Philip: The Final Portrait

by Gyles Brandreth

  It was mid-afternoon on Thursday, 7 February when the plane touched down at Heathrow. Waiting to greet his new sovereign was her Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who had first become a Member of Parliament more than fifty years before, when Victoria was Queen. Elizabeth II, Victoria’s great-great-granddaughter, a tiny figure in black, solemn and self-possessed, descended the aircraft’s steps alone. Philip lingered inside the door, hidden, watching and waiting until the new Queen had touched British soil. Only then did he emerge and come down the steps to join her. ‘Oh yes,’ he said to me, ‘when the late King died, everything changed.’

  Chapter Ten

  ‘A King is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness’ sake. Just as if in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat.’

  John Selden (1584–1654), Table-Talk

  ‘When King George died,’ I asked Prince Philip, ‘did you know what to expect?’

  ‘No,’ he said, laughing a little bleakly. ‘There were plenty of people telling me what not to do. “You mustn’t interfere with this.” “Keep out.” I had to try to support the Queen as best I could without getting in the way. The difficulty was to find things that might be useful.’

  ‘But there was the example of Prince Albert, the Prince Consort,’ I suggested. ‘You’d read biographies …’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ An exasperated sigh. ‘The Prince Consort …’ A pause. ‘The Prince Consort’s position was quite different. Queen Victoria was an executive sovereign, following in a long line of executive sovereigns. The Prince Consort was effectively Victoria’s private secretary. But after Victoria the monarchy changed. It became an institution. I had to fit in with the institution. I had to avoid getting at cross purposes, usurping others’ authority.’

  The institution had its own momentum and Philip had very little authority of his own. As darkness descended on that cold, dank February afternoon, the new Queen and her husband were driven from Heathrow to Clarence House, where they found the old King’s private secretary already waiting for them. Only, of course, Sir Alan Lascelles was not waiting for Philip. He was waiting for the Queen. He had a sheaf of state papers that he needed Her Majesty to sign. Within the hour, Queen Mary also came to call. She was eighty-four and frail, full of dignity and grief. The day before, her son, the King, had died. Today she had come, not to hug her granddaughter, but to curtsy to her new Queen. ‘Her old Grannie and subject must be the first to kiss her hand,’ she said. Elizabeth’s eyes pricked with tears as she accepted her grandmother’s obeisance. Martin Charteris told me, ‘For the young Queen, it was a moment that must have sorely tested her reserve and her resolve, but she loved her father and wanted to carry herself courageously as he would have done.’

  Elizabeth said as much the following day, at St James’s Palace, where her Privy Councillors gathered for the formal meeting of the Accession Council – many of them, according to Hugh Dalton, a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was there, ‘people one didn’t remember were still alive, and some looking quite perky and self-important’.77 The Queen, looking ‘very small’, according to Dalton, entered alone and read the Declaration of Sovereignty in a ‘high-pitched, rather reedy voice’. ‘She does her part well,’ said Dalton, ‘facing hundreds of old men in black clothes with long faces.’ Harold Wilson, another of the Privy Councillors and one of her future prime ministers, said it was ‘the most moving ceremonial I can recall’. When the Queen had read the formal Declaration, she added, ‘My heart is too full for me to say more to you today than that I shall always work as my father did.’

  Outside, on the ramparts of the Palace, the Garter King of Arms, in Tudor tabard, proclaimed the Accession: ‘Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the grace of God Queen of this Realm and of all Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.’ Inside, Philip, only eight weeks a Privy Councillor himself, stepped forward to take his sovereign by the hand and escort her out of the chamber and down to her waiting car. ‘In the back of the car,’ according to Sarah Bradford’s biography of the Queen, ‘she finally broke down and sobbed.’ Someone who was there at the time said to me, ‘The Queen may have cried – that would only be natural, the experience was overwhelming – but I assure you that she did not “break down and sob”. That is not her way. Why does everything have to be exaggerated?’

  There is no need to exaggerate the national sense of grief at the passing of George VI or the degree of admiration bordering on adulation expressed for the new Queen. When news of the King’s death was broadcast, drivers stopped their cars, got out, and stood to attention as a mark of respect. When his body lay in state in Westminster Hall, more than 300,000 people filed slowly past in tribute. ‘The world showed a large and genuine measure of grief,’ said Jock Colville. ‘The King was universally loved and respected,’ said Martin Charteris. ‘He gave his life for his country.’ ‘The King’s outstanding quality,’ said Dean Acheson, the US Secretary of State, was ‘his selfless dedication to duty.’ ‘He was a grand man,’ President Truman noted in his diary. ‘Worth a pair of his brother Ed.’ George VI had been King through the six long years of the Second World War and had not flinched. At his funeral at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, the card accompanying Winston Churchill’s wreath bore just two words, the inscription to be found on the Victoria Cross: ‘For Valour.’

  In his broadcast on the night of the King’s death, Churchill, as Prime Minister, paid tribute to the courage and fortitude of the late King and then, with typical Churchillian bravura, heralded a new Elizabethan age: ‘Famous have been the reigns of our Queens,’ he rumbled prophetically. ‘Some of the greatest periods in our history have unfolded under their sceptre.’ Churchill might not yet know Elizabeth well, might consider her no more than a child, but, very quickly, he became utterly enchanted by her. ‘You’ve got to remember,’ Charteris said to me, ‘Churchill was nearly eighty and the Queen was no more than twenty-five, but it was not simply her youth and beauty that entranced him. He was impressed by her. She was conscientious, she was well informed, she was serious-minded. Within days of her Accession she was receiving prime ministers and presidents, ambassadors and High Commissioners – all those who had come to London for the King’s funeral – and doing so faultlessly. She had authority and dignity as well as grace.’ Within a year, Churchill was confiding to his doctor, Lord Moran: ‘All the film people in the world, if they had scoured the globe, could not have found anyone so suited for the part.’

  Meanwhile, the Duke of Edinburgh, when he was being noticed at all, was not being so rapturously received. Within three weeks of the Accession, Churchill had received a formal letter of complaint about the Duke from a Conservative MP, Enoch Powell. Philip had visited the House of Commons to listen to a debate – something, according to Powell, a royal consort had not done since 1846 – and, while sitting observing the proceedings from the peers’ gallery, the Duke was deemed to have expressed his own opinions about the matters under discussion below, in a manner neither seemly nor constitutional. The government chief whip endorsed Powell’s complaint: Philip’s demeanour had not been ‘exactly poker-faced’. Philip was quietly reprimanded. ‘It kept happening,’ according to Patricia Mountbatten’s husband, Lord Brabourne. He said to me, ‘Philip was constantly being squashed, snubbed, ticked off, rapped over the knuckles. It was intolerable.’ Mike Parker told me, ‘The problem was simply that Philip had energy, ideas, get-up-and-go, and that didn’t suit the Establishment, not one bit.’ In his diary another, more senior, Conservative MP, Harold Macmillan (another of Elizabeth’s future prime ministers), summed up the ‘Establishment’s’ reservations succinctly: ‘I fear this young man is going to be as big a bore as Prince Albert. It was really much better when royalty were just pleasant and polite.’

  Among the many who came to London for the lying-in-state and funeral of the late King was his elder brother, David (or ‘Ed’ as President Truman called him), whose abdication as Edward VIII, of course, had led to George V
I’s reign. The Duke of Windsor, as he had become, was now fifty-seven and destined to live a further twenty years. Queen Elizabeth, privately, may have blamed her brother-in-law’s selfishness for her own husband’s premature death, but now she entertained him to tea and spent some time alone with him. He reported to his Duchess – who, diplomatically, had stayed behind in New York – that the widowed Queen had ‘listened without comment’ (they are very practised at that) ‘& closed on the note that it was nice to be able to talk about Bertie with somebody who had known him so well’. ‘Officially and on the surface,’ David told Wallis, ‘my treatment within the family has been entirely correct and dignified.’ Superficially, he acknowledged, he was handled impeccably by courtiers and relations alike. ‘But gee,’ he added, ‘the crust is hard & only granite below.’ Unsurprisingly perhaps – given that he had lived away from the court for sixteen years, and that most of those at court had little affection and still less respect for him – he found the mood and way of life at Buckingham Palace stiff and uncompromising. ‘Gosh, they move slowly within these Palace confines,’ he said. He found the tone and atmosphere at Clarence House, the Edinburghs’ base camp, much more congenial. ‘Clarence House was informal and friendly,’ he reported to Wallis. ‘Brave New World, full of self-confidence & seem to take the job in their stride.’

  According to Martin Charteris, ‘the operation at Clarence House was a good one.’ ‘We were a good team,’ said Mike Parker. ‘Philip ran a tight ship.’ As well as being the Edinburghs’ office, Clarence House was also their home – and Philip’s first and only family home since he had last lived with his parents in Paris when he was ten. Philip wanted to go on living there. He put his thoughts on paper in a note to Boy Browning. He proposed that Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother – as she decided she wished to be known – should remain at Buckingham Palace and that the new Queen and her family should remain at Clarence House. One day, he suggested, Clarence House might also be an appropriate London home for Prince Charles. (It now is.) The business of the monarchy could be conducted from Buckingham Palace, while the family of the monarch could continue living where they were. Sir Alan Lascelles was having none of it. ‘God, he was bloody,’ Lord Brabourne told me fifty years later. Lascelles was adamant: the traditional home of the British monarch was Buckingham Palace; it always had been; it should remain so. In fact, the Palace – built by the Duke of Buckingham in 1703 and rebuilt between 1825 and 1837 – had only been the official London residence of the sovereign since Queen Victoria’s reign, but Lascelles, as the Queen’s private secretary, had authority that Philip, as the Queen’s husband, lacked, and – significantly – he also had the backing of the Prime Minister. Churchill said, ‘To the Palace they must go.’ So, to the Palace they went.

  At the same time, in another, even more sensitive matter, the young Queen did as her private secretary and Prime Minister advised, rather than as her husband wished. She decided that her children – and her children’s children – should bear her family name rather than his. Philip was incandescent. ‘I am nothing but a bloody amoeba,’ he protested. ‘I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children.’

  ‘It hurt him, it really hurt him,’ Patricia Mountbatten said to me when I went to see her. Sitting facing her and her husband, John Brabourne, in their drawing room at Mersham half a century after the event, from the pained expressions on their faces you would think the wound had been inflicted yesterday. ‘Can you imagine doing such a thing?’ asked Lord Brabourne. ‘It so hurt him,’ repeated Countess Mountbatten. ‘He had given up everything – and now this, the final insult. It was a terrible blow. It upset him very deeply and left him feeling unsettled and unhappy for a long while.’ ‘A long while,’ echoed Lord Brabourne. A silence fell in the room. The fire crackled. Suddenly, jointly, the Brabournes seemed to sense that they had gone too far. ‘Of course, I don’t blame the Queen,’ said Lady Mountbatten. ‘It was Churchill,’ said Lord Brabourne, emphatically, ‘encouraged by Lascelles. They forced the Queen’s hand.’ Lady Mountbatten said, ‘I remember hearing the Queen say herself that she was in favour of the name Mountbatten-Windsor.’

  The issue arose when it did, as it did, because, at a house party at Broadlands, within days of the old King’s death and the new Queen’s Accession, Dickie Mountbatten was heard to declare that ‘the House of Mountbatten now reigns’. Prince Ernst August of Hanover, who was there, swiftly reported this boast to Queen Mary – whose own husband, George V, had created the House of Windsor in 1917. Queen Mary, outraged, summoned the Prime Minister’s secretary, Jock Colville. Colville duly reported the dowager Queen’s concerns to Churchill, who had his own reservations about Mountbatten – and was by no means alone. The Duke of Windsor, after the King’s funeral, wrote to Wallis: ‘Mountbatten – one can’t pin much on him but he’s very bossy & never stops talking. All are suspicious & watching his influence on Philip.’

  Churchill decided on ‘action this day’ and immediately raised the issue with his senior ministers. According to the Cabinet minutes of 18 February 1952, ‘The Cabinet’s attention was drawn to reports that some change might be made in the Family name of the Queen’s Children and their descendants. The Cabinet was strongly of the opinion that the Family name of Windsor should be retained; and they invited the Prime Minister to take a suitable opportunity of making their views known to Her Majesty.’ The Prime Minister did exactly that and, within six weeks, despite her husband’s furious protestations, the Queen made her position plain before the Privy Council: ‘I hereby declare My Will and Pleasure that I and My children shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, and that My descendants who marry and their descendants shall bear the name of Windsor.’

  ‘Philip was not happy,’ said Martin Charteris. ‘Philip was spitting,’ said Mike Parker. ‘Personally,’ reflected Dickie Mountbatten, ‘I think it was Beaverbrook’s hatred of me coupled with Winston’s disenchantment with what I did in India that brought all this about.’ Certainly, Lord Beaverbrook had Churchill’s ear and, not long before George VI’s death, John Gordon, the editor of the Sunday Express, had reported to his newspaper’s proprietor that a member of the Greek royal family had told him that those ‘dangerous people’, the Mountbattens, were ‘determined to be the power behind the throne when Elizabeth succeeds’, though he sensed they would not succeed, as ‘Elizabeth was developing into a strong-minded woman who would not be controlled by him’. Gordon told Beaverbrook that the Mountbattens were plotting to get Philip pronounced King or King Consort. But Arthur Christiansen, the editor of the Daily Express, who knew Philip through their shared membership of the photographer Baron’s Thursday Club (of which more anon), assured Beaverbrook that Philip ‘sees through his uncle and fully realizes how great are the Mountbatten ambitions’.

  There is no evidence that Philip ever wanted to be called Prince Consort – let alone King Consort or King – and I do not believe he was particularly concerned about the actual name ‘Mountbatten’. It was not his father’s name. It was not his mother’s name. It was the anglicised version of his maternal grandfather’s name. What concerned Philip was the principle that a father be allowed to pass on his surname to his children. He believed he had precedent on his side. Victoria of Hanover had married Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha: their son, Edward VII, had reigned as a member of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

  He also, unfortunately, had precedent against him. During the First World War, George V showed that a sovereign could change the name of the Royal House at will.

  ‘What the devil does that young fool Edinburgh think that the family name has got to do with him?’ asked Queen Mary in the spring of 1952. In the spring of 1953, ten weeks before the Coronation, Queen Mary died. In the summer of 1953, shortly after the Coronation, Tommy Lascelles retired. In April 1955 Winston Churchill, aged eighty, resigned as Prime Minister. On 8 February 1960, eight years to the day after her Accession Council, and shortly before the birth of Princ
e Andrew, the Queen issued a new declaration of her ‘Will and Pleasure’: ‘While I and my children will continue to be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor my descendants, other than descendants enjoying the style, title or attributes of Royal Highness and the titular dignity of Prince or Princess, and female descendants who marry and their descendants, shall bear the name Mountbatten-Windsor.’

  It was a compromise. ‘The Queen has always wanted,’ announced the Buckingham Palace press office, ‘without changing the name of the Royal House established by her grandfather, to associate the name of her husband with her own and his descendants. The Queen has had this in mind for a long time and it is close to her heart.’ She had certainly been brooding about it. Harold Macmillan, her Prime Minister between 1957 and 1963, liked to tell the story of calling on the Queen at Sandringham and encountering the old Duke of Gloucester in the hall. ‘Thank heavens you’ve come, Prime Minister,’ says the Duke. ‘The Queen’s in a terrible state. There’s a fellow called Jones in the billiards room says he wants to marry her sister, and Prince Philip’s in the library wanting to change the family name to Mountbatten.’