Philip: The Final Portrait

by Gyles Brandreth

  ‘Show Us You Care’ chorused the headline writers. The Queen was at Balmoral, invisible, unhappy, and confused. Above Buckingham Palace, the flagpole, traditionally empty except when the sovereign is in residence, remained bare. The people – or, at least, the tabloids on their behalf – demanded a sign from the sovereign: a flag above her principal residence flying at half-mast. By tradition, the only flag to fly above the Palace was the Royal Standard and, famously, even at the death of his own father, Edward VII, his son, George V, would not countenance the Royal Standard flying at half-mast. But that was then and this was now. ‘Your Majesty, Please Look and Learn,’ read a handwritten notice left, amid the field of flowers, outside Buckingham Palace. Her Majesty – pressed from all sides: by family, friends, and Tony Blair – took notice and, biting the inside of her bottom lip, did as she was counselled. She broke with all precedent and commanded that the Union flag be flown above the Palace at half-mast. She returned to London. With Philip at her side, she got out of her car and inspected the tributes – the single flowers, the bouquets, the poems, the teddy bears – left, in their thousands, in remembrance of her late daughter-in-law. On Friday night, 5 September, on the eve of the funeral, the Queen gave a live broadcast that changed the national mood. She said no more than she meant, that Diana was ‘an exceptional and gifted human being’ whom she admired ‘for her energy and commitment to others, and especially for her commitment to her two boys’. She spoke of the ‘extraordinary and moving reaction to her death’ and the ‘lessons to be learnt’ from it. She spoke as a Queen and ‘as a grandmother’ – and what she said and how she said it, simply and directly, with sincerity but without false sentiment, reminded the people who watched that she wasn’t such a bad old stick after all. With dignity, and retaining her integrity, she showed us she cared. (Is it any wonder the Queen and Prince Philip despised the tabloid press?115)

  On Saturday morning, before the funeral, the Queen, with her family, stood at the gates of Buckingham Palace, and Her Majesty led by example, bowing her head slowly as Diana’s coffin was driven past. In the funeral procession, Diana’s former husband and younger brother, Prince Charles and Charles Spencer, were due to walk behind the gun carriage bearing her coffin along the route to Westminster Abbey. Prince Harry and, in particular, Prince William were uncertain as to whether or not they wanted to walk behind the coffin, too. Prince Philip, who had not planned to walk, said to William, ‘If I walk, will you walk with me?’ As grandparents Philip and Elizabeth did their best by their grandsons that week.

  The funeral itself was not a comfortable experience. Elton John was never one of Prince Philip’s favourite performers. Tony Blair’s over-emotional reading of the Lesson was embarrassing. And Charles Spencer’s address, while perhaps forgivable under the circumstances, was, from the point of view of the Queen and the Duke, both illogical and insulting. In the course of it, Earl Spencer spoke directly to Diana’s sons and, on behalf of his mother and his sisters, with a catch in his throat, solemnly vowed that ‘we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition, but can sing openly as you planned’. Outside the Abbey, the listening crowd applauded the Earl’s oration. The noise of applause spilt into the Abbey. The congregation began to clap. The applause rumbled down the nave. William and Harry, a little uncertainly, clapped, too. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh did not join in. Later, privately, Her Majesty said that what disappointed her about Charles Spencer’s address was that it failed to do justice to his sister’s memory. He devoted so much of his address to castigating the media and disparaging the Royal Family that he left himself no time to pay proper tribute to Diana’s many gifts and achievements. The Queen was especially saddened by the fact that her godson Earl Spencer failed to acknowledge the importance to Diana of her personal faith.

  When I talked to Charles Spencer about his sister’s funeral, he told me he had had no intention of upsetting the Royal Family with his remarks. He had simply spoken as he had felt at the time, from the heart. I asked him how much hands-on involvement the ‘blood family’ now had with the boys and their upbringing, and he admitted, ‘Not a lot’, because it was not necessary. He said, ‘Prince Charles is obviously a good father and the boys are doing really well. I think Diana would be very happy about the way they have grown up. She’d be very proud of them.’ I asked him how he felt about Camilla. He said, ‘It’s none of my business. I wish Charles every happiness. He should do whatever he wants to do.’

  Diana despised Camilla. She had good cause. She thought about her rival a great deal, but tended to avoid mentioning her by name, referring to her simply as ‘you-know-who’ or ‘her’ or ‘that woman’ or ‘the third party’. What Diana would have felt about Charles and Camilla marrying is anybody’s guess. She changed her opinion with her mood – and with the company she kept. On one occasion, she said, ‘Marry her? Over my dead body.’ On another, ‘Oh, what the hell, let him marry her. Why not? I’m past caring.’

  She was never past caring what those in the Royal Family whom she respected thought about her – though, in the view of the Queen and Prince Philip, especially after the Panorama interview, she had a funny way of showing it. She spoke well of Princess Anne and of Princess Margaret, each of whom, of course, had had matrimonial difficulties of their own. She said that Anne ‘could be surprisingly supportive at times’ and that Margaret ‘even defended me against the occasional tirades of my father-in-law’. Often, she said, she wanted ‘to give my mother-in-law a great big hug’, but she knew that was not exactly her mother-in-law’s style. She conceded that the Queen, who felt sorely tested at times, ‘behaved pretty impeccably throughout’. She reckoned that the Queen would never approve of Charles marrying Camilla, ‘And he wouldn’t without her blessing.’

  On 9 April 2005 Charles did marry Camilla, of course – and with his mother’s blessing. A few days earlier I had lunch at St James’s Palace with the Duke of Edinburgh and found him in a mellow mood. He spoke of Prince Charles without the usual asperity and seemed content at the prospect of his son’s second wedding. ‘At least it’s settled,’ he said, ‘and that’s good.’ When Lord Howard of Rising (a Norfolk neighbour) reminded him of the saying that ‘when a man marries his mistress it creates a vacancy’, His Royal Highness chuckled obligingly and muttered, ‘Don’t, please.’ I reminded him of one of his best jokes – ‘If you see a man opening the car door for his wife, it’s either a new car or a new wife’ – and asked him if he was planning to use it in his father-of-the-groom’s speech. ‘I shan’t be saying a word,’ he replied, firmly.

  When the wedding day arrived, all went well. The Queen and Prince Philip did not attend the civil marriage at the Guildhall in Windsor, but they were there for the blessing in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. The order of service included the General Confession taken from the Book of Common Prayer, so that Charles and Camilla (along with the rest of the congregation) acknowledged their ‘manifold sins and wickedness’ and sought God’s forgiveness ‘with hearty repentance and true faith’. The Confession gave the press the excuse for a churlish final fling. The Daily Express described the couple’s public act of repentance as ‘too little, too late’. The Daily Mirror filled its front page with a picture of Charles and Camilla both sporting a cuckold’s horns and devil’s tail, under the stark headline: ‘We have SINNED.’

  In the streets of Windsor the crowds were not vast, but they were sympathetic and good-humoured. As the couple arrived at the Guildhall for the civil ceremony, I heard one half-hearted ‘boo’. It came from a middle-aged man who was quickly hushed by those around him. Inside St George’s Chapel, as the guests arrived for the service of blessing and dedication, there was a sense of nervous excitement. ‘So far, so good,’ said Camilla’s father, Major Bruce Shand. ‘I’m terribly relieved it’s finally happened,’ said the actor Timothy West, who was to read Words
worth’s ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’ during the service.

  For Camilla, the day was not easy. She was nervous (understandably) and she was suffering from sinusitis (which nobody knew). Her head was throbbing. But she looked wonderful – exactly right – and there was something endearing about her moments of awkwardness. Outside the Guildhall, she knocked her hat with her hand. Outside St George’s Chapel, she held on to her hat for fear the wind was going to whisk it away. It was touching, too, to see Charles helping her find her place in the order of service, holding her hand to display the ring, whispering to her, ‘You’re doing so well.’

  The reception was a triumph. Everyone was happy – including, it seemed, the Duke of Edinburgh. He was his genial, joshing self, but he did not give much away. Congratulated on the way it was all going, he said, ‘Nothing to do with me.’ There was a sense of both relief and good humour in the air. When Charles ended his speech with the words, ‘Down with the press!’, everybody cheered. When William gave Camilla a congratulatory kiss, it was not cursory: it was done with real affection. When Charles thanked ‘my darling Camilla who has stood with me through thick and thin, and whose precious optimism and humour have seen me through’, there were tears in many eyes. Charles also paid tribute to ‘my sons’ (‘they would be annoyed if I called them my children’) and ‘my dear mama’ for meeting the bill for the occasion. The Duchy champagne flowed freely and the much-mocked ‘finger food’ went down a treat.116

  True to his word, Prince Philip did not say a word. The Queen spoke and her speech stole the show. She gave the marriage her unqualified seal of approval. She did not speak for long, but what she said was funny, apt, and profoundly touching. The wedding coincided with the Grand National and the Queen began by saying she had two important announcements to make. The first was that Hedgehunter had won the race at Aintree; the second was that, at Windsor, she was delighted to be welcoming her son and his bride to ‘the winners’ enclosure’. She said, ‘They have overcome Becher’s Brook and The Chair and all kinds of other terrible obstacles. They have come through and I’m very proud and wish them well. My son is home and dry with the woman he loves.’

  After years of anxiety and reservation, the Queen accepted Camilla and did so wholeheartedly. And her reward was to discover quite quickly that Camilla is very much her sort of woman – much more so than Diana could ever have been. Camilla can talk easily (and amusingly) about dogs and horses. She is comfortable with the Queen’s view of life (for the most part, she shares it); she is politically incorrect (in a good way), funny, self-deprecating, realistic; and, like the Queen, she is a mother and a grandmother who has been a bit tempest-tossed but has managed to weather the storms. In 2012, to mark Charles and Camilla’s seventh wedding anniversary, the Queen honoured her daughter-in-law as she had not honoured Diana: she made her a Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order.

  Prince Philip accepted Camilla into the family because, as he put it to me, ‘You can’t argue with the inevitable.’ There is no doubt that Prince Charles has not handled his life as his father would have done. And there is no denying that Philip was often critical of his son. At times he regarded him as self-indulgent, self-regarding, and naive. He did not approve of Charles’s affair with Camilla, nor with his handling of it, but once Diana was dead he could see no objection to Charles marrying Camilla. Being a pragmatist and a man with an orderly mind, he was pleased to see Charles’s situation ‘regularised’. When I asked him what he made of Camilla, he was circumspect. ‘She’s a good sort,’ I said. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘I’ve seen her at Highgrove with the boys,’ I said. ‘They get on well.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she’s good with the boys.’

  Prince Philip was content that for the last decade of his life he did not have to lose any sleep over the matter of his assorted daughters-in-law. Diana was dead. Camilla he accepted. Sophie he could rely on. And Sarah Ferguson he did not think about at all.

  ‘I think Sarah still obsesses about you,’ I said.

  He snorted derisively.

  ‘You clearly love her daughters,’ I persisted. ‘You obviously get on well with them. Is their mother completely beyond the pale?’

  ‘Her behaviour was a bit odd,’ he said.

  When Sarah Ferguson joined the Royal Family, in the summer of 1986, hopes were high. She was twenty-six and full of fun. I recall being told at the time by Philip’s cousin, King Constantine, ‘Everybody agrees that Sarah is the best thing to have happened to the Royal Family in years. She’s a breath of fresh air.’ She was certainly as lively as they come. She had a past (a live-in relationship with the racing driver Paddy McNally, twenty-two years her senior), but she also had a pedigree (her maternal grandmother was a first cousin of Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, and, on her father’s side, she was a second cousin to Robert Fellowes, the Queen’s private secretary from 1990 to 1999), and Prince Andrew was head over heels in love with her. On their wedding day he was created Duke of York (the Queen’s father’s old title), and the wedding itself, at Westminster Abbey on 23 July 1986, was as glamorous and optimistic an occasion as anyone could wish for. Sadly, the Yorks’ honeymoon with the press and public was not prolonged.

  As the United Kingdom moved into one of its most punishing economic recessions since the war, Andrew and Sarah were building for themselves a £3.5-million mansion on the Sunninghill Estate. Sarah, initially acclaimed by the press as fun and feisty, was soon depicted as freeloading, grasping, and ridiculous. She was mocked for her fashion sense, berated for charging Hello! magazine £200,000 for a family photo shoot, and accused of bringing out the worst in her sister-in-law and fellow Sloane, Diana. ‘Vulgar! Vulgar! Vulgar!’ is how the senior courtier Lord Charteris described her.

  At first the Queen and Prince Philip thought she was rather jolly. Philip had known her father, Ronald Ferguson, ‘Major Ron’, when he had played in Prince Philip’s polo team in the 1960s. Philip had been friendly, too, with the major’s first wife, Susie, Sarah’s mother, who ran off to Argentina with her lover, Hector Barrantes, when Sarah was twelve – much as Diana’s mother had run off with Peter Shand Kydd when Diana was a little girl. The Queen liked Sarah because she was ‘outgoing and outdoorsy’ and because her son evidently adored her and their two daughters (Beatrice and Eugenie, born 1988 and 1990) were very sweet indeed. When the marriage went wrong, Andrew’s parents were disappointed and saddened, but understanding. Throughout their divorce Andrew and Sarah remained friends, continuing even to live under the same roof, and Sarah hoped that she would be able to remain on intimate terms with the rest of the Royal Family, too. She might have managed it, had it not been for press reports of her extramarital behaviour.

  On 20 August 1992, while Sarah and Andrew, with their children, were holidaying at Balmoral with the Queen and her family, the Daily Mirror published photographs, taken earlier in the month, of the Duchess of York enjoying a rather different kind of summer break. At the beginning of August, Sarah had rented a villa in the south of France and gone there, with her daughters, to soak up some Mediterranean sun. John Bryan, her American ‘financial adviser’, had come along for the holiday, too. Unhappily for Sarah, across the valley from the villa, lurking up on the hillside, was an eagle-eyed jumbo-lensed freelance photographer who managed to take a series of gobsmackingly lurid holiday snaps of Sarah, topless, cavorting with her financial adviser beside the pool, clearly tickling his fancy as – wait for it – he sucked her toes.

  The Queen and Prince Philip were, understandably, unamused. Andrew stood by his errant wife, completely and without hesitation, and Sarah, for the sake of form and the children, stayed on at Balmoral for a further three days. The atmosphere was distinctly frosty. At mealtimes Sarah, as usual, sat next to her husband, but she spent most of the time staring at her plate. She told me later that the Queen had been ‘furious, really cross’. She had ‘a session with her’ after breakfast on the morning that the photographs appeared and the Queen kept repeating to her ‘how dreadf
ully let down she felt’. Prince Philip’s actions spoke louder than words. He decided to steer clear of Sarah altogether. ‘It was ridiculous,’ she told me. ‘As soon as I came in through one door he’d be falling over the corgis to get out of the other. It was very funny. Except, of course, it wasn’t.’

  After their separations from her sons, the Queen continued to see Sarah and Diana from time to time, to have tea with them and find out how they were. Prince Philip had no desire to see Sarah again. This she knew and it pained her. ‘Of course I want to see him,’ she said to me after her divorce. ‘I am the mother of his granddaughters, after all.’ When I raised this with Prince Philip, he shrugged and said, ‘But the children come and stay.’ When I asked him why he would not see Sarah any longer, he said simply, ‘I don’t see her because I don’t see much point.’

  Sarah was determined to keep on trying. For Philip’s eightieth birthday, she sent him a handsome dinner service. (It was supposed to have twelve settings, but it arrived with thirteen: the ‘sample’ had been included with the set. With Sarah, somehow, something always goes wrong.) He sent her a nice thank-you note and signed it, ‘With love’ from ‘Pa’.