Philip: The Final Portrait

by Gyles Brandreth

  For example, a few years ago, the writer Graham Lord published an entertaining and carefully researched biography of the actor David Niven. In the book he wrote that Niven, an occasional attendee at the Thursday Club gatherings, was ‘very proud of his friendship with the Duke of Edinburgh’. Lord went on, ‘According to actress Lauren Bacall, Niven and his Hollywood pal, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, lent themselves as “beards” to cover up the Duke’s alleged dalliances in the early years of his marriage to the Queen. “Philip always had women,” Bacall told me, “and they covered for him and pretended that his women were their women.”’ It simply is not true, though it may well be what Niven told Bacall at the time and the impression she gained on the few occasions in the late 1940s and early 1950s when there was a London show-business party and Philip was there.

  In his book Graham Lord made something of the fact that he approached Buckingham Palace hoping to talk to Prince Philip about Niven and was rebuffed. Niven and the Duke were friends, insisted Lord. Prince Philip’s secretary responded coolly that the Duke recalled meeting David Niven a couple of times. Lord then sought to establish the depth of the friendship by quoting a letter – brief but thoughtful – sent by the Duke of Edinburgh to Niven in the aftermath of the murder of Lord Mountbatten. The Duke’s letter begins ‘Dear David’ and is signed ‘Philip’. It is a courteous and friendly response to Niven’s letter of condolence. It does not make the Duke of Edinburgh and David Niven bosom friends.

  Lord may have thought that the Duke did not want to talk about his friendship with Niven because he had something to hide, because there was possibly some truth in Lauren Bacall’s suggestion that Niven and Fairbanks Jr were the young Duke’s ‘beards’. If so, Lord misunderstood the situation and misread the Duke. Many did.

  Prince Philip had the widest range of acquaintances imaginable: Nelson Mandela, the Pope, Frank Sinatra – he met them all. People in the armed services, in the Church, in the voluntary sector, in the entertainment business – industrialists, environmentalists, athletes, academics, politicians – year in year out, the Duke of Edinburgh was meeting, greeting, saluting, chatting to, talking with, encouraging, challenging, teasing, annoying, pleasing, all manner of men, women, and children. They always recollected meeting him, and remarkably, more often than might seem possible, he recalled meeting them – especially on second or third encounter; particularly if he had read about them or seen them on TV; notably, of course, if their particular occupation or achievement was in an area that already engaged him. He was affable and chatty, unselfconscious and at ease with himself. He was good (much better than the Queen) at picking up a conversation or a relationship at exactly the point where it was left off – whenever that was: a month, a year, even a decade ago. He was good at living in the moment, appearing (and being) interested in who you were and what you had to say. If he was concentrating, and giving you his full attention, he could establish a sense of intimacy that was deceptive.

  Prince Philip was a great letter-writer. He told me he would never write an autobiography. ‘Good God, no!’ he said when I suggested it. I told him that he should publish a collection of his letters. ‘That’s a possibility, I suppose,’ he said, without much conviction. ‘I could edit it,’ I volunteered. ‘No doubt,’ he said. I have quite a number of letters from him. They are addressed ‘Dear Gyles’ and signed ‘Philip’ and so – like his letter to David Niven – give an exaggerated impression of familiarity. As he had no surname, he had no choice but to sign his letters ‘Philip’. As he was unstuffy, he addressed people he knew by their first name. He did have close friends – his first secretary, Mike Parker, was one; Sir Brian McGrath, his secretary from 1982 until the mid-nineties, was another; Lord Buxton of Alsa (television executive, conservationist, wildfowl enthusiast) a third – but David Niven was not one of them.

  Like the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh was remarkably self-contained. Unlike the Queen, he might have grumbled and growled, and occasionally snapped, but, like her, as a rule, he kept his true feelings under wraps. And, even with those with whom he was intimate, he was still guarded. Mike Parker told me, ‘Philip did not discuss his feelings – at least, not with me. I certainly did not know about him and Princess Elizabeth until virtually the day of the engagement. He’s not one to let it all hang out. That’s not his style.’

  In the public arena, the Prince Philip you would see – the outer man – was accessible (if a little forbidding), confident, bantering, outspoken. The private Prince Philip – the inner man – was infinitely more difficult to reach. He was, from all I saw myself and from what I heard from those who knew him well, more sensitive, more thoughtful, kinder, and more tolerant than the well-known caricature would suggest, but he kept these things hidden. His manner appeared open, but his instinct was watchful. Whoever you were, he did not let you get too close. I said as much to him once. He replied briefly, smiling a wintry smile, ‘It’s safer that way.’

  The Duke of Edinburgh was careful of his reputation and conscious of his position, and of the responsibility that came with it. And he had been, from the day he married Princess Elizabeth. As I write, I am looking at a photograph, taken in 1948, at a Thursday Club cricket lunch: it is a picture of a dozen of the regular club members, some with wives or girlfriends, seated at a long table, out of doors, in the sunshine, waiting for lunch. It is an informal shot – we are among friends: there is laughter, joshing, David Milford Haven’s dog, Simon, has his paws on the table – but one figure stands out from the crowd: in the centre of the picture sits the Duke of Edinburgh, just a tad more formal than the rest, looking straight at the camera, smiling, spruce, present and correct, knowing, in truth, that though this is just a snapshot, he is still the focus of attention.

  In his diaries Kenneth Tynan gives an account of a memorable evening, in the mid-1960s, when, at his house, after dinner, by way of entertainment, he rigged up two screens ‘to show some American experimental films simultaneously with outtakes from British nudipix (cf. scenes when the model accidentally dropped towel, bra or knickers) and Jean Genet’s erotic film Chant d’Amour’. Tynan’s guests that night included Peter Cook, the comedian, Harold Pinter, the playwright, and the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, and her husband, Tony Snowdon. ‘I had warned Tony that there would be some pretty blue material,’ recalled Tynan, ‘and he said, “It would be good for M.”’ At first, apparently, the nudie picture show went well – ‘the English bits were amateurish and charming’, according to Tynan, ‘with odd flashes of nipple and pubic bush’ – but when Genet’s homo-erotic fantasy crackled into life ‘the atmosphere began to freeze’. The ‘unmistakable shots’ of male members, many and various, in assorted states of arousal, rapidly brought a ‘gelid silence’ to the room: ‘no one was laughing now’. Happily for Tynan, Peter Cook came to the rescue, by suddenly improvising a spurious commentary for the film, ‘treating the movie as if it were a long commercial for Cadbury’s Milk Flake Chocolate … Within five minutes we were all rocking with laughter, Princess M included.’93 My point in relating this story is this: the Duke of Edinburgh would never have allowed himself (let alone his wife!) to have been put into a position like this. He was careful about where he went and what he did. Baron, and some of Baron’s friends, might have had a darker side to them – a side that wasn’t quite cricket – but, if they did, Philip never joined them there.

  The Duke was no prude, but neither, in my experience, was he given to off-colour humour or lewd behaviour. More than once, I saw him, with a look or a raised eyebrow, silence someone, a little in their cups, who might have been on the edge of telling a story that went ‘too far’. In several accounts of the Duke, I have read reports of him appreciatively eyeing up shapely women and simultaneously making suggestive remarks. In my experience, while he evidently enjoyed the company of good-looking women, his manners were impeccable. In the 1980s, when I was Appeals Chairman of the National Playing Fields Association, as fund-raisers we organised a number of royal charity evenings
at the pantomime. After the show, backstage, I would escort Prince Philip along the line-up of charmingly shapely and scantily clad chorus girls. The Prince shook them firmly by the hand and looked them only in the eye. More recently, at a Royal Variety Performance, while the Queen’s equerry and I nudged each other knowingly and agreed that Jennifer Lopez was indeed a fine figure of a woman (petite but perfectly formed), the Duke of Edinburgh directed his small talk entirely at J-Lo’s forehead. He was careful. He was no fool. And he was not interested in showgirls, actresses,94 and starlets. On that, at least, Sarah Bradford and I were agreed.

  I bring Sarah Bradford – Viscountess Bangor95 – into the narrative at this point because, of all the more distinguished and reliable royal biographers, she is the only one who used to speak openly and without equivocation of ‘the fact that Philip has not remained faithful’ throughout his marriage. In the revised edition of her acclaimed biography of the Queen, published in 2002, she wrote of the royal couple: ‘Theirs is a very royal marriage; Elizabeth’s generation was not brought up to expect fidelity but loyalty. Affairs are one thing, passion another. Philip is not the man to fall hopelessly in love; his affairs make no difference to a marriage as firm and indeed fond as theirs.’ Other royal biographers would hedge their bets and write of Philip’s ‘friendships with women’ (Ben Pimlott) and ‘supposed romances’ (Robert Lacey); Sarah Bradford, alone, wrote boldly, baldly, of his ‘affairs’.

  Because Sarah Bradford’s work is widely respected and carefully researched, when I was researching the first edition of this book, back in 2002, I went to see her, to discover why she was so uncompromising in her assertion of Prince Philip’s infidelity. We met on a winter’s evening at her house in Fulham. She was open, friendly, and hospitable. By candlelight, over a glass of wine, she told me, ‘There is no doubt in my mind at all. The Duke of Edinburgh has had affairs – yes, full-blown affairs and more than one. Not with Pat Kirkwood or Merle Oberon or any of those people. You’re quite right, all that was nonsense, complete nonsense. I don’t think there was ever anything in any of that. But he has affairs. And the Queen accepts it. I think she thinks that’s how men are. He’s never been one for chasing actresses. His interest is quite different. The women he goes for are always younger than him, usually beautiful, and highly aristocratic.’ In her book Sarah Bradford put it like this: ‘Philip has learned to carry on his flirtations and relationships in circles rich and grand enough to provide protection from the paparazzi and the tabloids.’

  In her drawing room, as the candles spluttered, and her husband sat in the kitchen watching the early evening television news, Sarah Bradford recounted what clearly she believed was a telling story of a private party given in Scotland and attended by the Queen and Prince Philip. The Queen, apparently, was seated at a table by the dance floor, talking to friends about racing, but, as she talked, her watchful eyes were elsewhere, gazing across the dance floor, observing her husband as he danced very close – too close – to their hostess’s daughter. ‘Well,’ I said (fully understanding for the first time why Philip pulled that face on his one night of dancing with Pat Kirkwood back in 1948), ‘by all accounts he’s a great dancer and the Queen is the Queen – she can’t really get up and dance as he might. I think we can excuse – even understand – a little light flirtation with the hostess’s daughter on the dance floor.’ Sarah Bradford did not agree. ‘I wouldn’t like it if William [Viscount Bangor] behaved like that,’ she said.

  I told Sarah Bradford that one of the reasons I admired her books was because of the amount of authenticated detail she provides. I asked her, if she was so certain about these ‘affairs’, why she had not named any names in her book. ‘I wanted to give an accurate picture without hurting people,’ she said, reasonably enough. The problem, of course, is this: if you make a highly charged assertion, but do not back it up with evidence, or give your sources, or name the names of any of those who might be involved, it is very difficult to make your assertion stand up. I told Sarah Bradford I was trying to get to the bottom of the raft of rumours about Prince Philip and his love life – to either establish them as fact or scotch them once and for all. ‘How do you know you are right about this?’ I asked her. ‘I do know,’ she said, smiling. ‘Believe me.’ ‘Who are these women?’ I persisted. ‘You know you they are,’ she said. ‘They’re the ones people talk about.’ ‘You mean, women like Sacha Abercorn,’ I suggested. ‘Yes,’ said Sarah Bradford, putting down her wine glass. ‘She is certainly one of them. Philip and Sacha Abercorn certainly had an affair. Without a doubt.’

  My reporting this conversation in the first edition of my book infuriated Sarah Bradford. There was evidently a misunderstanding. I had gone to her house, notebook in hand, to interview her. She, it transpired, thought I had gone for an off-the-record briefing. She considered my behaviour underhand and unprofessional – the behaviour, as she put it, of ‘a creep’.

  I was sorry to have caused her distress, but I did not feel too guilty about it. She, after all, was the author who had told the world in her best-selling biography of the Queen that the Duke of Edinburgh was unfaithful. It was quite an accusation to make – and, coming from Sarah Bradford, an author with authority, it was an accusation that was taken seriously and consequently caused distress to both the Queen and Prince Philip. Sarah Bradford made the charge in public, in print, and without equivocation. As an admirer, ally, and biographer of Prince Philip, I felt justified in challenging her face to face and in publishing the account of our encounter.

  Happily, Sarah Bradford and I met again more recently, in 2019, at the home of mutual friends. We shook hands and agreed to let bygones be bygones. I was pleased to do so because in the intervening years Sarah Bradford had changed her mind about Prince Philip. He was no longer a philanderer. It appears her original accusation was misplaced. She got it wrong. She was misinformed.

  In June 2011, at the time of Prince Philip’s ninetieth birthday, Sarah Bradford explained to the journalist John McEntee, ‘I was told a lot of things by people who should have known better. I now don’t believe he was unfaithful. He hasn’t got that sort of temperament. He does like women and you can see his reaction to someone like Carla Sarkozy [the Italian-born wife of the then French president]. I was told about these affairs by people who should know better.’

  Whatever Sarah Bradford’s view of me, I am grateful to her. As a direct consequence of our candle-lit conversation on that winter’s night all those years ago I went to meet one of those alleged mistresses Sarah Bradford and I had discussed. In doing so, I believe, I came as close as we will ever be to the truth of Prince Philip’s special relationship with the women who were not his wife.

  Sacha Abercorn, who died in 2018, was tall, slim, and striking. She was quietly spoken: intelligent, articulate, and thoughtful. She was born in 1946, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Harold Pedro Joseph Phillips (known as ‘Bunnie’, a friend of Dickie Mountbatten, and sometime lover of Edwina) and Georgina Wernher (later, of course, Lady Kennard, known to friends as ‘Gina’ and to Prince Philip, when they were children, as ‘George’). Sacha was christened Alexandra Anastasia – her Russian heritage was important to her. Her mother’s mother was Zia Wernher, married to Sir Harold Wernher, but born Countess Anastasia Mikhailovna, elder daughter of His Imperial Highness Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailovich, the grandson of Tsar Nicholas I.

  When I went to see Sacha Abercorn she gave me a copy of Feather from the Firebird, a collection of her ‘prose poems’, published by the Summer Palace Press in County Donegal in 2003. The poems are short, powerfully felt, highly evocative, and beautifully observed. Many of them feel autobiographical, coded tributes to people she had known and loved and lost: her younger brother, Nicholas, who committed suicide in 1991, her father, who died in 1980, her father’s friend, Lord Mountbatten, murdered in Ireland by the IRA in 1979. The ‘biographical note’ in the book reads in full: ‘Sacha Abercorn is the founder of the Pushkin Prizes Trust. She received an Honorary Doctorat
e from the University of Ulster in 2003. She is a descendant of the Romanovs and of Alexander Pushkin, the great Russian poet.’ Her husband was James, 5th Duke of Abercorn, twelve years her senior, an officer in the Grenadier Guards, briefly an Ulster Unionist MP, and for fifty years a force for good and a power to reckon with in the social and economic life of Northern Ireland. The Abercorns’ family home (since 1612) in Omagh, County Tyrone, is called Baronscourt96 – a very different milieu from the Baron’s Court that surrounded Prince Philip’s photographer friend Baron, the founder of the Thursday Club.

  When I arrived to talk to Sacha Abercorn at her London mews house, near Victoria Station, a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace, she was just back from a trip to Russia. She was in happy form, fielding telephone calls from her mother and her daughter while making me tea. We moved from the kitchen to the drawing room and, sat, facing each other, perched on the edge of sofas. Notebook and pen in hand, I asked her when she first remembered meeting the Queen and Prince Philip.

  ‘When I was a child,’ she said. ‘I must have been eight or nine. It was in the 1950s. We lived in Leicestershire, at Thorpe Lubenham, and they came to stay. They came with Charles and Anne, who were a bit younger than us. What do I remember best? I think the fun we all had – so much fun. The adults and the children all playing together. I remember dressing up as monsters. I remember huge bonfires and cooking potatoes in the ashes.

  ‘In the evening, indoors, in the dark, after tea, we played a wonderful game called Stone. Do you know it? All the lights are turned out – you are in total darkness. Someone is chosen to be “He” and, in the darkness, when you are touched by “He” you have to stand absolutely still – like stone. There was fear and fun. It was fantastic. The Queen and Prince Philip loved it. They used to play it at Balmoral – all the grown-ups.’ Sacha laughed, and covered her mouth with her hand, then said, ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, but once, my father was “He” and, in the dark, he felt this figure hidden behind the curtains – and then the Queen giggled and he realised who it was. Can you imagine? The Queen hiding behind the curtains and my father feeling her up and down?’ I asked Sacha how the Queen and Prince Philip seemed to relate to their own children. ‘Then?’ she asked. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Really well. Really, really well. Philip was wonderful. I remember how he used to help Charles with his Go-Kart. And he used to tell them stories that he’d invented. I can’t recall any gruff words – ever. Or any tension. I would go with my parents to Balmoral and their children would be there, too. It was always fun and jolly. I loved the picnics. They were good times. I remember, once, in the stables, there was a dog fight and the Queen arrived and calmed it immediately. She’s intrepid. She doesn’t get thrown by things. They were good times for us and, I think, good times for them – human times, filled with good humour. They don’t get that much time off, you know. The heavy duty is relentless.’