A tough father to Charles... but Diana called him Dearest Pa
IN THE FRAME With Queen, Anne and Charles at Balmoral in 1952
On one of several tours of Australia, the Duke of Edinburgh was introduced to a couple called Robinson. Mr Robinson said his wife was a doctor of philosophy, adding “She’s much more important than I am.”
“Ah yes,” Philip replied. “We have that trouble in our family too.”
But in fact the Duke was always head of his family and had a reputation as an uncompromising father.
However, he mellowed with age and Princess Diana thanked her father-in-law Prince Philip for trying to save her crumbling marriage and praised his skills as a counsellor.
In 2007 letters between the two were presented to the inquest jury investigating the 1997 death of Diana and Dodi al-Fayed. In them, Diana refers to Philip as her “Dearest Pa”.
The jury also heard from one of Diana’s close friends, Rosa Monkton, who said the Duke had written “kind, intelligent and considered letters”.
But it has also been claimed the pair’s relationship could be fractured, leaving Diana “red-faced with fury”.
Her confidante Simone Simmons revealed Philip once sent her letters which made her “boil with anger”.
He apparently criticised her behaviour towards Charles during their bitter break-up in the missives, sent in 1994 and 1995.
At Elizabeth and Philip’s wedding service she promised to obey, even knowing she would soon be Queen.
When their children asked for treats, she would say: “Ask your father.”
The early years of their marriage were happy. Staff at the Palace remember laughter and practical jokes with Philip chasing Elizabeth down corridors as Dracula wearing joke-shop false teeth.
On one tour when he grew a beard he got on the royal plane one morning to discover everyone, including the Queen and her ladies-in-waiting, was wearing false ginger whiskers.
On every wedding anniversary Philip gave his wife a vast bouquet of white roses and lilies of the valley.
But he also had a short temper. Once on the way home from a polo match, he threatened to make Elizabeth get out and walk after she complained he was driving too quickly. From their honeymoon onwards they had separate rooms, but with connecting doors.
They also enjoyed different hobbies. Philip loved carriage driving while the Queen loved horse racing.
At Royal Ascot he was frequently at the back of their private box watching cricket on television. “I’m just a lodger here,” he said when he first moved in to Buckingham Palace. He hated the routine, the stuffiness, even the piper who played every morning outside the Queen’s window. Their relationship was not helped by his mother Princess Alice spending her final years at Buckingham Palace. She wore a nun’s habit, chain smoked and ate only grapes. When the couple’s first child Charles was born on November 14, 1948, Philip was playing squash with close friend Mike Parker. He had been with the Queen when she started labour, but couldn’t stand the waiting. He and Parker were in the middle of a hard rally when an official came in to tell Philip he was a father. Philip ran upstairs in sweater and flannels – carrying a bunch of carnations for Elizabeth and a bottle of champagne for the medical team. When the children were small he doted on them, spending hours making sandcastles. Studying always came a distant second to sport. He enrolled Charles in a London gym where he was forced to learn boxing. He taught both Charles and Anne to ride and swim.
At Balmoral, he would take them out camping on the estate.
But as the children grew up, the relationships became more strained. All three boys were sent to his old school, Gordonstoun. The first to go was Charles, who Philip worried was too sensitive and thought could be “toughened up”.
But Charles was desperately unhappy. He created his own surrogate father in Lord Louis Mountbatten – Philip’s Uncle Dickie.
When Mountbatten was murdered by the IRA, Charles was grief-stricken. On his desk at Kensington Palace, Prince Charles kept a photograph of himself and his father together. On it he had written, “I was not made to follow in my father’s footsteps”.
Charles often talked of the day his father came to Gordonstoun to see him, at 17, play the title role in Macbeth when he was 17. As Charles lay down playing Macbeth having a nightmare, he could hear his father laughing in the audience.
“I went up to him afterwards and said, ’Why did you laugh?’ and he said “It sounds like The Goons.”
In his 1994 interview with Jonathan Dimbleby, Charles revealed he was “emotionally estranged” from both his parents and was bullied by Philip – even into marrying Lady Diana Spencer.
When young Charles was seen sticking his tongue out at the crowd
along the Mall, his father beat him. On being given three pairs of carriagedriving gloves, Philip accepted the ones in brown and tan leather, but rejected a lilac pair, saying with a smirk: “I think we’ll pass these on to the Prince Of Wales.”
Andrew and Edward went to Gordonstoun too and, aged 19, Andrew enrolled at Dartmouth Royal Naval College, where his parents had met.
He went on to serve in the Falklands War as a helicopter pilot. Philip was unhappy when he heard he was developing a relationship with Koo Stark, an actress who appeared in risque films.
Called to Balmoral by his father, Andrew agreed to a cooling-off period and was sent with his ship to the Caribbean where he met model Vicki Hodge and the romance with Koo foundered. Later he married the daughter of Major Ron Ferguson, the royal polo manager.
Perhaps Philip’s biggest disappointment was when his youngest son, Edward, left the Royal Marines after just four months in 1987. “He’s the first in our family to become a Marine,” Philip had proudly told a American admiral whose son was a US Marine.
When Edward dropped out to work in the theatre for Andrew Lloyd Webber, Philip was furious, yelling at his son that he was a quitter. Edward burst into tears. It took many years for the rift to heal, helped when Edward began working for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme.
Now that his father is dead, Edward will become the new Duke of Edinburgh. Philip felt most at ease with his only daughter. “Anne,” he said, “has a lot of my abrupt directness and practicality.”
One of his genuinely proudest moments as a father was watching her complete a clear round at the Badminton Horse Trials for the prize of £5.
They shared a brisk, no-nonsense approach and he said of her: “If it doesn’t fart and eat hay, she isn’t interested.”
When she wed horseman Mark Phillips, an Olympic gold medallist, the Duke said: “I wouldn’t be surprised if their offspring are quadrupeds.”
The marriage lasted 18 years and produced two children, both adored by Philip. He and Anne went to Greenwich Park during the London 2012 Olympics to cheer on his granddaughter, Zara, in the silver medalwinning British eventing team.
“Judging by some families, I think we are all on pretty good speaking terms after all this time,” Princess Anne said.
“And that’s no mean achievement for quite a lot of families. I think we all enjoy each other’s company.”