There was further trauma in Philip’s life when, in April 1938, Hahn had to break the news to Philip that George Milford Haven had died of cancer at the age of forty-five. His death had a profound effect on Philip’s life as his uncle Lord Louis ‘Dickie’ Mountbatten, the younger brother of Milford Haven, stepped in to take George’s place as a friend and adviser.
That summer, the year before Philip left Gordonstoun, he spent the holidays in Venice with cousin Alexandra as the guest of her mother Aspasia, widow of King Alexander of Greece. Aspasia was under strict instructions from Andrea to keep Philip out of trouble. The summer was a continuous round of parties and Philip was showered with invitations. There was no shortage of lovely young things eager for Philip to escort them home at the end of the evening. In the words of Alexandra: ‘Blondes, brunettes and redhead charmers, Philip gallantly and, I think, quite impartially, squired them all.’
It is probable that Philip first fell in love that summer in Venice. The object of his affections was Cobina Wright, a beautiful American debutante, who won the title of Miss Manhattan the following year. For three weeks Philip escorted Cobina around Venice, followed by a week in London dining and dancing. When she returned to New York, Philip vowed to follow her one day to America, but it never happened. In 1973, in a Town and Country magazine interview, Cobina confirmed that she had met Philip in Venice and that she had photographs in her bedroom of the three loves of her life, one of them being Philip. She said they were still good friends and wrote to each other often.
In his final year at school, Philip rose to be head boy or ‘guardian’, he captained the cricket XI and the hockey team and represented Gordonstoun at the Scottish Schools Athletics championship. He wrote to Alexandra about Uncle Dickie having the fastest lift in London and a dining room that could turn into a cinema in his house in Upper Brook Street where Philip sometimes stayed in the holidays. Dickie was already part-way through a hugely successful naval career, and it was on his bidding that Philip took the entry exam to Dartmouth Royal Naval College.
Kurt Hahn’s leaving report for Philip in 1939 was highly complimentary. He wrote: ‘Prince Philip is universally trusted, liked and respected. He has the greatest sense of service of all the boys in the school. He is a born leader, but will need the exacting demands of a great service to do justice to himself. His best is outstanding; his second best is not good enough. He will make his mark in any profession where he will have to prove himself in a full trial of strength . . . His public spirit is exemplary; his sense of justice never failing; he demonstrated unusual courage and endurance in the face of discomforts and hardships; he had the making of a first-class organiser and was both kind and firm; his physical endurance was quite outstanding.’
Prince Philip’s enthusiasm for Gordonstoun was no less complimentary. He said: ‘I must confess I enjoyed my days at Gordonstoun. I would like as many boys as possible to enjoy their schooldays as much as I did.’ Years later, Prince Philip, as Chancellor of Edinburgh University, when making Kurt Hahn an Honorary Doctor of Law, added: ‘It cannot be given to many to have the opportunity and desire to heap honours upon their former headmasters.’
To prepare for the Dartmouth entrance examination, on Uncle Dickie’s advice, Philip went to stay with the Mercers, a retired naval officer and his wife, in Cheltenham. During several weeks of extreme cramming, his hosts found him hard-working, eager to get on and quite without ‘side’. He passed the examination sixteenth of the thirty-four entrants, most of whom were from naval schools. In May 1939, Philip entered the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth as a cadet, following in the footsteps of the three most recent Kings of England: George V, Edward VIII and George VI.
Within months of starting there, war would break out. Philip, like Elizabeth in her very different way, had been learning the importance of doing his duty. They had seen the results of what happened when people put their own interests first, as with Edward VIII’s abdication, and from their mentors they had developed a keen public spirit, even at this early age. The war years would not only reinforce that message – they would draw them together.
Chapter 4
KISSING COUSINS
A letter written by the Queen in 1947 describing how, as a young Princess Elizabeth, she fell in love with Prince Philip, was sold in 2016 for £14,400 at Chippenham Auction Rooms in Wiltshire. It far exceeded the pre-auction estimate of £1200. The two-page letter was written to the author Betty Shew, who was compiling a book called Royal Wedding as a souvenir of the marriage, and the young princess agreed to share details of her relationship with her naval officer fiancé. The letter is written in ink on headed notepaper from Balmoral Castle.
In it, Princess Elizabeth recalls how she first met Prince Philip in 1939, talks about her engagement ring and wedding band and how the couple danced at nightclubs Ciro’s and Quaglino’s in London. The Queen wrote:
The first time I remember meeting Philip was at the Royal Naval College Dartmouth, in July 1939, just before the war. (We may have met before at the Coronation or the Duchess of Kent’s wedding, but I don’t remember).
I was 13 years of age and he was 18 and a cadet just due to leave. He joined the Navy at the outbreak of war, and I only saw him very occasionally when he was on leave – I suppose about twice in three years.
Then when his uncle and aunt, Lord and Lady Mountbatten, were away he spent various weekends away with us at Windsor. Then he went to the Pacific and Far East for two years as everyone there will know.
We first started seeing more of each other when Philip went for a two-year job to the RN Petty Officers’ School at Corsham – before that we hardly knew each other. He’d spend weekends with us, and when the school was closed he spent six weeks at Balmoral – it was great luck his getting a shore job first then! We both love dancing – we have danced at Ciro’s and Quaglino’s as well as at parties.
She said of her engagement ring: ‘I don’t know the history of the stone, except that it is a very fine old cutting. It was given to me not long before the engagement was announced.’
She also wrote: ‘Philip enjoys driving and does it fast! He has his own tiny MG which he is very proud of – he has taken me about in it, once up to London, which was great fun, only it was like sitting on the road, and the wheels are almost as high as one’s head. On that one and only occasion we were chased by a photographer which was disappointing.’
The engagement ring was made by the jewellers Philip Antrobus of Old Bond Street using diamonds from a tiara belonging to Philip’s mother, Princess Alice of Greece. Philip designed it himself using a 3-carat diamond solitaire as a centrepiece, flanked by five smaller diamonds on each side, all set in platinum. The wedding band was made from a nugget of Welsh gold that came from the Clogau St David’s mine, near Dolgellau.
Although Philip had been a guest at Windsor Castle several times when Princess Elizabeth was a child, their romance may never have blossomed had it not fallen to him to escort the thirteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth and her younger sister Margaret around Dartmouth Naval College in July 1939. The royal family were on an official visit on the royal yacht Victoria and Albert. The Court Circular for that day reads: ‘His Majesty the King and Her Majesty the Queen, Her Royal Highness Princess Elizabeth and Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret visited the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten RN was in attendance.’
The plan had been for the family to attend morning chapel at the college, but because there had been an outbreak of mumps and chicken pox among the cadets it was decided that the princesses should not attend the service. Philip’s uncle Dickie Mountbatten was present in his role as aide-de-camp to the King. There is little doubt that Mountbatten had more than a hand in ensuring that Philip was picked over the other cadet captains to look after the princesses during the chapel service, as his dynastic ambitions had few bounds.
The following day he procured an invitation for Philip to lunch aboard the royal yacht. According to the account p
enned by governess Marion Crawford, Princess Elizabeth asked Philip what he would like to eat. Philip proceeded to gobble down several plates of shrimp and a banana split. In her book of memoirs about Philip, Queen Alexandra of Yugoslavia (formerly Princess Alexandra of Greece) says that years later, when the Queen and Prince Philip were trying to recall their meeting, she heard Philip say to the Queen: ‘You were so shy. I could not get a word out of you.’
In any event, it seems that Prince Philip made a favourable impression on the young Princess Elizabeth and an exchange of correspondence began between the two of them. No one can remember exactly when, but no doubt Marion Crawford prompted Elizabeth to write a letter of thanks to Philip for entertaining her and her sister during the royal visit and the distant cousins continued their correspondence throughout the war years.
Princess Alexandra wrote in June 1941 that when Philip was on shore leave in Cape Town, she found him writing a letter. ‘Who is it to?’ she asked. ‘Lilibet . . . Princess Elizabeth in England.’ Alexandra surmised that Philip was angling for invitations and she may have been right. By October that year, Philip had spent the first of several leave weekends at Windsor Castle. King George VI wrote to Philip’s grandmother Victoria Milford Haven: ‘Philip came here for a weekend the other day. What a charming boy he is and I am glad he is remaining on in my Navy.’
On one of his Windsor weekends, he and David Milford Haven (later to be his best man) rolled back the carpets three nights running and took the sisters Elizabeth and Margaret for their partners, treating them as though they were grown-up ladies of fashion in a London ballroom, instead of two schoolgirls incarcerated in an ancient castle with thick stone walls surrounded by wire. But, however gloomy Windsor Castle might have appeared to others, they loved the place. ‘Lilibet and I loved Windsor the best of all our homes,’ Princess Margaret later recalled. ‘It has such atmosphere.’
Prince Philip obviously liked it too as, despite dismissing his time there with typical insouciance, he spent several spectacular Christmases there with the royal family. The King and Queen had some concerns – not because they didn’t like Philip, because they did, but they thought their daughter was too young to become too involved with anyone, let alone someone as dashing and macho as the virtually penniless prince.
In December 1943, the King and Queen held a small dance at Windsor Castle for both their daughters. The King felt Elizabeth had missed out on the kind of socialising she should have had during her teenage years, and because of the war she hadn’t been able to have much fun. The Queen was impressed by the good manners of most of the young men invited, although Philip wasn’t one of them as he was confined to bed in Claridges Hotel (of all gloomy places the Queen noted).
Much to both the princesses’ delight, he was well enough to come to their pantomime and stay for the rest of the weekend. To raise funds for charity during the war and keep everyone entertained, the King had devised the idea of staging a pantomime every Christmas. That year it was Aladdin, with Princess Elizabeth as the principal boy. According to Crawfie, Princess Elizabeth acted better than she had ever done before. ‘I have never known Lilibet more animated. There was a sparkle about her that none of us had ever seen before.’ She went on to say: ‘Prince Philip was falling out of his seat with laughter.’ He then spent Christmas with them and was joined by his cousin David Milford Haven. According to Princess Elizabeth, ‘we had a gay time, with a film, dinner parties and dancing to the gramophone.’ The King’s private secretary, Tommy Lascelles, recalled ‘they frisked and capered away till near 1am’.
Looking back years later, Prince Philip described his wartime friendship with the royal family in a typically dismissive way: ‘I went to the theatre with them once, something like that. And then during the war, if I was here, I would call in and have a meal. I once or twice spent Christmas at Windsor, because I’d nowhere particular to go. I thought not all that much about it, I think. We used to correspond occasionally . . . But if you are related – I mean I knew half the people here, they were all relations – it isn’t so extraordinary to be on kind of family relationship terms. You don’t necessarily have to think about marriage.’
In his thank-you letter to the Queen after Christmas, Philip wrote he hoped that his behaviour ‘did not get too out of hand’. He added that he also hoped – if it was not too presumptuous – he could add Windsor to Broadlands (the Mountbatten home) and Coppins (the country home of the Duke and Duchess of Kent) to his favourite places: ‘That may give you some small idea of how much I appreciated the few days you were kind enough to let me spend with you.’
Despite their misgivings, there was little doubt that the King and Queen did little to dissuade Princess Elizabeth from seeing Philip. ‘He is intelligent, he has a good sense of humour and thinks about things the right way,’ the King wrote to his mother, Queen Mary. He added, however, that both he and the Queen thought her ‘too young for that now, as she has never met any young men of her own age’.
At Dartmouth, Prince Philip had excelled. He won the King’s Dirk as the best all-round cadet of his first term and capped it with the best cadet of the year. This was an exceptional performance as most of his contemporaries had already been at Dartmouth for several years while he was at Gordonstoun. He spent his book token prize on a copy of Liddell Hart’s The Defence of Britain, a significant choice as war with Germany was looming despite Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s promise of ‘peace in our time’. On 3 September 1939, war with Germany was declared.
Prince Philip’s first posting as a midshipman was to the battleship HMS Ramillies in January 1940 in the South Pacific. Philip spent the few days of his shore leave in Australia, working on a sheep farm rather than joining his shipmates who were having fun in the bars of Sydney. Over the course of several months, Philip was posted from ship to ship and, as a midshipman, was required to keep a log of anything of interest aboard each vessel. His journal has been praised for the detailed observations of technical matters, illustrated with plans, maps and diagrams and the occasional humorous note. According to the log, Durban was a favourite port of call and is mentioned several times with exclamation marks added – no doubt code for some good times had there.
Prince Philip’s fourth posting was to HMS Valiant in the Mediterranean fleet, where he first saw action at the bombardment of Bardia on the coast of Libya. His log records, ‘The whole action was a spectacular affair.’ He then spent two days in Athens where he saw his mother, Princess Alice, and cousin Alexandra among other Greek relatives. At a party there on 21 January, he caught the eye of the politician and diarist Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, whose entry for that day reads: ‘Prince Philip of Greece was there. He is extraordinarily handsome . . . He is to be our Prince Consort, and that is why he is serving in our Navy.’
This may have been an inspired guess or perhaps it was wishful thinking on the part of Princess Nicholas of Greece, with whom Chips had been chatting earlier. Prince Philip’s comment on the diary entry years later was that he must have been on the list of eligible young men, but one only had to say that for someone like Chips Channon to go one step further and say it is already decided. Chips also picked up some gossip about Philip’s parents. He said his mother Alice ‘was eccentric to say the least’, while his father Andrea ‘philanders on the Riviera’.
In March 1941, Prince Philip on board Valiant was caught up in the Battle of Cape Matapan off the south-west coast of the Peloponnesian peninsula, where the Italian navy was intercepted. Philip was in control of the ship’s searchlights. ‘My orders were that if any ship illuminated a target, I was to switch on and illuminate it for the rest of the fleet.’ He caught two Italian cruisers in the beam of his searchlight, allowing the Valiant to sink them both. For his part in the action, Philip was mentioned in the commander of the British Mediterranean fleet Admiral Cunningham’s despatches. Not long after, Philip got some shore leave in Alexandria, where he met up with David Milford Haven and his cousin Alexandra.
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bsp; ‘Philip used to talk at this time of a home of his own, a country house in England,’ she recalled. She found it rather touching that was what he wanted, but she knew with no family fortune coming his way and only his pay in the navy to live off, Philip would need to marry exceptionally well to achieve his dream objective.
By June of 1941, Prince Philip was due to return to England to sit for his sub-lieutenant’s examinations. His ship home sailed via Halifax, Nova Scotia, to pick up some Canadian troops and later, while refuelling in the Caribbean, several of the Chinese stokers jumped ship and disappeared. For the rest of the voyage, Philip and the other midshipmen toiled in the fiery heat of the boiler room shovelling tons of coal into the furnaces. For this he was given a certificate as a qualified boiler trimmer. According to Princess Alexandra, the certificate had a place of honour among his cherished souvenirs, along with the receipted bill for his wife’s bridal bouquet.
The examinations at Portsmouth were passed with distinction and Philip was soon back at sea as a sub-lieutenant on HMS Wallace. It was around this time that he first met Australian Mike Parker. At first, they were rivals, later the best of friends and they happened to be the two youngest first lieutenants in the navy. Parker recalled: ‘We were highly competitive. We both wanted to show we had the most efficient, cleanest and best ships in the navy.’ Mike’s girlfriend Eileen, whom he later married, met Philip when he and Mike were stationed at Rosyth naval base on the Firth of Forth in Scotland.
‘I recollect so well, thinking at the time, what a handsome man Philip of Greece was,’ Eileen noted. ‘Tall with piercing blue eyes and a shock of blond hair swept back from his forehead. I was not at all surprised to hear that every unmarried Wren on the base had her sights on him.’ She went on to say that it was inconceivable that such an eligible young officer didn’t have a sweetheart somewhere, but nobody ever came close enough to him to find out who it might be.
My Husband and I Page 6