Prince Philip

by Nigel Cawthorne

  After fifty years of involvement with universities, in 1997, he told penniless twenty-one-year-old Alison Nisbet, a student at Edinburgh University: ‘Why don’t you go and live in a hostel to save cash?’

  In 2001, thirteen-year-old Andrew Adams was a summer school at Salford University where the NOVA British space project is based. He was admiring one of the rockets when the Duke of Edinburgh asked him if he would like to travel into space. When he said yes, the Duke told him: ‘You’ll have to lose a little bit of weight first. You’re too fat to be an astronaut.’ The forthright help on what to do was taken lightly – the teenager said he wanted to become an actor.

  On formal education in general, he remarks: ‘University is merely so much vocational training unless it puts some fire in your belly.’

  Openings

  Early in his career of cutting ribbons, he discovered that the official opening often occurred sometime after the establishment was already up and running. Opening a school in Buckinghamshire in 1958, he said: ‘I always find these openings rather strange occasions and I gather I’m something like nine months late. I don’t think you need worry. I think that the fact that school has been operating without being properly opened won’t necessarily have any ill effect on you.’

  He developed this thought further when opening the Chesterfield College of Technology. ‘A lot of time and energy has been spent on arranging for you to listen to me take a long time to declare open a building, which everybody knows is open already,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow, to all intents and purposes, everything will be back to normal. That rather makes it look as if we are all wasting our time…’

  In the 1960s Philip argued: ‘I try to avoid laying inaugural stones because of their habit of getting lost, abandoned or stolen.’ Laying the foundation stone of Delhi Engineering College 1959, he said: ‘I have to admit that I was in two minds about accepting this kind invitation. You see there is a sort of myth that members of the royal family do nothing else but open things and lay foundation stones, and I don’t want to add any substance to that idea.’ Then he apologised for only laying one stone: ‘It won’t make any difference anyway because the value of the college will lay in its graduates and not in it stones.’ On another occasion, he apologised for laying a foundation stone crooked, but said the builders would lay the rest straighter.

  Asked about universities back in 1983, he said: ‘The first five hundred years of any institution are always the most difficult.’

  In 1958, presenting a Charter of Incorporation to St Edmund Hall, Oxford, Philip said: ‘In five hundred years from now, you will be able to put the charter on display and say that it was presented five hundred years ago. That, in my experience, is what usually happens and it is always most impressive because by that time the seal is usually missing and the writing is both illegible and unintelligible anyway.’ He strongly advised them to look after the charter ‘because, throughout history, a document of some sort had always been looked upon as a sort of passport to respectability and, without it, you will never be able to prove – whatever it is you want to prove.’

  In 1957, he told Manchester College of Science and Technology: ‘I wish this college every possible success and, to show that these are not empty words, I have agreed to become Visitor to the College. In my case, this is the only title I possess which means exactly what it says.’

  On the opening of the David Keir Building at Queen’s University in Belfast in 1959, he said: ‘I know that it is more usual to complain about governments than to praise them, but in this case the least we can do is to acknowledge that the Northern Ireland Government has contributed no less than £2 million towards this project – even if it is the taxpayers’ money.’

  Unveiling a plaque at the University of Hertfordshire’s new Hatfield campus in November 2003, he said: ‘During the Blitz a lot of shops had their windows blown in and sometimes they put up notices saying, ‘More open than usual.’ I now declare this place more open than usual.’ It is a quip he had used on several occasions.

  In 2005, when Bristol University’s engineering facility had been closed down so that he could open it, he rued: ‘It doesn’t look like much work goes on at this University.’

  Plymouth University’s new marine building in 2012, he said: ‘It’s now quite a long time since I started my university career. But unlike most people, I started at the wrong end. I became chancellor of the University of Wales in 1947 and been going downhill ever since.’

  Privilege

  Given the gulf between state education and the public schools, there is a certain amount of privilege involved in education. But Prince Philip is equivocal on the subject: ‘Up to quite recently, it was thought one gets into a university by paying, but now there is another privilege – intellectual privilege, which is another mistake. Privilege is privilege whether it is due money or intellect or whether you have six toes.’

  He certainly did not feel privileged when he was at school. ‘I was not the least aware I was any different from any of the others. It’s true I had this title of Prince, but it’s surprising how you can live it down.’

  Prince Philip was not university-educated and he famously declared that he did not feel in the least diminished by missing out on higher education: ‘I am one of those stupid bums that never went to university,’ he told a group of students in the 1980s, ‘and a fat lot of harm it did me.’

  On such occasions as award ceremonies, royalty are the recipients of a certain amount of flattery. Prince Philip was aware of this and, when accepting an honorary doctorate in 1960, said: ‘Some people might well feel that your vice-chancellor has succeeded in presenting me for this honorary degree, not just in a good light, but in a positively rosy glow of perfection. I can only imagine that he has taken Disraeli’s advice that “Everyone like flattery; and when you come to royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.”’

  Viewing toilets

  Visiting the University of East London during the Golden Jubilee, Prince Philip was shown an environmentally friendly toilet which is flushed with air instead of water. He asked: ‘Where does the wind come from?’ He then raised a laugh when he was shown pellets of sewage and fluid ash as part of a demonstration of sewage recycling. ‘What do they eat in East London to get that?’ he asked.

  When shown lavatory cisterns in the London Design Centre, he put his environmental hat on said: ‘This is the biggest waste of water in the country by far. You spend half-a-pint and flush two gallons.’

  Sports

  In his sporting life, the Prince has played soccer as goalie, field hockey as centre forward, squash, badminton and rugby. He was captain of the Gordonstoun Cricket XI. ‘But there were only about twenty of us at the school,’ he said.

  No Laughing Matter

  Bemoaning the decline of school sports, the prince said: ‘Taking part in games and sports is very much part of the growing-up process. Taking part particularly in team games – or any games that have rules and regulations and involve more than just a contest between two people – teaches a respect for the law because you won’t have a game unless you play according to the rules, and that is quite a good thing to learn.’

  The prince is a great believer in the old-fashioned virtues of physical education. ‘The great difficulty that schools have is that the old PE teacher, the gym mistresses and sports masters and things, have tended to hardly exist any more,’ he said. ‘They have closed down all the special PE schools. I think that has been a sad loss.’ It is not hard to believe that the prince was a particular fan of the gym mistress.

  On the value of losing, the prince wisely remarks: ‘I think it [sport] also teaches that failure isn’t the end of the world. You always bounce back again, and you may win next time. The idea that you are somehow depressed and you go and shoot yourself if you lose is ridiculous. It is very important through life that you don’t win all the time: occasionally you have to face a defeat.’

  According to Prince Philip, the competitive urge is a natu
ral inclination: ‘Everything you do is based on competition unless some half-witted teacher seems to think it’s bad for you,’ he said. ‘People like to pit their abilities against someone else. People want to race each other. It’s what gives the whole thing spice.’

  Idle Hands

  Generally, the prince is impatient with inactivity. He was chatting with the Duke of Beaufort one night at Badminton, when he said: ‘It seems a great pity in all these horse shows that they only have jumping and show classes for children. They just sit there, all dressed up. They don’t get much fun out of it. Can’t we think of something the ordinary pony can do? The family pony. It may look like nothing on earth, but it’s a great favourite.’ This was the origin of the Pony Club Mounted Games, which was modelled on the Army’s gymkhana.

  The prince is not much one for sitting on the sidelines. ‘I am not really a talented spectator, frankly,’ he says. ‘Yes, it’s quite fun to watch but it’s not the be-all and end-all. I’ve had enough of it.’

  Balls to You

  After a banquet in Brazil, the president of the national bowling club made a short speech in Portuguese. Realising that Prince Philip did not understand it, he made an effort to summon up his entire English vocabulary when presenting the emblem of the club to the prince and said: ‘Balls, you know.’ The Prince graciously replied: ‘And balls to you, sir.’

  Sometimes such childlike humour cannot be avoided, like when Prince Philip was lecturing the president of the World Bank, Tom Clausen, on the necessary of adding an environmental clause to the bank’s loan agreements. Under his breath, Clausen muttered: ‘Balls.’ ‘What did you say?’ asked the Prince. ‘I said it is difficult,’ said Clausen, amending his comment. ‘No you didn’t,’ corrected Philip. ‘You said ‘balls.’ And what’s more, sir, I say balls to you.’ They dissolved in giggling.

  Prince Philip’s forthright manner encourages plain speaking in others. Visiting the British team at the Mexico Olympics in 1968, the prince was quick to assure everyone that the lack of oxygen at that altitude was nothing to worry about – he had played some gruelling polo matches there in the past and quickly became acclimatised. The boxer Chris Finnegan put his hand up and said: ‘You know when you said you never felt any problem with the lack of oxygen during your tough polo matches? Well I was thinking – did anyone think of asking the bleedin’ horses?’

  At a reception at Buckingham Palace for the British athletes who had won forty-two gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, he told twenty-four-year-old medal winner Matt Shelham that there was gold in the room and that some of it should be donated to Gordon Brown to help with the country’s financial crisis.

  Sailing

  The Prince’s greatest love was, of course, sailing. Heaping praise on his yachting companion and boat designer Uffa Fox, Prince Philip said: ‘I am as surprised to see him made a Royal Designer for Industry as no doubt he is to see me president of the Royal Society of Arts. There is a tendency nowadays to imagine that everything new must be scientific or rational… I can state categorically that there is practically nothing scientific or rational about Mr Fox.’

  Cricket

  Later in life, at a charity match, he had England player Tom Graveney caught at fine leg from an off-break. ‘He was doing very well when I was put on to bowl,’ said the Prince. ‘I was trying to bowl off-breaks and I thought well, with any luck he might snick something on the leg side, which he did. Unfortunately, for him, someone was standing there and caught it.’ The Prince added: ‘He, of course, was then unmercifully teased by all his contemporaries. Every time I met him afterwards I always tactfully failed to mention it and he always brought it up.’ It was, he conceded, ‘just one wicket.’

  Philip told a cricket club conference: ‘The last time I played in a village match I was given out l.b.w. first ball. That is the sort of umpiring that should be looked into.’

  When Brian Johnston asked Prince Philip on Test Match Special if there was anything he would like to change about modern cricket, the prince replied: ‘I only wish that sometimes their trousers fitted better.’ In 1999, at a Buckingham Palace reception for one-day cricket World Cup, a white Zimbabwean player lined up with the West Indians. ‘Aren’t you in the wrong team?’ asked the prince. ‘No,’ said the interloper. ‘I play for Zimbabwe but I’m hung like a West Indian.’ There was much merriment all round.

  Prince Philip is patron and honorary twelfth man of the Lord’s Taverners, a cricketing charity found in 1950 by a group of actors who enjoyed a pint while watching cricket from the Tavern pub at Lord’s Cricket Ground. In 1962, he wrote the preface to Leslie Frewin’s miscellany The Boundary Book which raised over £5,000 for the National Play Fields Association, which the prince has been president of for over fifty years after inheriting the post from his uncle Lord Mountbatten. In the preface, he said: ‘I cannot claim to have an intimate knowledge of the Lord’s Tavern but I do know that it has an atmosphere that cannot be ascribed to cricket alone! Quite what it has that make the Tavern such a very special place, I don’t know. But there is something about this celebrated hostelry that can persuade an eminent Scottish playwright to stand and watch cricket in the company of perfectly strange Englishmen. What is it that causes staid theatrical producers to finish rehearsals early on some trivial excuse, only to find themselves, ten minutes later, rubbing shoulders at the Tavern with their own actors who should be studying their lines? And what prompts a renowned conductor to lay down his baton on a Saturday afternoon and look for a cab to St John’s Wood?

  Just cricket? Scientists one day may discover what controls the homing instinct of fish and birds but I hope they never try to analyse the urge of the Taverner to return to Lord’s.’

  In The Boundary Book: Second Innings published in 1986, His Royal Twelfthmanship went on to explain: ‘Those readers who are unfamiliar with the Lord’s Taverners should know that it is a heterogeneous collection of cricket enthusiasts who prefer to watch their favourite game from a public house with a view of Lord’s cricket ground rather than from a seat in the stands. As might be expected, the members of the Lord’s Taverners are, to put it mildly, different. For some hitherto unexplained reason, it seems that the members of those professions engaged in entertaining the public appear to requite the comfort of a full tankard in order to enjoy a game of cricket.’ The pub has since been demolished to make way for the new Tavern Stand, though a new Tavern pub was opened on the ground in 1967.

  Introduced to the Australian test team at Lord’s in 2009, Prince Philip asked Aussie head coach Tim Nielsen if he was the team’s scorer. This was said to have caused ‘much amusement to the rest of the touring party.’

  An MCC official asked the prince if he had enjoyed his lunch. Philip said: ‘Why do you ask that?’ MCC man said: ‘I hoped the answer would be yes.’ To which Philip replied: ‘What a stupid question.’

  Polo

  In 1965, Philip remarked: ‘The only active sport I follow is polo – and most of the work is done by the pony.’ However, he described polo umpires as ‘mutton-headed dolts totally ignorant of the simplest rules of the game.’ But then, perhaps he was biased.

  When times get hard, even the royal family feels the pinch. In 1969, the Duke of Edinburgh rued on American TV: ‘We go into the red next year, I shall probably have to give up polo.’ As it was, after twenty years in the saddle, he retired from playing polo in 1971.

  Polo is no laughing matter. On a visit to Pakistan, he turned down an offer to play, explaining later: ‘I went to Pakistan on serious business. If I’d gone there to play polo, I’d have got in some practice beforehand.’

  Carriage Driving

  When Prince Philip took up carriage driving, he was head of the International Equestrian Federation. ‘One of the executive members from Poland said to me, ‘Do you know we ought to have rules for carriage driving? bBecause it’s becoming very popular,’ he explained. ‘I’d never heard of carriage driving so I decided to have a look. I went to Germany. It was e
lectrifying to see something like twenty-four carriages going round the ring. Then I thought, well, we’ve got some horses, we’ve got some carriages, why don’t I have a go? In 1973 I entered my first national competition, and to my horror I was told I could compete in the European Championships in May that year as an individual. I did and I was rather impressed. Things went quite well until I hit the last obstacle, which damaged the carriage to such an extent I had to retire before the end. However, I had a clear round in the cones, so I was not last, at least.’

  Prince Philip said that he then took up carriage-driving because it was a ‘geriatric sport.’ ‘I thought of it as a retirement exercise. I promise you, when I set out I thought it would be a nice weekend activity, rather like a golfing weekend. Which it was, until some idiot asked me to be a member of the British team.’

  In 2011, he gave a fuller explanation of his interest in carriage-driving. ‘I gave up polo when I was fifty,’ he said, ‘and then this started and I thought, ‘Well, you’ve got horses and carriages, why don’t you have a go?’ So I started in 1973 and it’s been going on since then. These were carriage horses from London – they’d never been through anything bigger than a puddle. I made a little crossing – a stream, and had to bribe them across. I sent my groom across the other side with a jar of sugar – and they decided to get their feet wet!’

  When competing in a carriage race with other teams in 1974, his carriage hit a tree and overturned. He was then asked if he enjoyed carriage driving. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ he replied. ‘Do you think I do it for penance?’ He was asked whether he would like to compete in another event:. ‘Do you have another team of horses?’, came the innocent enquiry. ‘Another team?’ the prince retorted. ‘Do you think they grow on trees?’