Humble as always, man who became grandfather of the nation

It tells you something about a man when he decides to give up the day job at the age of 95. By the time Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, hangs up that spiffy Admiral of the Fleet hat in the autumn he will have passed the official state retirement date by a stonking 31 years.

Indeed, he is likely to be one of the few men who served in the Second World War and is still in public service. Yet, it is one of his gifts that he has never made us dwell on the fact that he is old. The role of the Grandfather of the Nation is to be taken utterly for granted, and that’s the way he likes it.

In a wonderfully cantankerous interview for the BBC on his 90th birthday, Philip was invited to take pride in his achievements. Good grief! It was as if he had been asked to strip off. His peregrine-falcon face contorting with disbelief, he objected, “No, that’s asking too much.”

On typical irreverent form, the Duke made the crowd at an Order of Merit service roar with laughter yesterday when he made a joke at his own expense, telling one guest who said he was sorry he was standing down: “Well, I can’t stand up for much longer.” That refusal to regard one’s self as of any great interest, indeed, to view introspection with grave suspicion, is typical of the Duke of Edinburgh’s generation (Britain’s greatest generation).

It has been the defining quality of an amazing life which, like the award that came to bear his name, was always outward bound. To an extent we have not yet fully understood, this dashing, rather wild and opinionated Alpha male, who came into the world on a kitchen table in Corfu in 1921, has had to squash and subdue almost everything he was and wished to be in order to fit the role of consort to Queen Elizabeth II. And, let no one dispute it, he has played an absolute blinder.

Not one of nature’s handbagcarriers, to put it mildly, Philip had to accept a humiliating reversal of roles when he married Princess Elizabeth in 1947. Behind every great man is a woman was the common wisdom; to make the opposite true took uncommon fortitude. When the King announced the betrothal of “our dearly beloved daughter to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, RN”, the bridegroom had renounced his nationality, his name and his Greek Orthodox religion to make the marriage possible. The naval career he adored would soon be sunk, subordinated to spousal duties. Philip was a New Man 70 years before his time and it frequently infuriated him. “I’m nothing but a bloody amoeba,” he fumed to a friend. “I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his children.”

For Princess Elizabeth, marrying “Phil the Greek” was her one great act

‘He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments, but he has been my strength and stay all these years’

of rebellion. For Philip, marrying Elizabeth was his one great act of conformity. (What are the “gaffes” of which the Duke is so often accused but the eruptions of a frustrated man walled in behind the dutiful façade?)

It was 1939 when the 13-year-old Princess Lilibet first met Prince Philip of Greece, aged 18. She said it was love at first sight. No wonder.

With his mix of German and Danish blood and his white-blond hair, he looked like an Aryan god. Sorry, but Matt Smith, who recently played Philip in The Crown, doesn’t even come close.

Crawfie, the royal nanny, recalled that the handsome young man with the piercing blue eyes “showed off a good deal” and Lilibet couldn’t take her eyes off him. “How good he is, Crawfie, how high he can jump!”

For eight decades, the brash confidence which attracted that rather solemn young girl has made her feel secure and enabled her to relax. Look at the way Philip makes her light up with laughter. With him by her side she feels as normal as she could ever feel. The Duke may be the only one who dares call Her Majesty “a bloody fool”, but she could not wish for a stauncher ally. He is the Everest of rocks.

At her Coronation in 1953, he was the first subject to pay homage to the newly crowned Queen.

“I, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, do become your liege man of life and limb, and of earthly worship; and faith and truth I will bear unto you, to live and die, against all manner of folks. So help me God.”

How unbelievably strange to see the woman you love, the mother of your children, transmuted into someone who straddles the human and the divine.

But he was as good as his word, wasn’t he? When the Duke was admitted to hospital a few years ago, his greatest concern was not for himself but the Queen. I thought about that, not long after, during the Diamond Jubilee river pageant when he stood by her side for hours in the sluicing rain staring grimly ahead. The liege man sometimes has to take his life and limb in his hands.

The royal marriage, the longest in recorded history, has certainly had its stormy patches, but the Queen wisely cut the Duke some slack. She has never forgotten the words of her father: “Remember, he’s a sailor. They come in on the tide.”

The Queen is well aware what she owes Prince Philip.

In a moving speech on their golden wedding anniversary in 1997, she said: “He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments, but he has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years.”

He won’t like it, but as he announces his retirement, this proud and relentlessly energetic figure will have to put up with some more bloody compliments. For if our Queen’s reign has been happy and glorious, and marvellously stable, it is in no small part down to the man behind the great woman.

The country owes the Duke of Edinburgh a huge debt of thanks. We look forward to celebrating your centenary, Sir. If anyone can get there, it’s Phil the Greek. “How good he is, Crawfie, how high he can jump!”