Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh
Distinguished naval officer who, as the Queen’s loyal husband, put aside his ambitions to become her ‘rock’
TO MANY he was just the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, the man obliged to walk a couple of steps behind her, (in)famous for his often politically incorrect quotes, which delighted newspapers as much as they infuriated the Palace courtiers. But the Duke of Edinburgh, who has died aged 99, was not just the Queen’s ‘rock’ during their 73 years of marriage. He was a substantial figure whose promising naval career was stunted by the very event that made him world famous, his marriage to the British Queen.
By the time he married Princess Elizabeth, Philip had already distinguished himself in the Royal Navy with postings throughout the Second World War, first in the Indian Ocean then, after the invasion of Greece in October 1940, with the Mediterranean Fleet. Mentioned in dispatches after the battle of Cape Matapan, he received the Greek War Cross of Valour.
One of the Royal Navy’s youngest first lieutenants at 21, in 1943 during the invasion of Sicily he devised an ingenious plan that saved his ship, the Wallace, from a bomber attack. The following year he served with the British Pacific Fleet and was at Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrender was signed.
Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark was born in Corfu’s Mon Repos, the Greek royal family’s summer residence. He was the fifth child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark — the fifth son of King George I of Greece — and Princess Alice of Battenberg, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria. A prince of both Greece and Denmark, he was in the line of succession to both thrones.
However, in 1922 Greece was in the throes of the Greco-Turkish war and the family were evacuated from the country in the HMS Calypso with baby Philip in a makeshift cot made from a fruit box. It was the start of a peripatetic period that took Philip to Paris where he attended The Elms, an American school, and then to Cheam School in the UK in 1928 where he stayed with his maternal grandmother, Victoria Mountbatten, Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven.
In the meantime, his mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and interned in an asylum, his father moved to Monte Carlo and his four sisters married German princes and went to Germany. In 1933. Prince Philip was uprooted yet again, this time to Schule Schloss Salem, a school in Germany owned by one of his brothers-inlaws, Berthold, Margrave of Baden.
Salem’s founder, Kurt Hahn, was Jewish and in 1933 he was jailed after asking students and staff to choose between the school’s principles and Hitler. He was released after five days. and forced to leave Germany. He went to Scotland and founded Gordonstoun School, based on the Salem principles of compassion for others, accepting responsibility and tenacity in pursuit of the truth.
Philip also moved to Gordonstoun, which proved the making of him. With its emphasis on challenging outdoor activities, the school combined traditional British private school elements with Hahn’s own educational views. Philip had found his ideal environment and he thrived.
Gordonstoun also equipped him to cope with anything life would throw at him, such as the air crash that in 1939 killed his sister Cecilie and her family. After leaving Gordonstoun in 1939, Philip attended the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth and graduated the following year as the best cadet in his course. There he first met the young Princess Elizabeth who was touring the Royal Naval College with her sister. The 13-year-old princess fell for the dashing young officer and they started a correspondence that would last throughout the subsequent war.
Philip spent the conflict serving in the British Navy — with two of his brothers-in-law fighting on the opposite side. His mother remained in Athens sheltering a Jewish family from the Nazis. In 1994 she would be honoured as Righteous Among the Nations during a ceremony at Yad Vashem attended by Prince Philip.
In 1946 Prince Philip asked the King for Princess Elizabeth’s hand but the engagement was held off until her 21st birthday the following year. By that time Philip had given up his Greek and Danish titles and taken on the surname Mountbatten (from his mother’s family) and had become British. In October, 1947 he completed his anglicisation by being received into the Church of England.
By the time he married Princess Elizabeth on 20 November, 1947, Philip had become a Royal Highness and given the title by which he would become known, Duke of Edinburgh.
About 200 million people around the world tuned in to BBC radio for the wedding ceremony at Westminster Abbey but the Duke’s German relatives, including his three surviving sisters, had not been invited – the war was still too fresh in people’s minds. While waiting to move into Clarence House, which the duke had had refurbished with the latest mod cons, including washing machines and even an intercom, the newlyweds lived at Buckingham Palace where protocol and the courtiers ruled supreme.
Work was not much more satisfying: he was given a desk job at the Admiralty, “shuffling ships around” as he described it. His posting to Malta in 1949, however, was an idyllic time for the young couple, free from the constraints of Court.
The Duke joined Princess Elizabeth on official visits and they were in Kenya on a Commonwealth tour when the news came of the King’s death. Princess Elizabeth was now the Queen and Prince Philip’s life was not his own any more.
What had always been his greatest strength — his energy and openness to new ideas — was fiercely opposed by the Palace machine.
The 1953 Coronation Ceremony might have seen him again kneel before his wife and take an oath of fealty, but at least, as chairman of the Coronation Commission, he was involved in planning it to the last detail, including the then revolutionary BBC broadcast that beamed the ceremony to the country.
However, over and over, Prince Philip had to give in. A case in point was the name of the royal house: two possibilities, the House of Mountbatten and the House of Edinburgh were vetoed by Queen Mary and Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
It was decided it would remain the House of Windsor. However much it cost him in wounded pride, Prince Philip learned to play the part of consort to perfection, accompanying the Queen to ceremonies and tours abroad. Once, from 1956 to 1957, he travelled around the world aboard the HMY Britannia.
Over the years the Queen steadfastly defended her ‘rock’ and Prince Philip channelled his energies elsewhere. An enthusiastic polo player, he regularly competed in carriage driving, was a keen yachtsman and achieved 5,986 flying hours on 59 types of aircraft.
His multifaceted nature also came through in another hobby; painting.
An important part of the Duke’s legacy has been the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, which he founded in 1956, together with Gordonstoun’s Hahn. The Award aimed to give the young “a sense of responsibility to themselves and their communities” and was an international success.
As patron of some 800 organisations, ranging from the environment, sport, industry and education, at his retirement from public life in 2017 the Duke had completed 22,219 solo engagements.
He is survived by Queen Elizabeth II, their children, Charles, Prince of Wales; Anne, Princess Royal; Prince Andrew, Duke of York; Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex; eight grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh: born 10 June, 1921. Died 9 April, 2021