My Brugge: Rare Commentary.

Tuesday, 13 April 2021

Rare Commentary.

Four year old Philip

Princess Alice with her son
1924

I am, relatively speaking, not interested in the British Royal Family but then again, not especially hostile to it either, though do believe that a country which retains Royalty and the attendant aristocracy, cannot truly be a democracy. That said, when Philip died last week, at almost 100, it was not a great personal loss though it seems, from across the Channel, that the media has, as usual, gone overboard with non stop comment and endless ‘features’. Plus ca change ……

Philip's sisters, 1922.

I have always considered Philip as physically gorgeous, when young, and unfailingly supportive to the Queen even when he let rip with racialist, colonial-type gaffes which caused offence and hilarity in equal volumes and over which remarks, Elizabeth generally sailed, serenely on. I believe he was probably a briskly-impatient father who heaped some suffering on his eldest, Charles, who followed his father's educational path but who hated Cheam Prep. School and Gordonstoun ["Colditz in kilts"!] in equal horrified measure. I do remember, too, that Edward was frog-marched into the Marines I think, when he was rather more drawn to the theatre! One didn’t need to read about the Royals to judge that Anne was awfully like her father in temperament and that they were probably great pals!

However, mea culpa, it is only now that I have learned more about Philip’s early life and feel uncomfortable that I hadn’t been interested enough to discover more when he was alive; it would have

Philip's mother became a nun. She was also recognised by Israel
as Righteous among the Nations for sheltering Jews
during WW2 in Greece. Profoundly deaf, she had a tragic but heroic life.

made me more tolerant of him. Born in Corfu in 1921 eight years after the assassination of his grandfather, King George of Greece, and youngest child of Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice of Battenberg. The family was exiled when Philip was one and led a somewhat itinerant life which no doubt contributed to the nervous breakdown of his mother in 1930 when she was hospitalised. Philip did not see his mother at all between 1932 and 1937. He went briefly to live in Paris but soon landed safely chez Uncle George, the Marquess of Milford Haven who became his active guardian. Philip’s own father seems to have drifted off without contact with his son. Uncle George’s son, David, became Philip’s great friend and eventual best man at his wedding.

In keeping with the class system regarding education, Philip was sent to Cheam Preparatory School which fostered a tough, independent ethos for its boys. He grew to love it there where his sporting

Kurt Hahn, German educator and
inspired educational innovator.

talent and competitive spirit had full rein. Similarly, after Cheam, came Gordonstoun, founded by Kurt Hahn as a deliberately Spartan establishment with a heavy emphasis on sports and education for leadership. Philip, who had long decided to banish introspection and adopt a resolutely cheerful and independent spirit as a way of dealing with the chaos and loss of his earlier life, flourished, eventually rising to become Head Boy. The school gave him a secure, stable, challenging environment which compensated for his earlier rootlessness. During his years there, Cecilie, one of his four sisters who had all married when Philip was young, was killed with her family in a plane crash in 1937. His headmaster said, approvingly, that Philip took the dreadful news “like a
George, 2nd Marquess of
Milford Haven.
man.” Six months later, his guardian died at 45 from cancer. George of Milford Haven had been very interested in engineering and was technically ingenious and had passed on this interest to Philip. This aptitude became embedded in Philip’s enquiring mind and a fascination with how things worked, became one of the hallmarks of his subsequent life.

George’s younger brother, Louis Mountbatten, took up the guardian reins and it was he, ever ambitious for his name, who arranged for Philip, then a student at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, to show around Princess Elizabeth and her sister, Margaret. The enduring rumour that the 13 year old Elizabeth fell in love with him then, may well be true though such early puppy love does not usually endure and produce a marriage of 73 years. He proposed during the Summer of 1946 but George V1 was not pleased; the Court was suspicious of Philip with Louis behind him; Louis was considered “unsound” with odd habits of friendship with Labour politicians! But Philip’s early losses are poignantly echoed in a letter he sent to Queen Elizabeth after he had stayed with them, thanking her for “...the simple enjoyment of family pleasures and amusements and the feeling that I am welcome to share them.”