it was his physical presence – so reassuring in the aftermath of so much family drama – from which in recent weeks she has drawn strength.
No longer the decisive man of action who had devoted a lifetime to supporting her, she was now able to repay him.
Domestic timetables such as mealtimes were torn up to accommodate him when he felt he was strong enough to join her.
Even with failing health signalling that his life was drawing to a close, the two were still able to enjoy time with each other as they always had.
In recent weeks he would often sleep for much of the day, but there were moments of great lucidity and joyful togetherness.
One such moment came when he dropped his reading glasses. A footman in attendance leapt forward to pick them up.
‘Never mind,’ the duke said, raising his arm. ‘I’ll do it.’ And so he did, bending down to the floor. On another occasion the Queen was overheard reflecting that her husband of 73 years was refusing to use his hearing aid. ‘It means we have to shout,’ she said.
Some are bound to focus on that looming centenary of Philip’s 100th birthday in June, which will no longer be the celebration once envisaged.
But the duke was not a sentimental man. For him it was far more important to die at home in his own bed, the date immaterial.
That it should have been at Windsor Castle where his mother Princess Alice, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, was born was of infinitely more significance.
In recent days he had been often confined to his room, but in the weeks since his release from hospital last month – he spent 28 days in the King Edward VII’s and St Bartholomew’s hospitals – he has been calmer and quieter.
Food would be sent up on a tray but he often had little appetite.
Routines inevitably had to change. He cancelled his 7.30am calling tray of morning tea that a valet or page would bring to his room where, among the few personal possessions he always kept on display, there were two framed photographs – one of his wife and the other of his mother.
Intriguingly, among the family photographs of children and grandchildren he always kept on his office desk at Windsor, was one of Prince Charles and Princess Diana taken on their wedding day.
On those days when he felt strong enough to venture out of his room, he dressed in a shirt and jumper, pressed trousers and polished shoes. There was a valet to draw a bath but according to insiders at least until very recently Philip was still dressing himself.
On warm days he asked for a chair to be taken outside and he would sit in the sunshine with a rug over his legs. Often he would nod off.
Walking was difficult and around his apartment he used a stick. Occasionally he would allow himself to be pushed in a wheelchair but staff were wary of suggesting it. ‘When it first appeared in the private rooms he shouted: “Get that bloody thing out of my sight!”’, recalls an aide.
This unwillingness to betray any sign of frailty was characteristic.
BuTfor the pandemic, things might have been so very different. At Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate Philip had adjusted to a new kind of life, sometimes with the Queen but often alone or entertaining friends such as Countess Mountbatten, the former Lady Penny Romsey, to whom he taught the sport of carriage driving.
When lockdown commenced last March Philip was whisked to Windsor to join the Queen. He did return to his beloved Wood Farm – thanks once again to the Queen. After cutting their stay at Balmoral last summer to just six weeks, they then spent three weeks at the Norfolk bolthole.
With its simple furnishings and modest size, it was the closest the couple came to leading an ordinary non-palace life.
On one occasion at a picnic a domestic servant, unfamiliar with royal tradition, mixed a salad dressing – only for the Queen to exclaim when she arrived a little after her husband: ‘I can’t believe the Duke of Edinburgh has made the vinaigrette, he knows I like to do it.’
Philip himself loved the solitude of north Norfolk. When he was there alone he had just a valet and a cook to take care of him. But
after this ill illness and with the country in a third lockdown the prospect of him returning to Wood Farm was impossible.
instead, he had only one ambition: he was determined not to end his days in hospital. ‘When he came back to Windsor he said he was not going back to any hospital,’ an insider said.
instructions were issued that he should be made as comfortable as possible – and if that meant changing timetables for meals so be it.
‘his entire life had been conducted to strict routines and since retiring he didn’t have to follow them and it was agreed that it should continue like that for him,’ says an insider.
‘No fuss was the constant refrain,’ says the insider.
even so he was well enough to still speak to family and close friends on the telephone – unlike the Queen, Philip was not a fan of Zoom calls.
But he was frustrated by Covid restrictions which didn’t just limit visits by th the family but also meant difficulties in the nursing care he needed.
There was no dramatic decline in his health but it was gradual. earlier this week, staff said Philip was ‘on good form’. he was still reading and writing letters.
REMEMBER, this was a man who prided himself on his fitness and who rarely complained. even so he was not pain free.
And rehearsals for his death were already under way. Late at night, a team of footmen at Buckingham Palace had been practising the placing of the official typed statement about the duke’s death.
Yesterday the task was conducted by two of the Palace’s foot-women.
Philip, who did so much to modernise Buckingham Palace, would surely have approved.