Prince Philip Read online

  The Queen

  However, he is not a man without sentiment. Recalling meeting his future wife in 1939 when she was thirteen, he said years later: ‘You were so shy. I couldn’t get a word out of you.’

  That shyness hasn’t lasted. According to the Queen’s former private secretary Lord Charteris: ‘It is not unknown for the Queen to tell the Duke to shut up.’

  Hours before marrying the princess, Prince Philip asked a friend: ‘Am I being very brave or very foolish?’

  Reunited with the Queen at the door of Westminster Abbey at the end of the coronation, he observed her crown and asked: ‘Where did you get that hat?’

  Since the coronation, Prince Philip has spent his life living in the shadow of someone much more revered – The Queen. Rarely does he meet anyone sympathetic to his plight. But once he was visiting a university in Australia where he was introduced to a couple identified as ‘Mr & Dr. Robinson.’. The husband explained: ‘My wife is a doctor of philosophy and much more important than I am.’ Philip replied: ‘Ah yes, we have that trouble in our family too.’

  The courtiers all say Her Majesty is Queen, but he is in charge behind the wheel. Once he was driving at high speed. The Queen, who was sitting beside him, let her nervousness show by short intakes of breath. ‘If you keep on doing that, I will stop the car and put you out,’ he said. Later, Lord Mountbatten, who had been sitting in the back seat, asked the Queen why she let herself be spoken to like that. ‘You heard what he said,’ she replied.

  In public, the prince has never shown the Queen up. However, according to Daily Telegraph photographer Ian Jones, once – in Belize City – they were going back to the Royal Yacht Britannia and the Queen stopped, chatting on the jetty. ‘The Prince stood on the boat and shouted: ‘Yak, yak, yak, come on, get a move on.’ He suddenly sounded like any other husband teasing the missus,’ said Jones.

  Although the photographer had followed the royal couple for ten years, at a royal reception at the end of a three-week tour around the Caribbean, the prince enquired: ‘Do you live locally?’ Correcting his mistake, the Queen said: ‘He isn’t wearing his cameras tonight.’

  The prince’s temper is legendary. Once when they were on the Royal Yacht Britannia the Queen was heard to say: ‘I’m not coming out of my cabin until he’s in a better temper?! I’m going to stay here on my bed until he’s better.’

  Phillip when allowed out on his own though is entertaining. In Canberra in 1956, he said: ‘May I say right away how delighted I am to be back in Australia. The Queen and I have not forgotten the wonderful time we had here three years ago. She had to stay at home this time because I’m afraid she is not quite as free as I am to do as she pleases.’

  Stepping into the breach at a Guildhall luncheon given by the Lord Mayor in 1960, he said: ‘It is of course a matter of great regret to us all that the Queen cannot be here today but, as you realise, she has other matters to attend to.’ She was giving birth to Prince Andrew. ‘When I first heard about your invitation I was naturally flattered and grateful,’ he continued. ‘For a short while I held the improbable notion that I would get a meal at the Guildhall without making a speech for it, or, at worst, a third of a speech. But I had a feeling this was too good to last and, by what I can only describe as the downright cunning of my relations, I stand before you now.’

  Later that year, he was at the opening of a British Exhibition in New York where he explained that he had to curtail his trip to be back in London to attend Trooping the Colour, which occurs each year on the monarch’s official birthday. ‘Don’t ask me to explain why it is that she had an official birthday in June, when her proper birthday is in April. You’ll just have to accept it like cricket, pounds, shillings and pence and other quaint, but quite practical, British customs.’ If the monarch’s consort can’t explain it, what hope have the rest of us got?

  When asked how you could make the Queen’s Christmas message on TV could be made more entertaining, Philip said: ‘Short of hiring a line of chorus girls and calling it The Queen Show, what can you do?’

  When Prince Philip introduced royal biographer Gyles Brandreth to the Queen, he told her that Brandreth was writing about her. Then the prince leant forward and said: ‘Be warned, he’s going to cut you to pieces.’

  After fifty years of marriage, he said with typical understatement: ‘You can take it from me the Queen has the quality of tolerance in abundance.’ Ten years later, he said: ‘The secret of a happy marriage to have different interests.’

  Prince Philip has had lapses about regalia. At the King Baudouin of Belgium’s funeral in 1993, he donned the wrong sash. He thought the one he was wearing belonged to the Order of Leopold, the highest order of knighthood in Belgium. It actually belonged to the Order of the Leopard, instituted in 1966 by President Mobutu of the Congo, the colony Belgium reluctantly made independent, and its bitterest enemy.

  Princess Margaret

  Asked by Scotland Yard to contribute a fingerprint as a souvenir of a visit, he replied: ‘Let’s choose an interesting finger.’ Then he was told that they already had Princess Margaret’s fingerprints. ‘Good for you,’ he said.

  Prince Charles

  On being a father, he said: ‘As a parent, you can either try to compete with your children or you can feel proud of them. I’ve opted for the latter.’ And he was sympathetic to their plight. Concerning his children’s careers, he said: ‘I don’t think people appreciate that there aren’t a great many options open to them. I suppose they could go into the church. But what experience seems to show is that if they enter any commercial or competitive activity, the people inevitably pick on them as the source of unfair competition.’

  On a Canadian tour, he was asked whether he knew the Scilly Isles. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My son owns them.’ Freehold of the islands are owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. Rent on the houses the Duchy owns there brings Prince Charles a substantial income.

  Of the Prince of Wales, he said: ‘He’s a romantic, and I’m a pragmatist. That means we do see things differently.’ After a reflective pause, he continued: ‘And because I don’t see things as a romantic would, I’m unfeeling.’

  Perhaps father and son were not as close as they could be. The Queen and Prince Philip were once scheduled to have lunch with Prince Charles on board the Royal Yacht Britannia which was moored in the Thames to celebrate their beloved son’s birthday. On the way, they made a visit to a hostel for the homeless run by the charity Centre Point. Signing the visitors’ book there, Philip asked: ‘What’s the date today? Is it the thirteenth?’ The Queen replied testily: ‘No, it’s the fourteenth… Charles’s birthday, remember?’ Presumably, Charles’s present was a rain check.

  Princesse Anne

  Maybe Prince Philip was closer to his daughter. In 1970, he said of the twenty-year-old Princess Anne: ‘If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested.’

  Duke of Windsor

  Prince Philip was worried that, by marrying commoners, the royal family might become ‘too ordinary.’. However, he was happy that they mixed with people of all social classes. After all, Britain is not as hidebound as it once was. ‘People think there’s a rigid class system here,’ he said in 2000, ‘but dukes have even been known to marry chorus girls. Some have even married Americans.’ This was worthy of P.G. Wodehouse, but was widely interpreted as a swipe at Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, later the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

  Prince Andrew

  On the announcement of Prince Andrew’s engagement to Sarah Ferguson in 1986, the Duke of Edinburgh said: ‘I’m delighted he’s getting married, but not because I think it will keep him out of trouble because, in fact, he’s never been in trouble in the sense the popular press would have it.’ (There was that business with soft-porn star Koo Stark.)

  After the couple split up, Prince Philip said of Sarah Ferguson: ‘Her behaviour was a bit odd.’ Then after a sigh, he said: ‘But I’m not vindictive. I am not vindictive… I don’t see her because I don�
�t see much point.’

  The prince had foreseen the break-up back in 1986. Just before they were married, he told Andrew: ‘I think she’ll be a great asset. For one thing, she is capable of becoming self-employed.’ And perhaps, for a moment, Philip thought it had all come horribly true. In 2001, at a reception at the Guards’ Polo Club – of which he is president – his flow of wit was interrupted by a flame-haired waitress proffering cocktail sausages. ‘Good God, I can’t take canápes from you – you’re Fergie!’ roared Philip. As the poor girl slunk away, her red face matching her hair, the prince turned back to his party guests, guffawing, and said: ‘She’s working anywhere for money now!’

  To mark death of the Queen Mother, it was suggested that Prince Philip be elevated to become a knight of the Royal Victoria Order. Philip rejected the offer saying it was ‘an order for servants.’ Despite this, in 2003, Prince Andrew was made a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. Then, in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace in 2011, the Queen invested Andrew as a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, the highest rank of the order, to add to his glittering array of honours and medals before the two of them settled down for tea.

  Prince Edward

  When Prince Edward was accepted into Jesus College Cambridge, despite only obtaining a C and two Ds at A-level, his father quipped: ‘What a friend we have in Jesus.’

  When comedian Aaron Barschak gate-crashed Prince William’s twenty-first birthday party at Windsor Castle wearing a pink dress, false beard and a turban like that worn by Osama bin Laden, Prince Edward was the only one of the senior royals not present. So if Barschak had been a suicide bomber, Edward would have succeeded to the throne. After Barschak had stormed the stage and got himself arrested, Philip told guests that Edward must have been behind the stunt. ‘It’s bound to have been Edward,’ he said. ‘Only the boy could have coached such a rotten performance out of someone.’

  The Extended Family

  As the ranks of the royal family swelled, Prince Philip was the prime mover behind the Palace’s Way Ahead Group, the regular meetings of senior members of the royal family. ‘We have to coordinate,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget, at the beginning of the Queen’s reign there were just one or two of us doing things, but then the children grew up and instead of one or two we had ten or twelve. People were tripping over one another. We got them to specialise in their interests. Charles went off to the arts, Anne went off to prisons. It’s about an efficient use of resources.’

  Prince Philip is even defensive about the ancient members of the firm. When royal biographer Lady Antonia Fraser was invited to lunch at Buckingham Palace, the Duke of Edinburgh asked her what she was writing. She replied: ‘The Six Wives of Henry VIII.’ He grew angry and said: ‘Why do people always say Henry VIII and his six wives as though it was all one word? There is plenty more to say about Henry.’ She replied cravenly: ‘Oh yes, sir, there is, I mean he was a wonderful musician.’ At this, the duke grew even crosser: ‘He was a wonderful military strategist, a fighter, he bashed the French.’ For emphasis, he repeated: ‘He bashed the French.’ (Sadly, this is not entirely true. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica: ‘Henry himself displayed no military talent.’ His victory against the Scots at Flodden was won by the Earl of Surrey. His campaigns in France were organised by Cardinal Wolsey and resulted in ‘the greatness of England in Europe… being shown up as a sham’.)

  In 2012, Prince Philip spoke of his fears for the future of the firm. At a luncheon for American journalists, he said: ‘The more accessible you become, the more ordinary you become. The argument could be that if you are ordinary, what are you doing anyway?’

  There are, as yet, no fears that Prince Philip will ever become ordinary.

  Education

  Prince Philip and education are not natural bedfellows by any stretch of the imagination. Talking about his school days, he said in 1965: ‘My favourite subject at school was avoiding unnecessary work.’ This certainly did not hold him back in his chosen career.

  Honorary Titles

  Although he never attended university, the prince is burdened down by a growing number honorary degrees and titles. Accepting an honorary doctorate in science from Reading University, he told the faculty on the subject: ‘It must be pretty well known that I never earned an honest degree in my life and I certainly never made any effort to gain an honorary one.’ So, understandably, he told an audience at the University of Salford: ‘The best thing to do with a degree is to forget it.’

  When he was installed as chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, where he had previously be awarded an honorary doctorate in law, he concluded his address by saying: ‘You may think that I have spent rather a long time laying down the law with very little justification. May I remind you then that the last time I was in this hall I was given full permission to teach law in any university in Christendom, so you only have yourselves to blame.’ He took the opportunity to give Dr Kurt Hahn, his old headmaster at Gordonstoun an honorary doctorate in laws. ‘It cannot be given to many to have the opportunity and desire to heap honours upon their former headmaster.’

  Addressing American students, he said that he was rather jealous of those who got a Fulbright scholarship and spent a year in America, and added ‘I don’t suppose chancellors of universities qualify, or, perhaps, honorary doctors of law.’

  Addressing the Royal College of Art in July 1955, the prince said: ‘I think perhaps the college should warn future honorary fellows of the ordeal they will have to undergo in being made to wear flannel dressing gowns.’

  Prince Philip has so many honorary appointments that it is not surprising that he gets a little mixed up. In February 2003, he told guests at the University of York: ‘It is surprising the way things have changed since I first became chancellor fifty years ago.’ The university was celebrating its fortieth anniversary at that time and its chancellor was opera singer Dame Janet Baker. Philip was then chancellor of Cambridge University where he had served for thirty-three years.

  University

  Addressing an audience at the opening of a £500,000 extension to what was then Heriot-Watt College in Edinburgh in 1957, Prince Philip jumped into the debate that was going on about education with both feet. ‘There is, quite rightly, a very lively argument about general education in schools and universities,’ he said. ‘The parties to the argument are legion – there are the vocationalists, the humanists, the specialists and the generalists and then, of course, there are a lot of people like me with little knowledge but a ready opinion on occasions such as this.’

  Later that day the prince got into a lift that got stuck between two floors. ‘This could only happen in a technical college,’ he said.

  On a visit during the Golden Jubilee visit to the University of East London he asked a Polish student whether once he had finished his course he would be going back to Poland to corrupt the Polish people. Then, when told that a member of staff was not a lecturer said: ‘That’s right, you do not have enough hair to be a lecturer.’

  While many were ruing the current ‘brain drain’ of British scientists to America, the prince said it was ‘a very nice compliment to our educational system.’

  In May 2013 at the opening of the £212-million Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, the Prince Philip asked a Polish scientist: ‘Did you come here to pick raspberries?’

  Opening the £556-million maths centre at Cambridge University in July 2000, he told an amused audience: ‘This is a lot less expensive than the Dome, and I think it’s going to be a lot more useful.’ (Renamed The O2 and given a £600-million facelift, the London Millenium Dome is now a surprisingly popular sports and entertainment venue.)

  Schools

  Being a parent, he has a firm idea of what schools are for. At the official opening of the Joy and Stanley Cohen Hertsmere Jewish Primary School in Hertfordshire in 2000, the children had been recalled from the summer holidays to sing to him. ‘Holid
ays are curious things, aren’t they?’ said the prince. ‘You send children to school to get them out of your hair. Then they come back and make life difficult for parents. That is why holidays are set so they are just about the limit of your endurance. Then you send them back to school again.’

  He expressed similar feelings when in 2013 he met Malala Yousafzai, the heroic fifteen-year-old schoolgirl shot in the head by Taliban extremists in Pakistan for encouraging girls to go to school. ‘There’s a thing about children going to school,’ he said. ‘They go to school because the parents don’t want them in the house.’ She laughed at his joke and explained she had missed a day of school to attend the reception at Buckingham Palace. ‘I had to miss school because I was meeting the Queen,’ she said. ‘It’s such an honour for me to be here at Buckingham Palace. It’s really an honour to meet the Queen.’

  Visiting Queen Anne’s school in Reading, Berkshire, he said of the girls’ blood-red uniforms: ‘It makes you all look like Dracula’s daughters!’

  Visiting Linacre Primary School in Bootle, Merseyside, in 1998, he asked a caretaker: ‘Can you manage to control all these vandals?’ Chief boom-wielder Jim Kampsell defended the pupils, saying: ‘We don’t have any vandals, they all come from out side.’ The duke was particularly touchy about vandals after the Prince of Wales accused him of vandalism for felling a three-mile stretch of oaks, limes and chestnut in Windsor Great Park. ‘They’re an eyesore,’ said Prince Philip. Among his many roles, he is Ranger of Windsor Great Park. ‘I’m a sort of godfather of the whole business,’ he said.

  Advice on What to Do

  Addressing the children at a school in Ipswich, he told the pupils: ‘It is traditional on these occasions for me to give you a bit of advice, which you will equally traditionally ignore.’ Recalling his own school days, he said he remembered ‘thinking what a lot of nonsense visiting persons managed to talk. Of course, I know now that all their addresses were really quite brilliant. I’ve more or less got to say that or I shall be accused of letting down the Union.’