Ben Pimlott - The Queen - Elizabeth II and the Monarchy

At about the time of his parents’ separation, Philip left the American school in St. Cloud at which he had been a pupil, and was sent to Cheam, an English preparatory establishment in Surrey; and from there to Salem, in Baden, a school owned by one of his German brothers-in-law and run by the legendary Kurt Hahn. But for Hitler, the rest of his education might have been German. In 1934, however, Hahn moved to Scotland to escape the Nazis, setting up a new school, Gordonstoun. Philip became a pupil and, as a result, in the words of the Countess of Airlie, was ‘brought up to all intents and purposes an Englishman,’ 27except that few Englishmen ever had to suffer the rigours and eccentricities of the Hahn–Gordonstoun form of educational progressiveness.

‘I don’t think anybody thinks I had a father,’ Philip allegedly once complained. ‘Most people think that Dickie’s my father anyway.’ 28Philip had been much affected by the breakdown of his parents’ marriage, and retained a great sympathy for Prince Andrew. ‘He really loved his father,’ says one close associate. ‘He had a big image of him which persisted, and his death was a great shock to him.’ 29After 1930, however, he saw much more of his mother, Princess Alice, and was closer to her, despite all her difficulties – which were extreme. In addition to the psychological problems which developed during Philip’s childhood, she was congenitally deaf. Later, she used to say that she could not communicate with her children until they were old enough to speak, when she became able to read their lips. 30But the presentation of her as a demented recluse was false. Friends recall her, except when ill, as forceful, intelligent and amusing. Despite her marital and other difficulties, she was responsible for translating her husband’s book from Greek into English. Conceivably, as one friend of Philip puts it, her eventual decision to found a Greek Orthodox monastic order, and become a nun in it, ‘was a very clever solution to the problem of how she fitted into the world,’ as an elderly royal widow without money, but with an interest in good causes. 31

Nevertheless, Philip’s early life, with an absent father and often psychologically absent mother, was by any standards disturbed and unstable. Much of it, especially when his mother had to go into a sanatorium, was spent migrating between schools and foster-homes provided by relatives. There was a confusion: uncertainty, neglect, and the feeling of being special mixed together. The only son, as well as the youngest child, Philip was a particular focus of family attention, especially to his four sisters who adored, petted and mothered him. However, within the space of a few months in 1931–2 all of them solved the problem of a disintegrating home by marrying German princes, scattering what was left of his family across Europe.

There were fixed points: Salem, for summer holidays, was one. When Philip was at school in Britain, his Uncle George, Marquess of Milford Haven and son of the dowager Marchioness, provided another, becoming his guardian in school vacations, and helping with fees. Although George was his main benefactor, Philip was also a frequent visitor at the house of his other uncle, Lord Mountbatten. ‘He was around with us a lot from about 1934,’ says Patricia. 32Another refuge was Gordonstoun where Philip became a model pupil – athletic, outgoing, enterprising, effortlessly displaying precisely those attributes which it had been Hahn’s vision to produce.

Yet the standard portrayal of Philip in his teens as a kind of Boys’ Own Paper hero misses something out. There was a picaresque quality, the sense of the adventurer who lives by his wits, and for whom what one early writer called ‘the lean upbringing of expatriate royalty,’ 33had provided as keen a training as any continental theory. Philip’s cousin Alexandra, Queen of Yugoslavia (and a fellow expatriate), recalled him on holiday with her family in Venice, a year before the Dartmouth meeting, as a genial sponger, living in a style not uncommon among displaced princelings, and giving the impression of ‘a huge hungry dog, perhaps a friendly collie who had never had a basket of his own’. 34

The summer of 1938 was an especially waif-like moment. George Milford Haven had died the previous April, leaving Prince Philip, as Philip Ziegler puts it, ‘stateless, nameless and not far from penniless’ 35and particularly in need of open-handed friends. Luckily, more substantial help was available. The death of one benefactor cleared the way for another, of incomparably greater influence. Observing Philip’s predicament, George’s younger brother Louis – ‘Uncle Dickie’ – stepped in, and took over what remained of the job of bringing his nephew up. It was a generous undertaking, but also, in view of the young man’s obvious talents, a well judged one. Lord Mountbatten was a prominent naval officer and it had, in any case, already been planned that the best place for a déraciné young prince with a taste for travel, and no home base, was the British Navy. Hence, on 1 May 1939, Philip joined Dartmouth College as a Special Entry Cadet.

When Prince Philip and Princess Elizabeth met in July, he was an unknown young man barely two months into training. What did he make of his world-famous distant cousin, with her home in Buckingham Palace? Did he distinguish between the celebrity and the child-like person? It would be surprising if she did not have an impact, because of who she was: but it would also be surprising if, at this stage, Philip’s interest was romantic. Handsome and confident eighteen-year-old young men are not often greatly attracted by thirteen-year-old little girls scarcely out of short socks. According to Queen Alexandra, the previous summer the Greek prince had shown himself a girl-crazy party-goer on the Venetian social scene. ‘Blondes, brunettes and red head charmers,’ she recalled, ‘Philip gallantly and I think quite impartially squired them all.’ 36Hélène Cordet, a cabaret singer who had been a childhood friend (and who was later dubbed by the French press as ‘the mystery blonde’ and ‘the one who will not be invited to the wedding’) had a similar view of him. 37Other accounts also show him as a happy-go-lucky enjoyer of female company, and player of the field. Yet Princess Elizabeth was pretty, royal, and obviously a catch. The thoughts that must have passed through his uncle’s mind, may also have passed through his own. At the time, however, there were other pressing things to consider. War was imminent, with everything that such a prospect offered to a prize-winning naval cadet, with excellent connections.

If the British Royal Family had a good war, Philip in a more conventional sense, had a highly distinguished one. After a period of escorting contingents of troops from Australia to the Middle East, he was involved in several engagements in the Mediterranean. During the battle of Matapan against the Italian fleet, he controlled the searchlights of his ship, and was mentioned in dispatches. ‘Thanks to his alertness and appreciation of the situation,’ reported his Captain, ‘we were able to sink in five minutes two eight-inch-gun Italian cruisers.’ 38Philip spent much of 1941 with the British Fleet in the East Mediterranean. In the spring, Greek resistance to the Germans crumbled, and on 23 April, King George of Greece and his Government were evacuated to Crete. The same day, Princess Elizabeth wrote to Winston Churchill thanking him for a bunch of roses he and his wife had sent her for her fifteenth birthday two days earlier. In her letter, she offered her sympathy, in view of the ‘very worrying time’ he had lately been having. 39Perhaps she had Philip’s recent dangers and exploits, and those of his royal house, partly in mind.