Such service to his wife, family and the country
THERE is a picture of the Duke of Edinburgh, taken in the summer of 1972 on a sunlit evening at Balmoral, which always, to me at least, summed the man up. He is standing at a barbecue he built himself, spatula in hand, dashing in an opennecked shirt and tweed trousers. Princess Anne, young and luminous, is next to him.
The Prince is clearly in charge, his concentration focused on the large slabs of meat before him, as he shuns protocol to cook the dinner he shot himself for his family.
It might just be the consummate image of Prince Philip. Unconventional, low-key, doing things his own way.
Of all the many tributes made yesterday following the death of the Duke of Edinburgh at the age of 99, it was the one from Balmoral Castle & Estate’s Twitter account which got to me. Instead of the usual condolences, there was simply a black screen. A mark of the depth of mourning from a place he loved dearly and which, it seems, truly loved him back.
For while he may have been the Duke of Edinburgh, it was always the Highlands where Philip’s heart lay.
From his school days at Gordonstoun in Moray, the spartan boarding school where he found his feet after a turbulent, nomadic childhood, to romantic summers at Birkhall on the Balmoral estate in the earliest years of his marriage, the rolling Scottish landscape provided Philip with an escape.
Here he was free from the constraints of the Royal protocol, from prying eyes, and from his endless duties as the longestserving consort of a monarch in history.
It was not only at the barbecue where Philip took charge. At Balmoral he could often be found battering around the moors in a beaten-up old Land Rover, spending long days on one of the three salmon beats or stalking deer among the heather. Over a period of several years he redesigned the grounds of the castle, taking to the controls of a bulldozer to dig out a water garden.
ACONVENTIONAL Scottish holiday? Not really. But for a member of the Royal Family born less than three years after the end of the First World War, whose life was dedicated to public service, perhaps an appropriate one.
When I was growing up in the west of Scotland in the 1980s it was fashionable to dislike the Royals, their lives of privilege and luxury seemingly at odds with the socialist movement of the time.
But I always rather liked Philip, and for many reasons. There was his obvious intelligence, strong faith and evident sense of humour. He was, at heart, a family man who adored his children, pushing them, encouraging them, and at times indulging them.
In Scotland in particular he was able to spend time in private with all four of his children and, later, his grandchildren, teaching them to hunt, shoot and fish, playing raucous board games and poignantly, shielding his two grandsons from the world in those dark days after their mother was killed on an August night in Paris in 1997.
In public, there was his ability to say what he thought about anything, at any time, with no filter (his remarks to a driving instructor in Oban, for example, when he enquired ‘how do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?’ are the sort which could only ever annoy the dourest of Scots).
In many ways he was the complete opposite of the ‘woke’ movement we find pervasive in so much of public life today.
And yet Philip was also a strong, if unlikely feminist. A man who literally knelt at the feet of his wife at her coronation and pledged allegiance to her. A man who learnt to walk two paces behind, to ensure his wife, his boss, his Queen, always stood in the sunshine, while he lingered in the shade.
He knew how to reach out to young people, too, many on the margins of society, perhaps due to the years he spent as an outsider himself. Many are the millions round the world who, as a result of the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme, set up in the wake of his own outward bound education at Gordonstoun, were able to experience adventure, discipline and the thrill of the outdoors. Recently, in a touching legacy, he set up a special bursary scheme at the school, which will allow children from different backgrounds to experience the same opportunities he did all those years ago. Among the Scottish political tributes paid yesterday, as the parties rightly suspended their election campaigns, some were a little lukewarm. Douglas Ross, however, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, got it spot on when he said that in the middle of a political campaign, the death of the Duke of Edinburgh was ‘a reminder of what was most important in life’. ‘We have lost a tremendous public servant who for decades served his Queen and Country,’ he said. My heart goes out to the Queen. I cannot comprehend what it must be like to go on alone after 73 years of having one person by your side, to find yourself a widow at the twilight of your days while still, after eight decades, doing a full-time job as head of state during the greatest crisis this nation has faced since the Second World War.
SHE will need to pull on all her reserves to get through this difficult time, without the man who was always her ballast. I hope she can take comfort in the many decades of memories. Memories of the man who made her laugh, who gave her counsel, who never wavered in his dedication.
And a man who, one sunlit evening many years ago on the Scottish moors, cooked her dinner he had shot himself.