A leader but an outsider: the complex man we knew
MY FIRST encounter with Prince Philip was when he visited a Jewish old age home in Wembley named Edinburgh House in his honour.
As he strode around, I was shocked to be introduced to a secretary who had retired at the grand old age of 55 — and checked herself into the home. Fortunately, she was not made known to the Duke — who was roughly the same age at the time.
By the time of his groundbreaking visit to Israel in 1994, I was the JC’s correspondent in Jerusalem. After years of backdoor advice from the Foreign Office that members of the
Royal
Family should not visit
Israel, Philip was poised to break that taboo. It was not, everyone was anxious to explain, a full-scale, proper royal visit. It was personal and was focused on the reburial of Philip’s mother, Princess Alice, who had been named Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem.
Princess Alice was due to be reinterred in the Church of St Mary Magdalene on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. Philip’s visit was deemed to be so delicate that Buckingham Palace decided to send an official to brief those members of the British press stationed in Israel, and to tell us all what we could and could not say to, or indeed about, the Duke. The protocol official was caught on the hop by the lack of forlock-tugging shown by the British press contingent. “Gone native,” muttered one of the Buck House entourage after one reporter refused to agree not to ask the prince unscripted questions.
The weekend before Philip arrived, news broke of Prince Charles’s infamous interview with Jonathan Dimbleby in which he admitted adultery. Reporters for the nationals cheered up considerably: a lacklustre assignment suddenly appeared to have legs. The Mount of Olives church was small and so the Foreign Press Association was asked to supply a pool reporter, who would provide material to all the correspondents waiting outside. Lucky me: the JC’s representative in Israel was on the rota as the pool reporter. In typical style, Philip strode into the church with hands behind his back, nodded to the priest leading the short service, walked around briefly making all the right noises to the relevant officials, and then left for the next stage of his programme — on to Yad Vashem. I emerged from the church to be surrounded by eager reporters. An Israeli reporter asked about Philip’s behaviour inside. Was he emotional? I, being somewhat naive, said, no, he was just walking around, hands behind his back. The next day’s Hebrew news headline taught me a lesson: “Jewish reporter says Prince showed no emotion as his mother was reburied.” Oy!
Later, at the Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Ramleh, Philip met Ajex members who had emigrated to Israel. We reporters shouted questions about his son’s behaviour. Philip affected a well-practised selective deafness. The woman from the Palace was, by this time, looking like she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I have never seen an official so desperate to leave Israel. Philip, meanwhile, looked as though he might quite like to hang around, his often brusque and curious nature matched — in spades — by his host, the then president Ezer Weizman.