Praise for Philip & Elizabeth
Gyles Brandreth:
‘The writer who got closest to the human truth about our long-serving senior royals.’
Libby Purves, The Times
‘Philip & Elizabeth boldly goes where other royal biographers have previously feared to tread … The book is exceptionally hard to put down.’
Humphrey Carpenter, Sunday Times
‘Probably the most revealing portrait ever of the Queen.’
Marian Finucane, RTE
‘The most insightful portrait of Prince Philip written to date.’
Robert Lacey, Sunday Times
‘Wonderfully entertaining … impressive … compelling.’
John-Paul Flintoff, Financial Times
‘Thoroughly entertaining … Filled with insights … He has had enviable access and he has used it well.’
Penny Junor, Daily Telegraph
‘Cheeky, gossipy, often highly amusing … A most engagingly intimate volume.’
Peter Mackay, Evening Standard
‘A joy … thoughtful … outrageous … sympathetic, wholly original, often hilarious, occasionally profound and unfailingly interesting … I came away with the strong feeling that I had glimpsed the Queen and Prince Philip for the first time as they really are.’
Craig Brown, Mail On Sunday
‘Philip & Elizabeth is a unique biography. It is a powerful and revealing portrait of a remarkable partnership, told with authority and insight, and illustrated with photographs from the couple’s collections.’
Ingrid Seward, Majesty
Also by Gyles Brandreth
Biography
Dan Leno: The Funniest Man on Earth
John Gielgud: An Actor’s Life
Brief Encounters: Meetings with Remarkable People
Philip & Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage
Charles & Camilla: Portrait of a Love Affair
Autobiography
Under the Jumper
Breaking the Code: Westminster Diaries
Something Sensational to Read in the Train: The Diary of a Lifetime
Novels
Who Is Nick Saint?
Venice Midnight
Murder Mysteries
Oscar Wilde and the Candlelight Murders
Oscar Wilde and the Ring of Death
Oscar Wilde and the Dead Man’s Smile
Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers
Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders
Oscar Wilde and the Murders at Reading Gaol
Jack the Ripper: Case Closed
Selected Non-fiction
Created in Captivity
I Scream for Ice Cream: Pearls from the Pantomime
Yaroo! The World of Frank Richards
The 7 Secrets of Happiness
Word Play
Children’s fiction
The Ghost at Number Thirteen and sequels
The Slippers That Talked and sequels
Nattie & Nuffin
Max: The Boy Who Made a Million
Maisie: The Girl Who Lost Her Head
Theatre
Lewis Carroll Through the Looking-Glass
Dear Ladies (with Hinge & Bracket)
Now We Are Sixty (with Julian Slade)
Zipp! 100 Musicals for the Price of One
Wonderland (with Susannah Pearse)
PHILIP: THE FINAL PORTRAIT
Elizabeth, their Marriage and their Dynasty
Gyles Brandreth
www.hodder.co.uk
First published as Philip & Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage
Copyright © Gyles Brandreth 2004
Revised and updated edition
Copyright © Gyles Brandreth 2021
The right of Gyles Brandreth to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Cover image: Estate of Kenneth Hughes/National Portrait Gallery, London
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
eBook ISBN 978 1 444 76960 9
Hardback ISBN 978 1 444 76957 9
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.hodder.co.uk
Contents
Praise for Philip & Elizabeth
Also by Gyles Brandreth
Title Page
Copyright
How to use this eBook
Introduction
PHILIP
Chapter One
Chapter Two
LILIBET
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
PHILIP & LILIBET
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
ELIZABETH & PHILIP
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
THE QUEEN & THE DUKE
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
MA & PA
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
PHILIP & ELIZABETH
Chapter Thirteen
ELIZABETH ALONE
Chapter Fourteen
APPENDICES
Prince Philip’s Achievements and Appointments
Offices and Involvements
FAMILY TREES
The British Royal Family
The Greek Royal Family
The Battenbergs and Mountbattens
Sources and Acknowledgements
Picture Credits
Footnotes
Picture Section
Harold: You agree that a successful marriage is the greatest of human benefits?
Vita: Yes.
Harold: And that it must be based on love guided by intelligence?
Vita: Yes.
Harold: That an essential condition is a common sense of values?
Vita: Yes.
Harold: That the only things that will stave off marital nerves are modesty, good humour and, above all, occupation?
Vita: Yes.
Harold: And give and take?
Vita: And give and take.
Harold: And mutual esteem. I do not believe in the permanence of any love which is based on pity, or the protective or maternal instincts. It must be based on respect.
Vita: Yes, I agree. The caveman plus sweet-little-thing theory is long past. It was a theory insulting to the best qualities of both.
Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West discussing marriage on BBC radio in 1929, quoted in Portrait of a Marriage by their son Nigel Nicolson, 1973
How to use this eBook
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Introduction
‘People who write books ought to be shut up,’ said King George V.
‘This is Gyles Brandreth,’ said the Duke of Edinburgh, introducing me to Queen Elizabeth II.
Her Majesty proffered me a tightly gloved hand and murmured an almost inaudible, ‘How do you do?’ Her consort continued cheerily, ‘Apparently, he’s writing about you.’ The Duke paused and leant towards his wife’s ear: ‘Be warned. He’s goi
ng to cut you into pieces.’
The Queen looked startled. The Duke chuckled. I smiled.
I knew the Duke of Edinburgh over a period of more than forty years. I was accustomed to his sense of humour. I liked it. I liked him. I admired him as much as any man I have known. It was knowing him as I did that led me to write this book about him, and his wife, and their remarkable marriage – the longest-lasting marriage of any sovereign and consort in history.
I first met Prince Philip in the 1970s, when he was in his fifties and I was in my twenties, and I became involved in the work of the National Playing Fields Association. The Association is the National Trust of recreational space: it protects playing fields and playgrounds, and aims to enhance opportunities for competitive sport and creative play, especially for young people and those with disabilities. It is a good cause, if a touch unglamorous. The charity, now known as Fields in Trust, was founded in the 1920s, with Elizabeth II’s father, then a young Duke of York, as its first president. Prince Philip, as a young Duke of Edinburgh, took on the presidency in 1948, soon after he married Princess Elizabeth. It was the first national charity in which he became involved. He remained its president until the week of his ninety-second birthday in June 2013, when he handed over the reins to his grandson, Prince William.
As the President of the NPFA Prince Philip was impressive: informed, committed, personally involved. He took the responsibilities of his office seriously. He was an effective fund-raiser. ‘The fund-raising never stops!’ he used to sigh. He was an intelligent and persuasive leader, with an unnerving eye for detail (and for flannel and flimflam), who was at his best when given a problem to solve, a difficult meeting to chair, an internal row requiring resolution. He liked to be given something specific to do. He welcomed detail. I accompanied him to the opening of a youth centre on Merseyside. His debriefing note to me was devoted to how best to relocate the lavatories and showers so as to maximise the space available for the sports facilities. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am practical. I like to help make things work.’ He wanted to make a difference where others, often, only make a noise. He wasn’t one for honeyed words and empty gestures. He did not give his wife bunches of flowers or cards inscribed with sentimental messages: he gave her pieces of jewelry he had designed and made himself.
I liked his style. I admired his achievement. I enjoyed his company. Having observed it at close quarters, I thought his manner with people was delightful and the more unassuming the people the friendlier he was. I recall coming down the back stairs with him after some lunchtime function at a club in central London. We passed the kitchen. The Duke stopped, turned back and marched in, unannounced, to meet the chefs and dish-washers. There was laughter, back-slapping, joshing: an enviable display of people skills and unselfconscious charm. The only time I have seen it quite as well done was recently – by Prince William.
What the Duke of Edinburgh made of me, if anything, I cannot tell you.1 He called me ‘Gyles’. I called him ‘Sir’. His last letter to me, written from Windsor Castle, was full of characteristic dry humour and his trademark double exclamation marks (!!); it was signed ‘Yours ever’. But I am mindful of the former Prime Minister James Callaghan’s observation: ‘What senior royalty offer you is friendliness, not friendship. There is a difference.’
There were times when I felt quite close to Prince Philip – like a proper friend, or as much of a friend as you can be with a man who is thirty years your senior and the husband of the head of state. Sitting alone with him in his library at Buckingham Palace, sharing a drink, he was the best company: completely unstuffy, easy to talk to – and happy to talk about anything.
We talked about life. ‘Has it been fun?’ I asked him once.
‘Fun?’ he snorted. ‘I don’t think I think much about “fun”. Do you think much about fun?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Now and again.’
‘Really? I suppose the polo was fun,’ he conceded. ‘Playing cricket was fun, in the old days. The carriage driving is fun – when you don’t fall off the box seat. Then it’s just bloody painful.’
‘Has it been enjoyable?’
‘My life? Enjoyable?’ He screwed up his eyes. ‘I enjoyed flying. I enjoyed flying very much. I sometimes think I should have joined the air force instead of the navy.’
‘Is that one of your regrets?’
‘Regrets are a waste of energy. There’s no point in having regrets.’
‘Has it been a good life?’ I persisted. ‘Worthwhile?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that. I’ve kept myself busy. I’ve tried to make myself useful. I hope I’ve helped keep the show on the road. That’s about it, really.’
We talked about death. ‘Death is part of life,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to face it. You’ve got to accept it – with a good grace.’ He laughed. ‘When you get to my age, there’s a lot of it about.’
Death was part of Prince Philip’s life from the beginning. His grandfather, King George I of Greece, was assassinated a few years before he was born. His favourite sister, Cécile, was killed in an aeroplane accident when he was still a teenager. His favourite uncle (and his guardian at the time), George Milford Haven, died of cancer soon after. His father, Prince Andrew of Greece, died when Philip was just twenty-three. His other favourite uncle, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was murdered by the IRA in 1979. ‘I’m quite ready to die,’ the Duke said to me. ‘It’s what happens – sooner or later.’
‘Later rather than sooner, we hope,’ I said.
He looked at me, smiling. ‘I certainly don’t want to hang on until I am a hundred like Queen Elizabeth [the Queen Mother]. I can’t imagine anything worse. I’m already falling to pieces as it is. Bits keeps dropping off. I have absolutely no desire to cling on to life unnecessarily. Ghastly prospect.’
I think that when he died, he died happy. In the last ten years of his life he seemed a more settled soul than once upon a time. He could still be cantankerous and tetchy – he was wilful and contrary to the last – but, overall, he appeared to me to be more contented in late life than he had been in middle age, more at ease with himself, with his family, and with the world. I believe he recognised, finally, that people recognised his contribution and, though he made light of it, that pleased him very much.
On Monday, 4 June 2012, six days before his ninety-first birthday, he should have been at the Queen’s side at the Diamond Jubilee concert that was staged in her honour in front of Buckingham Palace. He wasn’t there because the day before, as part of the Jubilee River Pageant, for several hours he had stood at the Queen’s side in a boat on the Thames in driving rain and had exacerbated a pre-existing bladder infection. He stood because the Queen stood – and the Queen stood because neither of them wanted to be seen seated on the grandiose thrones the pageant organisers had provided for them. ‘We’d have looked like Mr and Mrs Beckham, wouldn’t we?’ said the Duke. ‘You’ve got to draw the line somewhere.’ And because the Queen remained on deck, standing in the rain, the Duke remained there, too. It would not have occurred to him to be anywhere else.
Having spent Sunday in the rain, Prince Philip was admitted to hospital on Monday. That night, at the end of the Jubilee concert, the Prince of Wales stood next to the Queen and gave a short speech, saluting his mother and thanking those who had performed during the evening. The speech was warm, witty, and well judged. The crowd cheered almost every phrase, but they cheered loudest by far when Prince Charles asked them to cheer for the one person who was conspicuous by his absence: his father, Prince Philip. In the Mall on that wet and windy Monday night in June 2012, a quarter of a million people stood in the cold chanting, ‘Philip, Philip, Philip!’
A mile away, in his hospital bed, the Duke of Edinburgh watched the scene on television – and was touched by what he saw and heard.
I know (because he told me) that Prince Philip was disappointed that his doctors’ orders obliged him to miss some of the celebrations for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. In truth, per
haps not the pop concert outside Buckingham Palace (the Duke felt that he had endured more than his fair share of Elton John down the years), but certainly the Service of Thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral on the following day. ‘I was sad not to be there,’ he said to me. He had wanted to be there, at the Queen’s side. That’s why, a year later, he was so determined to be at Westminster for the service marking the sixtieth anniversary of the Queen’s Coronation. It was, after all, what his life had been about.
‘That’s what you do,’ I said to him. ‘You support the Queen.’
‘Yes.’
‘It is who you are.’
He smiled. ‘It is a family business.’
In 1897 the Duke’s mother, aged twelve, was there for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Princess Alice was born at Windsor Castle, the daughter of Princess Victoria, one of Queen Victoria’s favourite granddaughters. And the Duke’s father’s father, King George I of Greece, was an ADC to Queen Victoria – and, later, to Edward VII (who married Philip’s great-aunt Alexandra) and, later still, to George V (whose granddaughter Philip married.) By birth, Prince Philip was twice as royal as Elizabeth II. The Queen’s father was a king, but her mother was a commoner. The Duke of Edinburgh was royal to the marrow – related through each of his parents to kings, queens, emperors, kaisers, tsars.
In the summer of 2012, the Duke was touched, too, and surprised, by the Diamond Jubilee television film made by Prince Charles and broadcast at the start of the Jubilee weekend. The film was essentially a personal tribute by Charles to his mother, illustrated with ‘home movies’ from the early years of his parents’ marriage.
Once upon a time Prince Charles was in the habit of complaining about his childhood – plaintively and to almost anyone who would listen. In the early 1990s, when he cooperated with the broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby to produce a documentary and a book about his life, the Prince of Wales made it clear to all the world that, as a boy, he had felt neglected at home and abandoned at school. His parents did not cherish him, or understand him, in the way that his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, did. Twenty years on, in 2012, it became clear from the Prince’s Jubilee broadcast that his view had changed. Charles spoke of both his parents with unfeigned affection. And rightly so. It was evident from those old family films – as it always had been from the accounts of those who had been there at the time – that the Queen and Prince Philip had been loving parents: caring, concerned, and, given the style of parenting of those of their class and generation and the restrictions imposed on them by their official duties, remarkably hands-on.
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