My Husband and I

by Ingrid Seward

  Albert’s meddling in political matters, as some saw it, made him unpopular with the majority in Parliament. He was not granted a peerage or other title after the marriage and was voted a smaller annuity than previous consorts, £30,000 instead of the usual £50,000 – still an enormous sum in today’s money, and when compared with Philip’s civil list allowance. As time went by, Albert’s influence behind the throne increased substantially. He had access to all Victoria’s papers, drafted her correspondence and was present when she met her ministers. The Clerk of the Privy Council, Charles Greville, wrote of him: ‘He is King to all intents and purposes.’

  Albert described his position in a letter he wrote to the Duke of Wellington, saying: ‘As natural head of the Queen’s family, superintendent of her household, manager of her private affairs, sole confidential adviser in politics . . . he is besides the husband of the Queen, the tutor of the royal children, the private secretary of the Sovereign and her permanent minister.’ In short, he saw for himself a much larger role than could ever be possible nowadays for Prince Philip, but as an active man the Duke of Edinburgh needed to find an outlet for his energies, as his predecessor had done.

  Albert was only twenty years old when he married Queen Victoria; yet within a few years he had modernised the royal finances, set up a model farm at Windsor, increased the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall and improved the other royal estates. On the Isle of Wight, Osborne House, an Italianate villa, was constructed largely to Albert’s design as a holiday home for their growing family. He was also instrumental in securing Balmoral as a royal residence, buying the estate sight unseen in 1848, and in 1853 commissioned the building of the existing castle.

  Active with progressive ideas in many fields, including the abolition of slavery, the ending of child labour and the reforming of university education, Albert had a special interest in science and technological progress in the manufacturing industry, in which Britain was the world leader.

  Perhaps Albert’s most famous project was the Great Exhibition of 1851, held in the ‘Crystal Palace’ in London’s Hyde Park. It was organised by the Society of Arts, of which Albert was president, and owed most of its success to his efforts to promote it. Albert had to fight for every stage of the project. Opponents prophesied that foreign rogues and revolutionists would overrun England, subvert the morals of the people and destroy their faith. Albert thought such talk absurd and believed, quite rightly, that British manufacturing would benefit from the exhibition as a showcase for all they could do.

  The Queen opened the exhibition on 1 May 1851, and it proved a huge success. It generated a surplus of £180,000, which was used to purchase land in South Kensington on which to establish educational and cultural institutions, including the Natural History Museum, Science Museum, Imperial College London and what would later be named the Royal Albert Hall and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The area became known as ‘Albertopolis’ at the time. His impact and name lives on in the hundreds of roads, streets and squares and other places named after him.

  Prince Philip has certainly seen an opportunity for himself to do something similar in the way he promotes key activities. He has for many years taken a special interest in and done much to further the interests of British science and engineering, including setting up the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.

  He used the Great Exhibition as a starting point for the address he gave to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, of which he had accepted the presidency in 1951. Not content with reading the short speech that had been prepared for him, he decided to deliver an ambitious and far-reaching address that was a summary of the progress of science over the previous century from Darwin to nuclear fission. At the time, Philip was still a serving officer in the Royal Navy and enjoying his first proper command of the frigate Magpie. He prepared for his speech for weeks, with his cabin a mass of reference books and papers. His audience on the day of the address was one of the largest gatherings of scientists ever seen in Britain, with some 4000 in attendance.

  He opened the speech with a quote from the address that Prince Albert had made to the same association in Aberdeen in 1859. After an hour, he concluded with the words: ‘It is clearly our duty as citizens to see that science is used for the benefit of mankind. For of what use is science if man does not survive?’ His speech was warmly received by the scientists and was well reviewed in the press. Prince Albert had not been quite so fortunate in all his interventions. He had supported the theory of evolution by natural selection, based on Charles Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species, which the church would not accept. He had even put forward Darwin’s name for a knighthood, but it was rejected after opposition from the bishops.

  But that was not all Philip did. By 1953, he had already taken on two major projects with great success. He had been made chairman of the Coronation Commission and had overseen every detail of the ceremony. Leaving nothing to chance, he even stood on the balcony at Buckingham Palace to find the best angle from which the Queen could watch the fly-past after the ceremony without getting a crick in her neck while still wearing her heavy crown.

  At the suggestion of King George VI, Philip became chairman of the National Playing Fields Association (NPFA) in 1949. He set about raising the equivalent of many millions of pounds in today’s money to open new playing fields across the country. He enlisted the help of Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope to make charitable appearances and so successful were his endeavours that, four years later, new playing fields were still being opened at the rate of 200 a year. He remained president of the NPFA for sixty-four years until Prince William took over in 2013.

  Like Albert, Prince Philip involved himself in the modernisation of the royal estates. After her accession, the Queen made him Ranger of Windsor Great Park, a job for which Philip had to immerse himself in a course of estate management. He turned the farms at Sandringham and Windsor into profitable concerns, as well as supplying the royal households with food. At Balmoral, a herd of Highland cattle was put on the land and a forestry programme was introduced. Despite opposition from the stuffy officials at Buckingham Palace, Philip introduced many changes following a much-maligned time and motion study. An intercom system was installed so that if the Queen wanted a cup of tea or Philip a sandwich, it no longer took four footmen to pass the order on to the kitchen.

  Between 1959 and 2011, he chaired the judging panel for the Prince Philip Designers Prize, which rewarded the innovation and creativity of designers and engineers shaping daily life. Winners have included product designer Sir James Dyson, of vacuum cleaner fame, architect Lord Foster, designer of the Gherkin in the City of London, and Andrew Ritchie, inventor of the Brompton folding bicycle.

  Although Prince Philip ended his active naval career in July 1951, he remained very closely connected to the armed forces. In 1952, he was appointed Admiral of the Sea Cadet Corps, Colonel-in-Chief of the Army Cadet Force and Air Commodore-in-Chief of the Air Training Corps. The following year he was promoted to Admiral of the Fleet and appointed Field Marshal and Marshal of the Royal Air Force. For his ninetieth birthday, the Queen gave him the title Lord High Admiral.

  He has been patron of some 800 organisations focused on the environment, science and industry, sport, education technology and design. He has served as chancellor of the universities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Salford and Wales, but despite all of this work, he once said: ‘I am not a graduate of any university. I am not a humanist or a scientist, and oddly enough I don’t regret it. I owe my allegiance to another of the world’s few really great fraternities, the fraternity of the sea.’

  However, of all Prince Philip’s many interests and achievements, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme is the best known across the globe. Set up in 1956, it has helped more than 6 million young people to believe in themselves. It was originally administered by Sir John Hunt, who had led the first successful climb of Mount Everest. The scheme was based on the principles of physical fitness and community spirit laid
down by Kurt Hahn and has become the world’s leading youth achievement award. Bronze, silver and gold awards are earned through volunteering, physical activities, life skills and expeditions.

  But, if pressed to say which of his many duties is the most important to him, it is likely that his duty as consort to the Queen would be named first. To support and protect her as sovereign, to accompany her to official ceremonies such as the State Opening of Parliament, to be at her side at state dinners and foreign tours, has been the central part of his life. At the Coronation in 1953, Prince Philip knelt before the Queen and swore to be her ‘liege man of life and limb’, and that pledge is something he has never forgotten. It was only in August 2017, at the age of ninety-six, that he finally stepped back from royal duties to enjoy life at his own pace.

  Victoria was already Queen when she married Prince Albert on 10 February 1840 in the Chapel Royal at St James’s Palace. In her diary entry for that day she wrote: ‘The Ceremony was very imposing, and fine and simple, and I think ought to make an everlasting impression on everyone who promises at the Altar to keep what he or she promises. Dearest Albert repeated everything very distinctly. I felt so happy when the ring was put on, and by my precious Albert.’

  In an age where dynastic marriages were often loveless affairs, and it was taken for granted that princes and kings had mistresses, Albert proved to be the exception. There has never been any suggestion that he was not true to his wedding vows until his untimely death at the age of forty-two. Albert’s horror of infidelity could be traced back to his childhood, when he witnessed at five years old the departure of his beloved mother, who, having been mistreated by his father, embarked on an affair and was banished from the household for ever. A sincere and devout man, if he made vows, he honoured them. It is also clear he was a man of passion, and he and Victoria often sent each other erotic works of art as presents; she was enthralled by her intimacy with him, which produced nine children.

  With Philip, however, the story has not been quite so straightforward, perhaps not helped by his membership of the Thursday Club and his life as a sailor. Throughout their long marriage, rumours of his alleged affairs have been rife. Biographers and royal chroniclers have failed to prove the stories that have circulated since the 1940s and no one has come up with convincing evidence to support the allegations.

  Even before his engagement, Prince Philip’s love life had come under scrutiny. In 1945, Philip was twenty-four and very good looking; a tall, slim, blond Adonis. He was on active duty in the balmy trade winds of the Pacific with Mike Parker, the Australian fellow naval officer who later became Philip’s equerry. According to Parker, who went on shore leave with Philip: ‘Philip was actually quite reserved. He didn’t give away a lot. There have been books and articles galore saying he played the field. I don’t believe it. People say we were screwing around like nobody’s business. Well, we weren’t.’

  Parker did admit in an interview with a biographer of Prince Philip that there were always ‘armfuls of girls’. He later said: ‘Jesus, I wish I’d never used that phrase. What I meant was this: we were young, we had fun, we had a few drinks, we might have gone dancing, but that was it. In Australia, Philip came to meet my family, my sisters and their friends. There were girls galore, but there was no one special. Believe me. I guarantee it.’ There is, of course, no reason why Prince Philip should not have had girlfriends at that time.

  Why Parker thought it necessary to defend his friend’s actions when he was not even engaged is not clear, but the subject kept on being raised with him. Years later, Parker said: ‘Philip has been one hundred per cent faithful to the Queen. No ifs, no buts. Take it from me, I know.’ However, as Parker was Philip’s best friend and secretary, some have chosen to take any statement made by him on behalf of Philip with extreme caution.

  Once the Queen and Prince Philip were married, the period over which the biggest questions arise in many people’s minds came in 1956, when Philip left the Queen at home with the children and embarked on a world tour on the royal yacht Britannia, with the object of visiting some of the smaller far-flung outposts of the Commonwealth, as well as opening the Melbourne Olympics on 22 November that year. The tour lasted just over four months. Questions were raised at the time in the press as to why Philip had left his family in London for so long, and there were rumours of wild parties during the voyage. Britannia had a crew of 220 men and twenty officers. Also on board were Mike Parker and an aide-de-camp to Philip. It is hardly credible that anything could have taken place without the knowledge of at least some of those on board.

  Perhaps led on by baseless gossip, Joan Graham, the London-based Mayfair correspondent of the Baltimore Sun, ran the story in 1957 that London was rife with rumours that the Duke of Edinburgh had more than a passing interest in an unnamed woman whom he met on a regular basis in the West End apartment of a society photographer (presumably his friend Baron Nahum). ‘Report Queen, Duke in Rift Over Party Girl’ ran the headline. The story was soon picked up by the international press. The rumours were further fuelled by the fact that Mike Parker had chosen this moment to tender his resignation. It was taken as a sign that he had to go because he had been leading Philip astray, but in fact he felt he had to resign because his wife had filed a petition for divorce from him.

  According to Parker, ‘The Duke was incandescent. He was very, very angry. And deeply hurt.’ In a break from the rule that the Palace never comments on rumour, the Queen authorised an official and complete denial. ‘It is quite untrue that there is any rift between the Queen and the Duke,’ said Commander Richard Colville, the royal press secretary.

  In a letter from February 1958, Princess Margaret touched on the controversy when writing to her American friend Sharman Douglas, whose father had been the US ambassador in London in the late 1940s: ‘I see the fine old press in your country tried to make out the Queen wasn’t getting on with my b-in-l [brother-in-law]. So of course, the stinking Press here repeated it all sheep-like, like the nasty cowards they are. However, all is well and he’s terribly well and full of fascinating stories of his journeys and it’s very nice indeed to have him home again. The children are thrilled.’

  At the end of the tour, the Queen flew out to Lisbon to join Philip for a state visit to Portugal. During the long voyage, Philip had grown a full naval beard, which he shaved off before boarding the Queen’s plane. He found the entire party on the plane, including the Queen, wearing false ginger whiskers. When the royal couple emerged to meet 150 reporters on the tarmac, they were smiling happily. Time magazine reported that this was ‘an all’s well signal that spread to the four corners of the earth’.

  Whether the unnamed showgirl referred to in the Baltimore Sun was Pat Kirkwood, a beautiful musical comedy star, is unknown. However, there were persistent rumours in the press that Philip was having an affair with her as early as 1948, when the Queen was pregnant with Prince Charles. Kirkwood, then the highest paid star on the London stage, was the girlfriend of society photographer and Philip’s fellow Thursday Club member Baron.

  One evening after a performance of the musical Starlight Roof at the London Hippodrome, Baron took Philip and an equerry to meet Pat in her dressing room. The foursome then went out to dinner at Les Ambassadeurs Club in Hamilton Place run by John Mills, a Polish ex-wrestler. After dinner, they went at Philip’s request to the Milroy Club for some music and dancing. According to Kirkwood, Philip would not let her sit down and danced to whatever the band played. Later they went to Baron’s flat for scrambled eggs. Philip’s conduct had not gone unnoticed at the Milroy and rumours of an affair with Pat spread.

  According to Kirkwood, they only met again when she was presented to Philip at command performances in the theatre. She later said: ‘I wish Philip had never come uninvited into my dressing room that night. I have had to live with the consequences for the rest of my life.’ The rumours persisted for years.

  After her death in 2007, Pat’s fourth and last husband said: ‘I have in my p
ossession correspondence which passed between my wife and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh which leaves no room for doubt that the allegations so often made regarding a relationship between them are entirely without foundation. It was my wife’s express wish that these letters should be handed in the fullness of time to the Duke’s official biographer in order that the truth may be finally established. Until that time, they will not be released for publication.’ Even this comment, however, does not explain why she and Philip should have been corresponding with each other at all.

  Another name with whom Prince Philip was romantically linked is Hélène Cordet, formerly Hélène Foufounis. She became friends with him when she was six and he was three and they spent holidays together at her parents’ villa in Le Touquet. Hélène became well known on television as the hostess of the BBC variety show Café Continental and as founder of The Saddle Room, London’s first discotheque. Hélène had two children while separated from her first husband, but declined at the time to name the father. When Philip elected to become godfather to both children, some assumed that he must be their father. Matters weren’t resolved when she allowed the paternity of her children to remain a mystery. Even in her memoir, Born Bewildered, published in 1961, years later, she does not name the father. Many years later, her son Max, who became a professor of economics, was finally provoked into issuing a public statement utterly denying this.

  Over the years, the rumour mill produced several other names of those they claimed he’d had an affair with, including the Countess of Westmorland, the wife of the Queen’s Master of the Horse; the novelist Daphne du Maurier, wife of the Comptroller of the Royal Household ‘Boy’ Browning; the actresses Merle Oberon and Anna Massey; the TV personality Katie Boyle; the Duchess of York’s mother, Susan Barrantes; the Duchess of Abercorn, wife of the Lord Steward of the Royal Household; Philip’s cousin, Princess Alexandra; and his carriage-driving companion, Lady Romsey.