Prince Philip turns 99 today. He is a living totem of the virtues of putting duty first.
I have long been fascinated by His Royal Highness, The Duke of Edinburgh. Who else has worked until he was 95? Who else is still handsome at 99? As a young man, he was the best looking of his generation. And as his 99th birthday is today. I couldn’t be happier that he is still with us as a living totem of the virtues of putting duty first.
Fiammetta Rocco wrote a lengthy study of the prince in which she dates the moment that the duty hard-wiring began. She claims it was the result of a dramatic episode in November 1937. With a mother, Princess Alice, who had become a Greek Orthodox nun (after being treated by Sigmund Freud who recommended she have radiation of the ovaries to dampen down her ardour) and a father who was very much hands-off, Philip had no parent to look after him. Consequently, he was sent to Gordonstoun where he was taken under the wing of the character and resilience-builder Kurt Hahn.
Who else has worked until he was 95? Who else is still handsome at 99? As a young man, he was the best looking of his generation. And as his 99th birthday is today. – Mary Killen
At first, royal cousins would have him to stay for exeats and holidays. But with no clear cousin designated as specially responsible, gradually the invitations petered out and he spent his holidays at the boarding school, as well as the term time.
One day, in November 1937, when Philip was 16, he set off from Gordonstoun to attend a royal wedding in London. The emotionally starved youth was looking forward to seeing there his older sister Princess Cecilie of Greece and Denmark. But the small plane on which she was travelling with her husband and two children crashed in Belgium. Moreover the baby Princess Cecilie was carrying was born and died on the flight. There were no survivors.
How could Her Majesty The Queen have coped without a figure capable of such Olympian detachment at her side? – Mary Killen
Philip had to attend a funeral instead of a wedding. It was at that moment that, proposed Fiammetta Rocca very plausibly, he learned to sublimate his emotional needs and rise above them – by putting duty first. You might say it was a blessing in disguise because all of Her Majesty The Queen subjects have been the beneficiaries. How could she have coped without a figure capable of such Olympian detachment at her side?
When I wrote my self-help handbook – How the Queen can make you Happy, I read a lot of royal biographies. Craig Brown tipped me off that the one with the greatest ring of truth was that by Gyles Brandreth, Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Royal Marriage. Brandreth actually had a friendship with Prince Philip.
In a nutshell, the Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth have dealt with the rumours and lies disseminated by the press for almost one hundred years now by simply rising above them. For example, Prince Philip was for many decades rumoured to have had an affair with an actress he had only met three times – two of which were in Royal line-ups after shows.
The truth is that there was once a time when you could have a private life and you were surrounded by loyal household staff who saw the point of the monarchy and its crucial importance to the well-being of all and that the subjects should Mind their own Business.
All that matters is that they serve us. This they have certainly done. – Mary Killen
All that matters is that they serve us. This they have certainly done.
Their secrets are safe with their loyal servants, perhaps the last of their kind. And this is why Peter Morgan was required to carry out so much guesswork on his Netflix series The Crown: no one would tell him the “truth”. Yet even with The Crown, HM The Queen and her loyal husband simply rose above Morgan’s speculations – and ignored them.
Mary Killen is a writer and contributor to Channel 4’s Gogglebox. She is the Spectator’s social dilemmas expert in her column, Dear Mary.
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