Dan Snow's History Hit - Prince Philip

Episode Date: April 9, 2021

Abandoned by his parents, exiled from his home, a veteran of Second World War battles, an author, the founder of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), this is the story of Prince Philip as you have ne...ver heard it before.He was the longest-serving consort to a reigning British Monarch in history and the oldest-ever male member of the British Royal Family. Born in Corfu, Greece, in 1921 his family escaped a revolution soon after his birth eventually settling in Paris. He was educated in Scotland and after school went on to join the Royal Navy where he served with distinction on British warships during World War Two. He married Princess Elizabeth in 1947 and became a royal consort in 1952 after Elizabeth Ascended to the throne. As consort, he completed over 22,000 solo royal engagements and thousands more alongside Queen Elizabeth for whom he provided unshakeable support. He was a keen sportsman, helped to found the Worldwide Fund for Wildlife, was a patron of many charities and a sponsor of British Engineers and designers. Prince Philip was sometimes portrayed as insensitive and cold and he became known for his sometimes bizarre quips, but what was the real man like? We talk to one of Britain’s best-known broadcasters, Gyles Brandreth, a personal friend of Prince Philip, and a leading historian of the royal family to mark the long life and career of the Queen’s husband. We'll also hear from renowned historian Sally Beddell Smith, author of bestselling biographies of Queen Elizabeth II.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Dan Snow's History Inn. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, died this week at the age of 99. He was the longest-serving consort of a reigning British monarch in history and the oldest ever male member of the British royal family. Since becoming a royal consort in 1952, he completed over 22,000 solo royal engagements, and thousands more, alongside his wife, Queen Elizabeth II. This podcast is about his life. He escaped a revolution as a baby. He served aboard British warships in conflict during the Second World War. He helped to found the Worldwide Fund for Wildlife and was a patron of many charities and a sponsor of world-famous British engineers and designers.
Starting point is 00:00:52 He's portrayed in The Crown, which people have watched recently, as insensitive and cold, and he is famous for his fairly bizarre quips. So I want to talk to two people who knew him well to tell us more about the man himself. A biographer, Sally Beddle-Smith, and a friend of his, Giles Brandreth, join me on this podcast to discuss his life, legacy, and the impact of his death on that institution, the British Crown. Prince Philip was born royal, but following the First World War and its attendant revolutions and upheavals, June 1921 was a bad time to be blue-blooded. His father was a younger son of the Greek king, but 18 months after Philip was born in Corfu, a war against Turkey was going disastrously and the military staged a coup. Sally Beddle Smith's written best-selling biographies of several members of the British royal family.
Starting point is 00:01:49 The Greek royal family was expelled in a coup and his father, who was an army officer, was almost killed by the military coup. But the British government intervened and they all escaped and went to Paris. He and his four older sisters and his mother, Princess Alice, who was related to the British royal family, her grandmother was Queen Victoria. We have to remember that Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth II are third cousins. They share the same great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. Nevertheless, he was a homeless, stateless young man living in Paris, living off the generosity of their more wealthy relatives who paid for him to go to boarding school. And he went to England, but he was a very unlikely person to end up where he did. Well-known British broadcaster Giles Brandreth was a friend of Prince Philip.
Starting point is 00:03:02 Well, one of the most fascinating things about the Duke of Edinburgh is that he is the most royal person you can possibly imagine. More royal than the Queen, because they're both, the Queen of Edinburgh, both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria. But the Queen is only royal on one side of her family, because, yes, she's the daughter of George VI, but her mother was merely an aristocrat, wasn't royal, whereas the Duke of Edinburgh was royal to his fingertips on both sides of his family, related to kings and queens, kaisers, emperors. There is no element of the Duke of Edinburgh that wasn't royal, totally royal. Technically, he was Greek. But as he said to me once, he had no particular fondness for the Greeks,
Starting point is 00:03:52 despite being known as Prince Philip of Greece, because they'd assassinated his grandfather and put his own father into exile at around the time when Prince Philip was born. So though he spoke a bit of Greek and was born in Greece on the island of Corfu, he didn't see himself as Greek. And his grandfather was the king of Greece merely because in the 19th century, so many problems in that part of the world, they were looking for a king
Starting point is 00:04:19 and they went to the crowned heads of Denmark and said, have you got a spare somebody you could lend us to be king. And that's how his grandfather and great-great-grandfather became kings of Greece. But on his mother's side, he is directly descended from Queen Victoria. One of the things that annoyed him, I think, when he became engaged to the queen back in 1946-47, and he went to stay at Windsor Castle. And people in this country
Starting point is 00:04:48 didn't know who he was, and the courtiers didn't really know who he was, because his father was a Prince of Greece, and his mother, though descended from Queen Victoria, was, as we may discuss, something of an eccentric lady. They didn't really know who he was, and he was Prince Philip of Greece. Though he'd been in the Royal Navy, they still had their doubts about him. Anyway, he was going to stay at Windsor Castle. They were showing him around. And he got a bit irritated, and he said to the aquarii who was taking him to his room, I do know my way around here, you know.
Starting point is 00:05:18 My mother was born at Windsor Castle. Philip's exiled family now had to fall upon the generosity of an extended network of royal cousins. Well, the sisters were actually, depending on how you want to look at it, they all married German royalties, and some of them turned out to have Nazi associations, so that wasn't great, but they were pretty well fixed. Prince Philip was kind of on his own. He was taken in by his British family because his mother, Princess Alice, was a member of the British royal family. And so his uncle, who was Prince George, who was the Marquess of Milford Haven. And he took care of him for a while and then he died. Prince Philip's mother, who was profoundly deaf, also suffered a nervous breakdown
Starting point is 00:06:18 and she was in a sanatorium for a number of years. His father, who had only been trained as a military officer, went to Monte Carlo and lived with his mistress. So Philip was left without any parents, really. And so his uncle, George Milford Haven, took care of him and put him in a boarding school, and then he died. And so the one who really had the most influence in his life was his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten. But he had no money, and I think his only future was in the British Navy, which is where he went after boarding school and where he distinguished himself in World War II. He became a British citizen in the 1940s and changed his name from Philip. Curiously, for a royal person, you only had one first name, one Christian name. He was simply Philip. Quite extraordinary. And that always when he wrote to you, you felt a kind of intimacy that was quite unwarranted because, of course,
Starting point is 00:07:31 he could only sign his letter, Philip. So whenever he wrote to anybody, he signed it, Philip. Oh, look, I've got a letter from Philip. But actually, there was something else that he could put because he was simply Philip. Philip, Prince of Greece. So born Greek, but died British. But basically, he was a citizen of the world, I think. Philip was the top cadet in his class at the Royal Navy College, Dartmouth, then saw plenty of action serving with the Royal Navy during the Second World War. He was at the Battle of Crete in the Mediterranean. He was mentioned in dispatches for his service during the Battle of Cape Matapan, in which he controlled a battleship searchlight. He became First Lieutenant of HMS Wallace at 21 years old,
Starting point is 00:08:10 one of the youngest First Lieutenants in the Royal Navy. During the invasion of Sicily in July 1943, he saved his ship from a bomber attack at night. In 1944, he was on HMS Whelp and saw service with the British Pacific Fleet. And amazingly, he was in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrender was signed. I'll sally whether marrying into the royal family actually adversely affected his career. It absolutely did stop his career. He was ticketed because of his ability. Prince Philip was a very, very bright man. I remember once talking to a
Starting point is 00:08:48 general and asking about how he and the queen made decisions. And he said, well, the queen has this sort of big picture, and Prince Philip has this sort of defense staff rigor, and he can drill down to the bottom of a problem and pick it apart and find a solution. He was a very good sailor. war, he was pursuing a career. And when he and the queen, well, then Princess Elizabeth, went to Malta in the late 1940s, he had his own ship. And he was thrilled because this is what he'd always wanted to do. And then George VI became very ill and they had to return to England and take over a lot of his duties. And at that point,
Starting point is 00:09:54 he knew that there was no hope that he could continue as an officer in the Royal Navy. He met the future Queen, his young cousin Elizabeth, at Dartmouth. He met the future Queen, his young cousin Elizabeth, at Dartmouth. He met the Queen, I mean, properly met the Queen in the summer of 1939, when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth took their two daughters to the Royal Navy Academy at Dartmouth for the day. Philip was a cadet in the program there, and he was 18 years old and drop-dead gorgeous. He looked like an Adonis, six feet tall, blonde hair, fine features. Elizabeth was 13 years old, and she was just beginning to emerge into puberty, really. But she saw him that day, and it was the first time that she really spent time with him. I mean, I think they may have glanced at each other at a royal wedding a few years earlier, but this was the first time that they really properly had a chance. They played games, they had lunch and dinner and she fell in love with him
Starting point is 00:11:07 immediately. I remember talking to her cousin, Margaret Rhodes, who was the daughter of one of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother's sisters. And Margaret said she fell in love with him at that moment and she never looked at another man. And it was the only thing in her life that she decided on her own. And it's touching to see how persistent she was. I mean, there were moments during World War II when the king and queen were bringing around all sorts of eligible, titled English aristocrats that they thought would probably be more suitable. And she just cast them all aside. Prince Philip was the only one.
Starting point is 00:11:52 And Elizabeth, to her credit, saw in him qualities that could be very helpful to her. She didn't know when she would become queen, but she knew she would become queen at some point. And he has been so misunderstood, and I think particularly by the crown, really portrayed in a fashion that is completely at odds with the way he really is. He was highly intelligent and with a real questing mind. He probably would have been the last person to say that he was an intellectual, but he had a probing intelligence. He had thousands of books in his library on a whole range of topics from philosophy to psychology. He was a great advocate of Carl Jung, for example, as was Prince Charles. And it was one thing that they had in common. But he had so many wide-ranging interests, whether it was interfaith dialogue or science and technology.
Starting point is 00:13:08 He famously said he was the first person to pet a microchip on the head. And he introduced computers to Buckingham Palace. He introduced television to the Queen. He was the first member of the royal family to do a television documentary. He helped her do the Christmas broadcast in 1957. He taught her how to use a teleprompter. I mean, all these aspects of him have been sort of overridden by a kind of caricature of him as the guy who makes the gaffes and gets himself in trouble. But in fact, he knew from the very beginning that his role was to support his wife. I watched them together on any number of occasions when they were out and about overseas,
Starting point is 00:14:04 on any number of occasions when they were out and about overseas. And I was always struck by how watchful he was. He kept his eye on her all the time. And he always kept his eye on people who might want to get a better look at her or people who were about to meet her and were rigid with fear. He would say something to jolly them up and relax them. So he had a whole myriad of roles that he played in addition to being her very effective consort. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. We're looking back on the life of Prince Philip, who died this week. More after this. and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed.
Starting point is 00:15:09 We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Philip and Elizabeth were married in late 1947.
Starting point is 00:15:55 Giles points out that marrying Princess Elizabeth didn't automatically make him a prince. When he married the Queen, he became the Duke of Edinburgh, but he ceased to be a prince at all. And people didn't realise this. For 10 years, the Duke of Edinburgh wasn't a prince. And sometimes people say, why isn't Catherine, William's wife, why isn't she a princess? And I say, I don't think she'd be a princess in under 10 years. It took the Queen 10 years to decide to make Prince Philip a Prince of the United Kingdom. And he became a Prince of the United Kingdom after ten years of marriage in 1957 on his return from what was then quite a controversial, though an important, trip that he made on Britannia, going to parts of the Commonwealth that no other member of the royal family had ever been to before. So for his first 10 years as the consort of Princess Elizabeth
Starting point is 00:16:47 and then Queen Elizabeth II, he was not a prince, but he then became a prince of the United Kingdom. King George VI died in February 1952, and Elizabeth was now queen. And then in 1952, as he put it to me, he said, the king died and everything changed. And I said, well, were there people then telling you what to do? And he said, no, no, they were telling me what not to do. The queen had a role. The queen then became the queen and there was a role for her. There were people around her. There was the prime minister, then Winston Churchill, who had been her father's prime minister during the Second World War and her father's private
Starting point is 00:17:28 secretary. They became the focus of the two men in her life. And he said, the people saying, keep out. So when that was the example of the prince consort, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, he said, oh, no, no, no, no. You've got to remember that Queen Victoria was an executive monarch and Prince Albert was her private secretary. They actually could do things together. It was quite different with the queen in a constitutional monarchy. I was told to keep out, and I had to invent, I'm now quoting the Duke of Edinburgh, I had
Starting point is 00:17:57 to invent for myself what I was going to do. And so he had to conjure up for himself what he wanted to do. And so he had to conjure up for himself what he wanted to do. And as you say, his interests, and by the time he retired, age 97, he had, I think, 837 different patronages, things that he was head of, president of, chairman of, founder of, of which there was a small number in which he took a detailed interest, real care about them. And they were very varied. And they did go from nature, the environment, the worldwide fun for nature, which he was a pioneer of, through to science and engineering, making things happen.
Starting point is 00:18:37 He saw himself as a pragmatist, not a romantic. He was very much into practical solutions. And his view of the world was, how can we make things better? What can we do to make things better? And that's really what he gave his entire life to doing. I asked both these observers what they thought was Philip's contribution as a royal consort. He and the Queen shared a sense of humor. I remember one of her longtime friends, Prudence Penn, telling me after being very dismayed by the first season of The Crown, she said, what they don't understand is that with the Queen and Prince Philip, there's always a laugh around the corner. always a laugh around the corner. And there was this lightness to their relationship that I think was very helpful to her because she had a lot of heavy-duty things to think about. I think one of the reasons that he lived so long and was a happy person was that he coped very well
Starting point is 00:19:39 with change. I think one of the secrets of being a contented individual is to be able to adapt to the world because life does change. He was quite interested in psychology. And I discussed this with him once, how somebody had said to me, it was Dr. Anthony Clare, the man who used to do a radio program called In the Psychiatrist's Chair, who said one of the secrets of being happy is to cope with change, to be able to change the salt of the soup of life. If you resist change, you will be unhappy because the world is ever evolving. And one of the reasons I think that Prince Philip was remarkable was that he coped with change.
Starting point is 00:20:13 He lived for 100 years, born in 1921. His values, though, really were the values of his generation, but he coped with the changing world. Napoleon, I think it was he, who said that if you want to understand the man, you should look at what the world was like in the year that man turned 21. And Prince Philip turned 21 in 1942, the height of the Second World War. And he reflected people of that generation. But he also was able to cope in an extraordinary way with change. He was truly as modern as tomorrow, though he had a lot of time for yesterday. And as a personality, this is what made him so different from the Queen. The Queen, who is naturally conservative with a small c, Prince Philip was naturally radical, go ahead.
Starting point is 00:21:00 She, as a matter of policy, would go at the pace of the slowest person in the kingdom. In fact, one of her private secretaries said to me once, I said, you know, the Queen is very conservative. And he said, no, it is a matter of policy. She goes at the pace of the slowest person in the kingdom because she believes that no one should be left behind. Whereas the Duke of Edinburgh was always thrusting, questing, moving forward, wanting change, looking at what was coming around
Starting point is 00:21:25 the corner. He was interested in the world around him, in what was new. He was interested in science, technology, engineering. Unusual for a member of the royal family to be interested in those things. So all that kept him abreast of times. And he accepted society, but he wasn't eaten up with it. There was a generation that took all this sort of thing seriously, which I don't think he ever did. You've got to bear in mind, I am old enough, or indeed young enough. When I first went to a Buckingham Palace garden party many, many years ago, I was able to go because I was married. If I'd been divorced, I wouldn't have been able to go to a Buckingham Palace garden party. Even in my lifetime, divorced people couldn't go to a Buckingham
Starting point is 00:22:05 Palace Garden Party. Isn't that extraordinary? He was very involved in conservation at a very early age. And he was also way ahead of Prince Charles on preserving the rainforests. Even in his sporting life, shooting partridges and pheasants and grouse and all that. He was, at the same time, a naturalist. He took a great interest in the natural world. You have to remember, he wrote nine books, a lot of them on philosophy and religion, and he made connections, as Prince Charles later would, between the spiritual life and the natural world. He was a far-thinking man. And the Queen, somehow in her adolescent brain, could see that even though he wouldn't perhaps be easy, that he would always be interesting. And he could make a contribution.
Starting point is 00:23:07 So there was never a tension. He never struggled by being number two. He knew what he was getting into. He absolutely knew what he was getting into. And at the same time, he had the intelligence and the inquisitiveness to develop a whole portfolio of his own interests. Hundreds of patronages. He became the chancellor of Edinburgh University and Cambridge University, and that allowed him to keep up with what was going on in the academic world. And by the way, he could get into the kind of detail that the queen never could. So he was a valuable resource to her in that regard. And also, he always had personal interests that he was very good at. He was a good designer of jewelry, for example.
Starting point is 00:23:59 I remember speaking to one of the bridesmaids at the wedding who described to me how he gave them all these Art Deco compacts that he had designed. And she said, typically, he sort of dealt them out like playing guards. But he also designed, for example, a beautiful bracelet for the queen. He designed a beautiful bracelet for then-Princess Elizabeth on their fifth wedding anniversary. He was a person full of surprises. I mean, one of the first things that I found amazing about him was his real interest in Jung. Jungian philosophy was something that interested me. I'd read a lot of Jung. And Jung had done some work looking at the case histories of all his patients over a lifetime, and had come to the conclusion that the happiest of his patients were the people who were outward-looking, not inward-looking. People
Starting point is 00:24:48 looked up and out, not down and in. And Prince Philip hated talking about himself, told all his children, don't talk about yourself, don't think about yourself, look out, look up and look out. And that was his view of life. Take an interest in the world around you, in nature, in science, in art, in what's happening around you. Look out. And that's what he did as a matter of policy. So combine that Jungian philosophy with the education he got at Gordonstoun, the outward bound education, healthy mind, healthy body. That plus the independence he had to find in himself because of the strange nature of his childhood, which we can touch on. He basically had to bring himself up in a way because his parents split up when he was 10 and
Starting point is 00:25:31 almost disappeared out of his life from that age on. So this independent person, intelligent, questing, looking out at the world and interested in everything around him. So he took a keen interest. I asked Sally how she thought Philip had handled his role, not as a consort, but as a father. So I think, look, Prince Philip was not a huggy guy. And it was sad that he, and the Queen for that matter, had a lot of difficulty talking to their children face-to-face about problems. They tended to write to them when they wanted to discuss things that were tricky.
Starting point is 00:26:14 So parenting was a challenge, but he took it seriously and obviously made mistakes. And I think when three of his four children encountered terrible problems in their marriage, it was a source of great pain to him and to the Queen. What does Philip's death mean for the monarchy itself? What the Queen and Prince Philip have given us is what a famous poet once called the security of known relationships. They have been there all our lives, and they have been reliable all our lives. I mean, the queen, there she is, driven by duty, sustained by faith, a happy person because she has passions in her life, her dogs and her horses, but there isn't a more dutiful sovereign in the world. But the truth is,
Starting point is 00:27:07 if we regard the Queen's reign as a success, and most people do, the joint author of that success has been the Duke of Edinburgh. And I think when they both go, the gap will be huge, but they will leave the monarchy in a solid state. I mean, it is, I think, the most respected, best-serving monarchy in the world. If you look around, in thinking of the Duke of Edinburgh, if you look around at the other kings and sovereigns and consorts there have been, from Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands to the last king of Spain, there's very few where there hasn't been tainted by scandal or impropriety or just general cock-ups.
Starting point is 00:27:46 There was none of that with the Duke of Edinburgh. He turned up on parade in the right uniform on the right day, occasionally saying the wrong thing, but only to make a laugh impeccably for 70 to 80 years. I mean, just beyond belief. There is no example of the Duke of Edinburgh, for example. There's no example of him ever of Edinburgh, for example, there's no example of him ever stepping out of place with the Queen. There is no photograph of him where he isn't one step behind her in the correct place. There's literally not. In 70 or more years of service, he did not
Starting point is 00:28:16 put a foot wrong. It's almost beyond belief. It's going to be a blow to, obviously, It's going to be a blow to obviously everybody in the royal family to not have Prince Philip. More than people realize, he was a real sort of source of strengthening the family within. And obviously in his last years when he wasn't around as much, when the monarchy was dealing with COVID, he couldn't exercise that same influence. But I'm not so sure that his passing will trigger a significant rethink. I think the more consequential moment will come when the queen dies, And that will be a shockwave that we can't even begin to anticipate. According to Giles, Philip was always fairly realistic about monarchy. So he was totally royal. And he had an instinctive, relaxed feeling about royalty.
Starting point is 00:29:24 He understood, he was fascinated by history. And he understood the comings and goings of royalty. And what was interesting to me, observing him at close quarters, is he lived it. He believed it. But curiously, he didn't ever really take it too seriously. Famously, it was in Canada, I think, once he said to the people that, well, look, if you don't want us, we don't have to stay. Just say so. We'll go home. You know, you don't have to have a king, queen of Canada. You can do it your own way. So he was very relaxed about that.
Starting point is 00:29:56 He certainly was a remarkable person. It's a funny way to run a world, but it's worked for us for a thousand years. And it gives people something they want, something that's quite interesting. I mean, you with your history podcast, the reason people like talking about royalty is it gives you something that history alone doesn't give you. This gives you heritage and fairy tale. It's a wonderful combination, history and magic. That's what you get from royalty. Let's finish up with one last anecdote about meeting Prince Philip from Sally. Well, I had a few encounters with him when I was traveling, doing work on books. And the best one was in Malta when he was 94. And we were at a reception at the palace and the queen was being escorted around as she typically was and he as he typically was was sort of roaming around and um and he he walked up to me
Starting point is 00:30:58 and he looked at me and he saw the tags around my neck for my credentials and he picked one up and he said, oh, Random House, what do you do? Do you write books? And I said, yes, I write biographies. And he said, who have you written about? And I said, well, I wrote about Her Majesty, actually. well, I wrote about Her Majesty, actually. And he said, oh, God, you must be desperate. And I said, no, no, it was actually really fascinating. And he said, who are you writing about now? And I said, His Royal Highness. He said, which one? And I sort of looked over at the other side of the room, and there was Prince Charles. And he looked over and he looked at me and he said, you must really be desperate. So he always had a twinkle. He said it in a kind of mischievous way. And he was that way a lot. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished.
Starting point is 00:32:08 Hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money, makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review. I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there, and I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome, but if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you.

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