Philip: The Final Portrait

by Gyles Brandreth

  She meant it, and you could tell. She did not write it. The author was Dermot Morrah (1896–1974), historian and leader-writer and correspondent for The Times. Morrah sent his draft of the speech to the King’s private secretary, Sir Alan Lascelles, who was travelling with the royal party on board the White Train. At first the draft went missing. According to Lascelles, who wrote to Morrah from the train on 10 March, ‘The steward in the Protea diner had put it in the bar, among his bottles, little knowing that it was itself of premier cru.’ Lascelles saluted Morrah’s achievement: ‘I have been reading drafts for many years now, but I cannot recall one that has so completely satisfied me and left me feeling that no single word should be altered. Moreover, dusty cynic though I am, it moved me greatly. It has the trumpet-ring of the other Elizabeth’s Tilbury speech, combined with the immortal simplicity of Victoria’s “I will be good.”’ Lascelles told Morrah how it had pleased Princess Elizabeth and her mother: ‘The ladies concerned, you will be glad to hear, feel just as I do. The speaker herself told me that it had made her cry. Good, said I, for if it makes you cry now, it will make 200 million other people cry when they hear you deliver it, and that is what we want.’ And so it proved. When the speech was broadcast, there was barely a dry eye on the planet.

  On 24 April, as the royal party set off once more for home, Lascelles reported to his wife, ‘From the inside, the most satisfactory feature of the whole business is the remarkable development of P’cess E.’ He summed up her essential characteristics: ‘A perfectly natural power of enjoying herself … Not a great sense of humour, but a healthy sense of fun. Moreover, when necessary, she can take on the old bores with much of her mother’s skill, and never spares herself in that exhausting part of royal duty. For a child of her years, she has got an astonishing solicitude for other people’s comfort; such unselfishness is not a normal characteristic of that family.’

  Elizabeth was – and is – a conspicuously unselfish individual. But uniquely so? In 1936 Elizabeth’s Uncle David selfishly abandoned his duty to pursue the love of his life – no question – yet, nineteen years later, in 1955, Elizabeth’s sister Margaret – certainly spoilt and undoubtedly self-indulgent in many ways – sacrificed the love of her life when she agreed not to marry a divorcee in the becoming shape of her father’s former equerry, Peter Townsend. Elizabeth’s grandfather, George V, was not an easy parent, but he was a conscientious king, wilful but not notably selfish. His wife, Elizabeth’s grandmother, Queen Mary, shared her husband’s stern sense of duty, but liked to get her own way. Famously, when she came to call, if there was a bibelot in your drawing room that took her fancy, she expected you to present it to her. Elizabeth’s mother was justly celebrated for her courtesy, charm, and commitment, and while, on the whole, she did as she pleased, and led a wonderfully pampered – and nonchalantly extravagant – life, enhanced by an enviable capacity for ignoring the unpleasant, she, like her daughter, was always solicitous for other people’s comfort.

  That said, when Crawfie – while her charges were in South Africa – came to see Queen Mary to tell her of her own plans to marry, the old Queen, then in her eightieth year, ‘spearing for me a muffin on a small silver fork: Her Majesty never touches any food with her fingers’, said at once, “My dear child. You can’t leave them!”’ Crawfie, then in her thirty-eighth year, pointed out that Margaret Rose, at seventeen, was nearly done with her schooling and that Princess Elizabeth was likely to get married before too long. The Queen was unmoved. ‘I don’t see how they could manage without you,’ she said. ‘I don’t think they could spare you just now.’ Queen Elizabeth, on her return from South Africa, was equally unbending. ‘Does this mean you are going to leave us?’ she asked the governess. ‘You must see, Crawfie, that it would not be at all convenient just now. A change for Margaret is not at all desirable.’ Crawfie hoped Her Majesty might say something about the family’s plans for Lilibet’s future, but, according to Crawfie, the Queen ‘said nothing further, and I curtsied and withdrew’.

  From my observation of them, the members of this family are masters of the art of saying nothing. Sometimes they do it to protect themselves. Sometimes they do it to indicate that a conversation is at an end. Often they do it to indicate disapproval.56 In Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother’s very first letter to Prince Philip at the time of his engagement to her daughter, Her Majesty warned her future son-in-law of the challenges that lay ahead and that chief among them would be ‘remaining silent when one is bursting to reply’.

  Crawfie reflected on Queen Mary’s silence and settled on a compromise. On 16 September 1947 she married her man (Major George Buthlay, a divorcee from Aberdeen, fifteen years her senior), but, after the honeymoon, the royal governess returned to her duties at Buckingham Palace.

  She was not there much longer. By the end of 1948 Princess Margaret had turned nineteen and Princess Elizabeth had given birth to her first son. After sixteen years of loyal and effective service, Crawfie retired. She had been a good teacher: intelligent, imaginative, and quite adventurous by the standards of her time. Queen Elizabeth wrote thanking her for the ‘devotion and love’ and she was awarded one of the honours in the sovereign’s personal gift, becoming a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. (She had been hoping to become a Dame, but she was a little too junior for that, both in years and in station. She had a good opinion of herself – and why not? – but, possibly, des idées au dessus de sa gare. She was just the governess, dammit.) Her happiest reward – besides, of course, her fond memories of her years with the little Princesses – was the lifetime tenure of Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace, a dream home of ‘seasoned red brick … with roses round the door … in the little square garden’ – or £100 per annum in lieu. She did not enjoy the charms of Nottingham Cottage for very long.

  In 1949 she wrote The Little Princesses, her account of her years in royal service. The book was originally published in the United States and serialised in the Ladies’ Home Journal. Queen Elizabeth’s friend Nancy, Lady Astor, happened to know the magazine’s editors and was able to send Her Majesty a copy of the manuscript. The Queen was appalled. The invasion of her family’s privacy and the betrayal of their trust left Her Majesty ‘shocked and distressed’. Her private secretary wrote to Lady Astor: ‘Such a thing is utterly alien to the spirit and custom of Their Majesties’ households and staff and great regret is felt by all those who care for the sanctity of their family life at this unhappy breach of decency and good taste.’

  Crawfie was not to be silenced. She received $6,500 for the US serialisation and £30,000 when the book appeared in the UK, serialised in Woman’s Own. The money was good, and she was pleased with her own writing, but, in her heart, she knew she had done wrong. John Gordon, editor of the Sunday Express, tried to persuade her to write for him. He reported to the Express’s proprietor, Lord Beaverbrook, ‘Persuasion is difficult at the moment because she has been brought to the edge of a nervous breakdown by all the trouble, but she will bend in good time.’ She didn’t – at least, not for the Express – but for Woman’s Own she continued to exploit her erstwhile royal connections with a weekly column that ultimately proved her undoing. In the summer of 1955 she gave her readers vivid and personal accounts of both the Sovereign’s Birthday Parade and Royal Ascot – annual events that, unfortunately for Crawfie, were unexpectedly cancelled that year due to a national rail strike.

  Crawfie abandoned Nottingham Cottage (which Queen Mary had helped furnish for her) in the autumn of 1950. (It later became the home of Brigadier Sir Miles Hunt-Davies, GCVO, secretary to the Duke of Edinburgh, and subsequently the first London home of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.) The court’s low opinion of the errant former governess was made plain. Her neighbours, according to John Gordon, ‘were afraid even to be seen speaking to her. So she decided to pack up and go.’ Five years later, when her reputation as a reliable royal correspondent was finally exploded, she retired to Aberdeen, childless, largely friendless, and living in a marr
iage that turned out to be a disappointment. She died on 11 February 1988. There were no flowers from Lilibet or Margaret Rose at her funeral. It had been very different forty years before. At her wedding in 1947, Crawfie had been showered with royal gifts, including a complete dinner service from Queen Mary, a coffee set from Lilibet, and three bedside lamps from Margaret Rose.

  Crawfie had been determined to marry her man and Their Majesties had had no choice but to accept her decision, however inconvenient. Lilibet, in her way, was just as determined. She had accompanied her parents to South Africa; she had done her duty: she had passed her twenty-first birthday and broadcast her solemn commitment to the world; now she was coming home to claim her prize. One of the ladies-in-waiting accompanying the royal party reported that, as the Vanguard steamed into harbour, Lilibet ‘danced a little jig of sheer delight at being home again’.

  Philip was determined, too – and clearly had been for a while. In June 1946 he had invited himself to Buckingham Palace and, after the visit, had written to Queen Elizabeth to apologise for his ‘monumental cheek’ in so doing – adding, as if to compound his cheek while claiming to be ‘contrite’, ‘there is a small voice that keeps saying “nothing ventured, nothing gained” – well I did venture and I gained a wonderful time.’

  Later that summer, after he had spent three weeks holidaying with the Windsors at Balmoral and the young couple had shared their feelings with each other and with the King and Queen, Philip wrote another thank-you letter to his future mother-in-law. ‘I am sure I do not deserve all the good things which have happened to me,’ he said to the Queen. ‘To have been spared the war and seen victory, to have been given the chance to rest and readjust myself, to have fallen in love completely and unreservedly, makes all one’s personal and even the world’s troubles seem small and petty.’

  In an age of comparative deference and discretion, long before the advent of the internet and the tweet, it took a while for rumours of the royal romance to spread. On 29 May 1946 Philip was photographed next to Princess Elizabeth at the wedding of her new lady-in-waiting, Mrs Jean Gibbs, to her favoured first cousin, Andrew Elphinstone, but Philip was described in the press as ‘a figure still largely unknown to the British public’. They were photographed together again five months later, on 26 October 1946, at the wedding of Philip’s first cousin, Patricia Mountbatten, to John Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne. This time the picture appeared to tell a story: the young couple were caught on camera gazing into each other’s eyes. Then they were sighted walking in the park at Windsor – holding hands. The moment they realised that they had been spotted, they sprang apart, but their secret was gradually seeping out. When Princess Elizabeth went to visit a factory, on one of the solo official outings that she was now beginning to undertake, someone in the crowd called out, ‘Where’s Philip?’

  On 30 April 1947 the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma! opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Philip and Elizabeth went to the show and, as a consequence, for ever after, ‘People Will Say We’re in Love’ was said to be ‘their song’. I happen to know that the Queen has a good recall of popular songs of the 1940s,57 but I know, too, that the Duke of Edinburgh regarded the notion of ‘our song’ as ‘sentimental codswallop’ and was ‘utterly infuriated’ whenever it was played. In 2012, at the time of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Duke’s ninety-first birthday, I took part in a special edition of BBC television’s The One Show broadcast live from Buckingham Palace. The producers were keen to feature ‘People Will Say We’re in Love’ in the programme. I said, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘Because it’s their tune – it’s their favourite tune.’ I said, ‘It isn’t. I know it isn’t.’ They said, ‘It is. It really is.’ When I reported this to the Duke of Edinburgh he laughed somewhat despairingly: ‘Once these myths take root there’s nothing you can do to dislodge them.’

  Did Prince Philip marry for love? It is not a question that I dared to ask him – nor one that he would have deigned to answer. But every one of those to whom I did put the question who knew him at the time – and knew him well – answered with an unequivocal ‘yes’. His first cousin, Patricia Mountbatten, said to me, ‘He may have had his doubts about what he was getting himself into – the whole business of marrying the King of England’s daughter, I think that did concern him. But he had no doubts at all about Lilibet as a person – as a future wife. He adored her. He loved her deeply – you could tell. It was definitely a love match.’ Mike Parker, Philip’s closest male friend at the time, said to me, ‘He loved her – absolutely.’ Parker was an Australian and added, for good measure, ‘And he fancied her, too. No question about that.’

  Prince Philip married Princess Elizabeth for love. I think that he married her for family as well. As he never ceased to remind me, he had ‘a perfectly good family’ of his own. ‘I had parents, I had sisters,’ he insisted. But from his adolescence onwards he saw very little of them. Through the years of the Second World War he could not see his sisters: they were in Germany, literally sleeping with the enemy. His father was in Vichy France until his death in 1944. His mother was in Athens, occupied by the Germans until October 1944. In the summer of 1944, after he had spent part of his leave staying with the Windsors, Philip wrote to the Queen and told her how much he had valued his time at Balmoral: ‘It is the simple enjoyment of family pleasures and amusements and the feeling that I am welcome to share them. I am afraid I am not capable of putting all this into the right words and I am certainly incapable of showing you the gratitude that I feel.’

  ‘Showing’ his feelings was not something that came easily to Prince Philip. Gina Kennard told me, ‘Philip used to speak to me about Princess Elizabeth before they were engaged. He was extremely fond of her, always. He said, “I think we could do a lot together.”’ Robin Dalton told me, ‘Philip’s a cold fish. Always charming and fun, but I couldn’t tell you what he really felt. All I know is that in 1945 David [Milford Haven] told me Philip was definitely planning to marry Elizabeth one day. He saw it as his destiny.’

  And so it proved. On 7 July 1947, from Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth wrote to her sister May: ‘This is one line to tell you very secretly that Lilibet has made up her mind to get engaged to Philip Mountbatten. As you know, she has known him since she was 12, & I think that she is really fond of him, & I do pray that she will be very happy … We are keeping it a deadly secret, purely because of the Press, if they know beforehand that something is up, they are liable to ruin everything!’

  ‘At last things were moving,’ wrote Crawfie. ‘Suddenly that look of strain we had all been conscious of disappeared from Lilibet’s eyes. One day she poked her head into my room looking absolutely radiant … “He’s coming tonight,” she said, and then she kissed me and danced away. Next morning was Wednesday, July the ninth. Lilibet came to my room much earlier than usual. I have never seen her look lovelier than she did on that day, not even on her wedding morning. She wore a deep yellow frock, a shade that has always suited her very well. She closed the door behind her and held out her left hand. Her engagement ring sparkled there. It was a large square diamond with smaller diamonds either side. At the same time it was too large for her, and it had to go back to be made smaller. It was a ring they had chosen secretly, but of course she had been unable to go and try it on.’

  In fact, neither Lilibet nor Philip had been able to choose the ring personally. Phillip’s mother, on one of her visits to London, undertook the task. Princess Alice had managed to reclaim her own jewelry – deposited for safety’s sake at an English bank in Paris in 1930 – and took a selection of her diamonds to a jewellers in Old Bond Street, ‘as Philip dared not show his face at jewellers,’ she explained to her brother, Dickie, ‘for fear of being recognised. I think the ring is a great success.’

  On 9 July 1947 the engagement was formally announced from Buckingham Palace: ‘It is with the greatest pleasure that the King and Queen announce the betrothal of their dearly beloved daughter The Princess Elizabeth
to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, RN, son of the late Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Andrew (Princess Alice of Battenberg), to which union the King has gladly given his consent.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance.’

  The Book of Common Prayer

  How great was their pleasure? How glad was the King’s consent? Was George VI truly happy with the engagement? Yes, overall, I think he was. Naturally, he was loath to lose a daughter – he was a fond father and they were good companions to each other – but he saw Philip’s merits. He liked the fact that Philip was royal – and therefore ‘one of us’. He liked the fact that Philip was making a career in the Royal Navy, as he had done. He appreciated his future son-in-law’s intelligence, energy, and sense of humour. Above all, he saw that Lilibet was wholly in love and, now she was of age, could find no reason to deny her her heart’s desire.

  Queen Elizabeth, too, welcomed the engagement – although not in person on the day of the announcement. On 9 July she wrote to Philip from Buckingham Palace: ‘I am so disappointed to be laid aside with this laryngitis, because I particularly wanted to see [you] & tell you how happy we feel about the engagement, and to say how glad we are to have you as a son-in-law. It is so lovely to know you so well and I know that we can trust our darling Lilibet to your love and care.’ She signed the letter, ‘Ever your affect aunt’. Whoever you are, it is never easy knowing what to call your mother-in-law.

  To friends, acquaintances, and well-wishers offering congratulations on the news of the engagement the Queen gave a uniform response: ‘We feel very happy about it, as [Philip] is a very nice person, & they have known each other for some years which is a great comfort.’ But, privately, Her Majesty had reservations. Her doubts fuelled by her younger brother, David Bowes-Lyon, and some of her closest aristocratic friends, and by the senior courtiers led by Sir Alan Lascelles, she was not entirely sure about her future son-in-law. Was Philip really right for Lilibet? Was he good enough? Was he, in truth, a suitable consort for a future Queen?