GLORIOUS 8-PAGE PULLOUT
Starting today, an intimate portrait of their 70-year marriage — by one of Britain’s most distinguished royal authors
Now in their 90s — though with the mental alertness and physical fitness of a couple many years younger — the Queen and Prince Philip are in uncharted waters.
As they prepare to celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary on November 20, they know they have rewritten the record books. The 91-year-old Queen is now the longest reigning British monarch in history, and her husband is the oldest-ever male member of the Royal Family.
At the age of 96, Philip finally retired from royal duties in August. Shortly after his decision was announced, 88-year-old mathematician Michael Atiyah said to him at a lunch: ‘I’m sorry to hear you’re standing down.’
‘well, I can’t stand up much longer,’ said the Prince. It was the type of dry and humorous response we’ve learned to expect from Philip.
Indeed, he and the Queen have been
part of our lives for so long that we imagine we know them. But do we really?
After many years of writing about the Royal Family — I’ve met both the Queen and Philip on many occasions — I feel I’ve had a unique insight into their lives: and what I’ve discovered is that there’s a great deal more to them than their popular image suggests.
In public, for instance, the Queen is often unsmiling; it’s as if her royal duties, which she’s always undertaken with the utmost gravity and dedication, preclude her ever seeing the lighter side of life. In private, however, she can be quite different.
Unexpectedly, she has a well-developed sense of humour. This surfaced during an early trip to America, when she hilariously mimicked the U.S. photographers who were ever-present.
Deciding to do some filming of her own, she pointed her camera at Philip and cried out in a nasal American voice: ‘Hey! You there! Hey, Dook! Look this way a sec! Dat’s it! Thanks a lot!’
In her old age, she still relies on humour to leaven potentially serious situations. On the weekend of her Diamond Jubilee, when Philip was taken into hospital as a precautionary measure for a bladder infection, she was heard to quip: ‘Don’t die on me. Not now, anyway!’
SURPRISINgLY, too, it was the Queen who was keenest on doing the rather undignified stunt that was filmed for the opening of the 2012 Olympic games.
This involved her appearing in her first acting role — as a Bond girl opposite 007 star Daniel Craig — at Buckingham Palace, and then seeming to parachute into the Olympic stadium.
Philip was extremely dubious about the whole thing. Needless to say, however, she wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t eventually given his approval.
His own wry and sometimes ribald sense of humour has been a crucial factor in the marriage. From the very start, he’s always been able to make his wife laugh. In the Fifties, the young Queen would freeze before TV cameras, but he’d diffuse the tension with an amusing aside to bring a smile to her face.
When you’re under a constant spotlight, as she has been for almost her entire life, this makes a vital difference.
Having come from a sheltered background, the Queen was still painfully shy in her 20s. During her first Commonwealth tour of Australia in 1954, there were times when it all became overwhelming.
At 28, she’d been Queen for only two years and the responsibility still terrified and confused her. But with Philip at her side, she felt she’d always be able to cope.
He made her see the funny side of situations, and he was often the only person she could talk to in a superficial vein about what they’d seen and done; she didn’t have to be on her guard with him, worrying in case she might say the wrong thing or create the wrong impression.
He gave her some much-needed courage when she was meeting the hundreds of people who were waiting for her.
Occasionally, Philip’s sense of the ridiculous has led to one of his famous gaffes — risky remarks that he makes partly to liven things up, get a reaction or because he’s bored stiff.
One of the chief reasons for these so-called gaffes is less well understood: he simply wants to make the Queen laugh.
Better than anyone, Philip knows that she never really conquered her shyness. She may have met more strangers in her life than almost anyone else on the planet, but her conversational skills remain minimal.
It’s usually only with people who are interested in racing or breeding thoroughbred horses that she can be animated and chatty.
So throughout their married life, it’s been Philip who’s done most of the talking in social situations.
He can still move smoothly through a room, sipping a drink, smiling at an appropriate moment, making a humorous remark, before seamlessly moving on. It’s an acquired skill that his wife has found all but impossible to learn.
Even with visiting dignitaries, she can be very stilted. When France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni, the former singersongwriter and model, attended a state banquet at Windsor in 2008, for instance, the Prince got on so well with Carla that his bonhomie was infectious.
If he needs to put on the charm, he can outshine the most obsequious of courtiers. For her part, the Queen often copes with her shyness in social situations by using what her husband calls her ‘dog mechanism’. To avoid a disconcerting question, she’ll dip down to feed her ever-present corgis under the table.
And when troubles threaten to overwhelm her, she has a habit of switching off and going for a walk with her dogs.
It’s the equivalent of the late Queen Mother’s habit of playing card games as an avoidance mechanism — and everyone in the family has been on the receiving end. It actually took Prince Andrew three weeks to fight his way past the dogs to tell his mother his marriage was in trouble.
Philip, of course, has a tendency to grab problems by the scruff of the neck — writing literally dozens of letters to both Princess Diana and Sarah, Duchess of York after their marriages began to go wrong.
He can also be very irascible. When he was younger, his personal staff hardly ever saw him for any length of time as he travelled so much — but now he is always around and always shouting at them.
They’re used to him: knowing he doesn’t mean anything by his impatient barks, they don’t take too much notice and refer to him behind his back as ‘father’.
Diana was less tolerant. When I saw her at Kensington Palace shortly before her death, she told
me that she’d warned her boys: ‘Never, never shout at anyone the way Prince Philip does.’
More surprisingly, the Queen also has a temper. But she raises her voice only rarely; strong emotions have no part to play in her lifetime’s exercise in self-control.
Instead, she shows her displeasure by icy silence. If that makes her incomplete as a person — and there’s an element of the child in her inability to address the sometimes wayward behaviour of her own family — there’s also a regality about her which is both reassuring and intimidating.
As a girl, aware that she might one day be Queen, Elizabeth was unusually grave and earnest. She did not join her younger sister in the practical jokes that have long been a tradition in the Royal Family. When Margaret hid the gardener’s rake or threatened to sound the bell at Windsor to bring out the guard, Elizabeth would be so embarrassed that she’d run off to hide.
Order always had to be maintained. Her governess, Crawfie, called her ‘neat and methodical beyond words’, and revealed that the Princess would sometimes get up in the middle of the night to make sure her shoes were neatly stowed.
Self-control was also essential. At their father’s coronation at Westminster Abbey in 1937, Elizabeth said of her little sister: ‘I do hope she won’t disgrace us all by falling asleep in the middle.’
And when their parents set sail for a tour of Canada and the United States, just before the outbreak of World War II,
Elizabeth sternly warned Margaret ‘to wave, not to cry’.
As the Queen herself would acknowledge in later years: ‘I’ve been trained since childhood never to show emotion in public.’
This practice of constant self-restraint has leached into her private life. She doesn’t particularly like being touched, and Philip isn’t demonstrative either, though away from the public spotlight, he’ll sometimes affectionately put his arm around his youngest son’s shoulder — he calls him Ed — and give him a kiss.
If compromise is marriage’s essential ingredient, it has been especially vital to the Queen and her husband.
Theirs is a surprisingly small world from which there is no escape. In their personal affairs, they have only each other to turn to for comfort and support — more so than ever now that so many of their friends have died. There’s also more than a spark of romance between them. Even now, the Queen’s eyes light up when he enters a room.
And, according to the couturier who made the outfit she wore to Prince Andrew’s wedding in 1986, she blushed when it prompted a rare compliment from her husband of nearly 40 years.
But living on top of each other, as they do, means they both have to make allowances for the other if life is not to become so claustrophobic as to be unbearable.
In public, Philip has had to quell his fiercely competitive nature to walk two paces behind his wife. He’s had to lay to one side his many other interests to make accompanying the Queen the central part
of his life. (He calls himself the world’s most experienced unveiler of plaques.)
It could have been an impossible role for a man of his temperament — bright, energetic, opinionated and obsessed with his masculine image. The Queen, however, instinctively understood this and has always tried to ensure he feels like the master of his own home.
She’s also been wise enough to let him pour his phenomenal energy into other interests — from a huge array of sports to a passion for conservation and a fleeting obsession with UFOs (he used to subscribe to Flying Saucer Review.)
It is her serene acceptance of him that has kept the marriage alive. In turn, Philip has never felt that it’s important for him and his wife to enjoy the same activities, or even admire the same things.
Unusually for a man born in 1921, he is a fan of the modern artist Tracey Emin, whom he and the Queen once met at the Turner Contemporary Gallery in Margate. His wife, however, didn’t seem to know who she was, asking if Emin had ever ‘exhibited internationally as well as in Margate’.
These days, the Queen loves walking her dogs — usually corgis, whom she dotes on so much that she even took one called Susan on her honeymoon.
She enjoys playing Patience, completing complicated jigsaws, keeping her photograph albums up to date — and she’s meticulous about writing her diary every night.
Philip is just the opposite and gets frustrated when he isn’t doing something physical. He has kept his trim figure and has always been somewhat vain about his weight: in the early days of the marriage, he’d put on two or three sweaters and go for a run if he thought he’d gained a few pounds.
He’d come in exhausted, lie down and then have a bath to recover. This amused the Princess, who thought he was quite mad. Even now, he does Royal Canadian Air Force exercises — a stretching and toning 12-minute plan — which were created by a doctor in the Fifties.
Inevitably, however, Philip has had to bow to advancing years. In 2011, he received treatment for a blocked coronary artery after he was taken to hospital suffering chest pains.
HE WAS fitted with a stent to keep the artery open, which led to him giving up shooting. It was considered that the recoil of a gun could dislodge the stent. Fly fishing for salmon and trout has since become his favourite pastime at Balmoral. Despite his age, he is still steady enough to spend hours in the water, wearing chest-high waders.
The Queen, who had her first riding lesson at the age of four, still rides out regularly with her groom, Terry Pendry, at windsor and Balmoral. She refuses to wear a hard hat and once told trainer Ian Balding: ‘You don’t have to have your hair done like I do.’
Now that she is in her 90s, she no longer rides spirited half-thoroughbreds, preferring the width and safety of her own home-bred Fell ponies.
And these days she enjoys riding only when the weather is decent: ‘I’m rather a fairweather rider now. I don’t like getting cold and wet,’ she confessed not long ago.
She still takes a keen interest in the breeding of her horses, deciding which mares are to be bred to which stallions and making regular visits to observe and assess her foals firsthand from birth. Once they finish racing, they remain in her care into retirement.
One of the greatest passions in her life is horseracing. when one of her thoroughbreds won the Ascot Gold Cup, it was one of the very few occasions when she was seen to be overcome with emotion.
Her husband, however, has little interest in the sport, which stems not from a dislike of it, but rather from the fact that, unless one is the jockey or trainer, racing is a passive sport.
During Royal Ascot, Philip will dutifully be at his wife’s side, but he insists on being able to watch the cricket on TV during the racing and has a small office in the back of the royal box where he catches up on his correspondence with the help of a secretary.
He doesn’t have to be at Ascot or the Derby. He doesn’t have to accompany his wife, standing erect to one side, as she presents the racing trophies. He’s there only out of love and respect for the Queen, both of which have remained steady through seven eventful decades.
There have been times — as we’ll see later this week — when she could well have crumbled without Philip’s strong moral support.
‘They are a tight unit. Cross one and you’ve crossed them both,’ according to James Edwards, a prep school headmaster who got to know them both.
As for the Queen, she’s never had cause to revise the heartfelt words that she spoke at the Guildhall in London on their golden wedding anniversary. Prince Philip, she said, ‘has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years.’