Heir styling
The Duke looked to mould his children in his own image... with, at times, fractious results
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.
In 2007, letters between the two were presented to the inquest jury investigating the 1997 death of Diana and Dodi al-Fayed.
In their letters, 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 fractious, 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.
When Princess Elizabeth married Philip 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, 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 loves horse racing. At Royal Ascot he was frequently at the back of their private box watching cricket on television.
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 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.
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 very 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 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.
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 carriage-driving 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.
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 risqué films.
Called to Balmoral by his father, Andrew agreed to a cooling-off period and was sent with his ship to the Caribbean. Later he married the daughter of Major Ron Ferguson, the royal polo manager.
Perhaps Philip’s biggest disappointment was when youngest son, Edward, left the Royal Marines after just four months in 1987. 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.
Edward will now 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 proudest moments as a father was watching her complete a clear round at the Badminton Horse Trials.
They shared a no-nonsense style and he said of her: “If it doesn’t fart and eat hay, she isn’t interested.
“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.”
In their letters, Diana refers to Philip as her “Dearest Pa”