He loathes Tom Jones songs – but loves jazz and studying UFOs. On the eve of his century...
Things you never knew about Prince Philip
MILLIONS of words may have been written about his jam-packed life, but a new book by veteran Royalwatcher IAN LLOYD unearths nuggets about the man who, with characteristic self-deprecation, has even invented a word for his famous habit of ‘putting one’s foot into one’s mouth’…
1
Mon Repos was the Corfu villa where, on June 10, 1921, Princess Alice, 36, had her fifth child. Her doctor thought it more expedient for her to give birth on the dining room table rather than in her bed.
2
His mother’s childhood nickname for him was ‘Bubbikins’.
3
He’s Queen Victoria’s oldest surviving greatgreat-grandchild.
4
Thirty years ago, he said: ‘I’m not really interested in what goes on my tombstone.’
5
Watching the Queen Mother in her centenary year, he declared: ‘God, I don’t want to live to be 100. I can’t imagine anything worse.’
6
He has described his ‘dontopedalogy’ as ‘the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it’.
7
Once asked which country he’d still like to visit, he replied: ‘Russia – although the bastards murdered half my family.’
8
His paternal grandmother was Tsar Nicholas I’s granddaughter. In 1993, a blood sample from Philip allowed scientists to compare the DNA of bones thought to be from the imperial family murdered in Yekaterinburg in 1918 with living relatives. They confirmed their fate at the hands of a Bolshevik firing squad.
9
An aunt, Princess George of Greece, documented a list of her willing extramarital sexual partners in unpublished memoirs, The Men I Have Loved. She believed the closer the clitoris to the vagina, the more chance a woman has of achieving an orgasm – and had her own clitoris surgically shifted in that direction. It didn’t work.
10
Philip’s mother converted to the Greek Orthodox Church but suffered delusions, thinking she was in a sexual relationship with Jesus and that she had a signed photo from him.
11
The first time Elizabeth, then eight, and Philip, 13, saw each other was at the wedding of her uncle, the Duke of Kent, to Philip’s cousin Princess Marina of Greece, on November 29, 1934.
13
His sister Cecile, her husband and their two sons were killed in an air crash in 1937. She was eight months pregnant and rescuers found remains of a stillborn child in the wreckage. For years afterwards, Philip carried a small piece of the damaged aircraft.
14
At Cecile’s funeral in Germany, Philip’s three brothers-in-law, all German aristocrats, walked alongside him – one was in his full SS uniform while another was dressed as a Nazi stormtrooper.
15
Hitler and his Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, sent messages of sympathy while Luftwaffe commander Hermann Goering marched in the funeral procession.
16
Philip signs himself with the Greek ‘P’.
17
He joined the battleship HMS Valiant in January 1941, helping convoy troops to bolster the British Expeditionary Force in Greece.
18
He manned the searchlights, identifying enemy targets. He later recalled one dramatic battle, saying: ‘All hell broke loose.’
19
His war service was rewarded with the 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star; Burma Star; Italy Star with Mention in Dispatches; Cross of Valour; Croix de Guerre.
20
In her account of his life, his cousin Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia wrote: ‘Blondes, brunettes, and redhead charmers, Philip gallantly and I think quite impartially squired them all.’
21
As a 22-year-old naval hero, he almost missed a watershed moment – being confined to bed with flu – but rallied to cheer as Elizabeth, 17, performed in a family pantomime of Aladdin at Windsor Castle on December 18, 1943. She played the role of Aladdin, dressed in a revealing costume.
22
Their first memorable meeting had been at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth in 1939 when the visiting 13-year-old princess couldn’t take her eyes off the blond, athletic cadet.
23
A year later, the captain of his ship, HMS Ramillies, noted that Philip told him: ‘My Uncle Dickie [Mountbatten] has ideas for me; he thinks I could marry Princess Elizabeth.’
24
That Christmas, Philip sent Elizabeth a Christmas card from Athens.
25
Their engagement was announced on July 9, 1947. He’d asked her ten months earlier at Balmoral. According to his cousin, Elizabeth said it happened ‘beside some well-loved loch, the white clouds sailing overhead and a curlew crying out of sight’.
26
‘They were bloody to him,’ recalled Earl Mountbatten’s son-in-law John Brabourne. ‘They didn’t like him, they didn’t trust
him and it showed.’ The ‘him’ was Philip. The ‘them’ were senior courtiers and the Royals’ aristocratic friends.
27
Three critical lords – Salisbury, Eldon and Stanley – ‘professed to see in him a Teutonic strain’, and one called him ‘Charlie Kraut’.
28
The King’s assistant private secretary, Sir Edward Ford, said some wondered if ‘this rough diamond would treat the Princess with the sensitivity she deserves?’ In truth, the fact that Philip didn’t treat her with ‘the sensitivity she deserves’ was a trait that attracted her to him.
29
The King’s private secretary, Tommy Lascelles, said both the King and Queen ‘felt he was rough, ill-tempered, uneducated and would probably not be faithful’.
30
Elizabeth’s mother wrote letters to friends waxing lyrical about her daughter’s intended, but to Lascelles she said: ‘One can only pray that she has made the right decision. I think she has – but he is untried as yet.’
31
Vehemently anti-German, having lost a brother during the First World War, the Queen Mother was said, years later, in private, to have dubbed her sonin-law ‘the Hun’ and believed he ran the Royal estates ‘like a Junker’ – members of the landed nobility in Prussia.
32
Elizabeth’s cousin Margaret Elphinstone noted that many of Philip’s critics in Royal circles thought he was ‘a foreign interloper out for the goodies’.
33
However, George VI grew to admire his future sonin-law. ‘I like Philip,’ he wrote to his mother Queen Mary in 1944. ‘He is intelligent, has a good sense of humour and thinks about things in the right way.’
34
Philip designed the couple’s platinum engagement ring, featuring 11 diamonds from his mother’s tiara which had to be collected from a bank in Paris where they had been stored after her mental collapse.
35
He gave up smoking at his wife’s request and never relapsed.
36
Philip’s official stag night was at London’s Dorchester Hotel, made up of officers from HMS Whelp. A relatively sober bridegroom left at 12.15am, saying: ‘Sorry I must go. I have an early morning date!’
37
Churchill called the wedding, on November 20, 1947, ‘a flash of colour on the hard road we have to travel’. Mindful of the postwar austerity, George VI agreed there would be no souvenirs or stands and decorations along the procession route.
38
However, the Tory politician ‘Chips’ Channon wrote in his diary: ‘Someone in the Government apparently advised simplicity, misjudging the English love of pageantry and show. Now it is too late and an opportunity missed.’
39
Philip wore his naval uniform with the stars of the Order of the Garter and the Greek Order of the Redeemer.
40
Breakfast was coffee and toast – topped up with a gin and tonic to steady his nerves.
41
Absent were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, 11 years after his abdication, and Philip’s three sisters – coldshouldered by the Palace because of their German connections.
42
‘They minded terribly,’ recalled their cousin Lady Pamela Hicks. ‘It’s not as if they were stormtroopers!’
44
The cake was four-tiered, 9ft tall and weighed 500lb.
45
Among 2,583 presents were 16 pairs of silk stockings and more than 100 nylons, a cylinder vacuum cleaner from Hoover Ltd, an automatic potato-peeler and a Siamese kitten.
46
For their honeymoon night at Broadlands (Mountbatten’s Hampshire mansion), the housekeeper, Mrs Monks, ‘smoothed the pale pink crepe-de-chine sheets and two pillow cases appliqued with a white satin leaf motif’ at least 20 times.
47
In 1946, a 25year-old Philip met his late father’s mistress, the French actress Comtesse Andree de la Bigne, at a cafe in Monte Carlo. Although she was not mentioned in his will, Philip’s mother kindly gave her his car and any possessions she wanted, which Philip arranged over cocktails.
48
Prince Charles was asked in a 1969 BBC interview whether his disciplinarian father had told him ‘to sit down and shut up’. Charles replied: ‘The whole time, yes,’ before adding: ‘I think he has had quite a strong influence on me, particularly in my younger days.’
49
When asked by Gyles Brandreth about his similarities with his eldest son, Philip interjected: ‘Yes, but with one great difference. He’s a romantic and I’m a pragmatist. That means we do see things differently…’
50
After comments that both stood with their hands behind their backs, as if it were some genetic trait, Charles joked: ‘We both have the same tailor… He makes the sleeves so tight, we can’t get our hands out in front.’ 51
The Duke has been a lifelong jazz fan, and is particularly fond of Duke Ellington.
52
The Thursday Club was an all-male weekly lunch group founded by Philip and others at Wheeler’s restaurant in London’s Soho. Famous guests included actor David Niven, and Kim Philby before he was outed as a Soviet spy. One member, Philip’s cousin David Milford Haven, sold his story of the Royal Wedding to a newspaper, and clubbers named him ‘C*** of the Week’.
53
The club held a black-tie stag do five days before the official one. They dined on foie gras, turtle soup, mixed grill and crepes suzette.