The end of a royal era
With the sad passing of Prince Philip, we take a look at why we'll never see the likes of him again
We’re sending the newsletter a day early this week following the sad news that Prince Philip has passed away just two months short of his 100th birthday. We can honestly say we’ll never see another royal like him. Kerry has written several features for The Sunday Telegraph this week marking his passing. Here’s why it’s the end of an era.
He was as far from PC as you could get – and all more refreshing for it. Aged 94, he famously told a photographer to “just take the f-ing picture” at a Battle of Britain event in 2015.
Dashing and daring in his day, Philip was as charming and witty as he was brusque and offensive. Renowned for his temper, he was known to be somewhat stony-hearted with his children, yet in later years, would provide the emotional support his grandsons needed when they lost their mother.
He was a man of contradictions and while definitely not woke, was of a different time. Living for almost a century, the world was a completely different place when he left it. And at least he kept us, and the Queen entertained.
Despite being the powerhouse behind the 1969 BBC documentary Royal Family, which was recently leaked online after having been locked away by the Queen, ironically it would be the Netflix series The Crown which would really make the world view the Duke of Edinburgh through a different lens. His struggles to find a role, made us understand exactly what it would have been like for an alpha male joining The Firm.
Born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark in 1921, but exiled from Greece with his family when he was a baby, he joined the Royal Navy in 1939 aged 18 and enjoyed a distinguished career. When he met the teenage Elizabeth, the pair became the glamour couple of their day, marrying in 1947.
After that, Philip’s naval career got beached and he began a new one, albeit anchorless. He was furious when Winston Churchill insisted the Royal Family take the name Windsor not Mountbatten, saying, “I’m nothing but a bloody amoeba. I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his children.” In the end, he got his way and his descendants now go by the surname Mountbatten-Windsor.
And he did work hard – carrying out 22,220 solo engagements and making 5496 speeches as the Queen’s Consort, before he retired in 2017 aged 96.
The Crown fans will also be familiar with the handsome young Philip’s rumoured affairs and his membership of the Thursday Club with Australian pal Mike Parker. He denied it – once telling the Independent newspaper, “I have never moved anywhere without a policeman accompanying me. So how the hell could I get away with anything like that?”
But what was certain was the love he and the Queen had for each other. It was also record-breaking. They were the longest-serving British royals in history, the Queen the longest-reigning British monarch and Philip, the oldest-ever male in the Royal Family.
It’s no mean feat – particularly when subsequent generations made a royal mess of their relationships, with Princess Anne, Prince Charles and Prince Andrew all getting divorced.
“(The Queen’s) serene acceptance of the man kept the marriage alive,” says biographer Ingrid Seward. “She has always been wise enough to accept his phenomenal energy and let him get on with things. He, in turn, has been her greatest support and has always protected her.”
“He has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years,” the Queen said on their Golden Wedding anniversary in 1997, “and (we) owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim, or we shall ever know.”
He was also the protector of the very institution he once struggled to find acceptance within – leading him to be harsher on Sarah, Duchess of York and Diana, Princess of Wales during their marriage splits, than the Queen. But in the end, it would be Philip who would become the ballast that kept the family afloat when Diana died in 1997. It was he who Prince William requested walk with him behind the coffin at her funeral.
William described his grandfather as “a legend” and Princess Eugenie called him, “strong and consistent. He’s been there for all these years, and I think he’s the rock, you know, for all of us.”
He was due to hit a century in June and was reportedly appalled by the idea there would be a party, telling a palace aide he wanted “nothing to do with any celebrations”. It’s not surprising – in 2000, he told the UK Telegraph he didn’t want to hit 100. “I can’t imagine anything worse,” he said. “Bits of me are falling off already.”
In the end, typically, he got his own way.
Forever a royal legend
He was the golden-haired Adonis with blue-blood in his veins, six feet tall with magnetic blue eyes, exuding energy, vitality, wit and charm. We honestly could have listed at least 99 reasons why Philip was a fun-loving daring dynamo…
1. A Royal Navy hero: During WW2 Philip was mentioned in dispatches for his bravery under fire on HMS Valiant during the Battle of Cape Matapan in the Mediterranean, March 1941.
2. A super sportsman: At Gordonstoun School, he won the captaincy of both the hockey and cricket teams. He was also a champion polo player and, after hanging up his mallet in his fifties, he took up the demanding sport of carriage driving.
3. A conservation pioneer: Prince Philip was president of both the Zoological Society of London (1960-1977) and first president of the World Wildlife Fund (1981-1996), travelling the globe and speaking out about protecting the environment.
4. A modernising leader: A great-great grandson of Queen Victoria and born a prince, officials still saw him as an ‘outsider’ who ‘was rough and uneducated’. Ruffling a lot of feathers along the way, the Royal Family’s transformation was initiated by the practical and forward-thinking Duke. He was the driving force behind televising the Queen’s Coronation in 1953, a revolutionary move for its time.
5. An action man: He began his pilot training in 1952 and spent over 44 years in the cockpit clocking up 5,986 hours in 59 types of aircraft. In 1956 the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme was launched and to date almost seven million people have taken part and it’s now an international action-packed initiative.
6. A much-loved royal: As actor Matt Smith discovered when he was researching his role for The Crown, Philip was wildly popular . “All the research I did found him to be brilliantly funny, very clever, very popular. In the royal house he’s the most popular of them all. If you’ve talked to any of the staff, Philip’s the one they all love.”
Share your memories of Prince Philip
If you have a special memory or even a photo of the Duke of Edinburgh that you’d love to share with The Royal List, we’d be thrilled to hear from you.