HIS BIG, red hands were what you first noticed. On his wrist the ordinary watch with his brown leather strap and the copper bracelet he wore to illuminate the rheumatism which had so plagued his later years. The hands, large as lion’s paws, are in turn shaped by his genes and by life: his wife, their children, her subjects.
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If Philip had been the soft-skinned English aristocrat who would have chosen the king and queen for their older daughter, Elizabeth, it would have been different. But he was an outsider. When he married his second cousin at the age of 26, he lost virtually all of his early roots. His father was dead; his mother, who had a spiritual breakdown, moved into a religious order. She had a gray habit until the end of her life. Three of his four sisters married Nazis; no one was welcome at the royal wedding in Westminster Abbey just after the end of the war.
By that time, Philip had also lost his birthright, his home, his name, his nationality, and his church. Even his birthday – first fixed in the Julian calendar and then in the Gregorian – was no longer the same. The 20th century would test Britain’s monarchy on divorce, democracy and contempt. But the man who held his future in those hands had an immigrant’s hunger for tradition and hard work.
He came to Britain by accident. He was born in 1921 on the island of Corfu. His father, the son of the king of Greece, was mainly of Danish and Russian origin; his maternal grandfather grew up in Austria and Germany and became British. As a toddler, Philip was carried in a crib from an orange crate on board the ship when his family was banished from Greece. Until he was ten years old, they lived in exile in St Cloud, a tree-lined suburb of Paris.
His German family wanted him to grow up in Germany, and sent him to the school they founded in Schloss Salem in Baden-Württemberg. But Hitler’s rise to it paid off. Philip followed the Jewish principal, Kurt Hahn, to Scotland, where he founded a new school, Gordonstoun, with a perfect philosophy and the motto, “More is in you (than you think)”. As a schoolboy, Philip was often naughty, though never angry. He developed a strong sense of public duty and a taste for speed; he excelled in sports and learned to sail, while often being given the task as a cook because he was immune to seasickness.
At 18, he went to Dartmouth Naval College in the south of England, where he was named best cadet. When World War II broke out in the same year, he sailed to Colombo and joined a winding battleship escorting convoys of Australian troops to Egypt. On board, Philip of his time managed to complete Admiralty Form S519, ‘Journal for Use of Junior Officers’, a robust bundle with marbled print. The entries reveal a passion for technical things and an idiosyncrasy with spelling. Hitler’s allies are consistently “Italian”; buoys appear as ‘buoys’; he writes ‘errors’ and ‘except’. On the title page he draws his name, Philip, Prince of Greece; the men call him Pog. In the evenings he was ‘Captain’s Doggie’ and one of his duties was to make the cocoa.
Only after Italy’s invasion of Greece in June 1940 did Philip begin to see any action. And when it came down to it, it was dramatic. His ship, HMS Brave, was the center of the battle that destroyed the Italian navy. Philip is mentioned in dispatches, and emerged from the war as one of the youngest first lieutenants. At Buckingham Palace, teenage princess Elizabeth kept a photo on her dressing table of the bearded young officer who had served in her father’s navy. He had a striking resemblance to her grandfather, King George V.
Later, his staff often described him as a ‘prop’. When asked by a (female) journalist about rumors about a colorful private life in the 1960s, he barked: ‘Good God, woman! I do not know what kind of company you like. But he was good at getting things done: his Duke or Edinburgh teen award scheme is now operating in more than 140 countries.
In public, it was his job to walk two steps behind his wife, and not always try to have successful talks. He took the lead privately and encouraged her to spread her wings with the words, “Come on, Lilibet.” In his passport he was called a ‘prince of the royal house’, but he considered himself a modernizer. Within days of moving into Buckingham Palace, he began an “Organization and Methods Review.” He visited each of his approximately 600 rooms and asked each staff member what they do there and why.
Later he expanded his assignment. His study on the first floor there offers a panoramic view of his interests. On a long wall of bookshelves, his collection of model ships was stored in glass cabinets. Between them are the books that caught his attention – about wildlife, anthropology, history, naval strategy, sailing. In a corner were the biographies written about him. And on a table next to a window stood a variety of family photos in black and white. Many family members, but no children, except for a large, misty color portrait of the thorough Princess Anne taken shortly before she was first married in the early 1970s. She was his favorite among the four children, the one who was most like him. His sons upset him, not just the sensitive Charles he sent to Gordonstoun, even though he knew he would be bullied.
Stay calm and move on
The marriage brought the young, rootless prince a home, a land, a passport, a new religion and the first real stability in his life. In return, the immigrant boy gave his total support. Philip was the first of the senior peers to pay tribute to the coronation of the Queen at Westminster Abbey, where they had been married just over five years earlier. “I, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, am becoming your liar of life and limb and of earthly worship,” he promised as he knelt before her and placed his large hands between hers. “And I will bear faith and truth for you to live and die against all men. So help me God. Get up, take his fingers on her crown and kiss her on the cheek.■
This article appears in the Obituary section of the print edition under the heading “Promise of a Lifetime”