My Husband and I

by Ingrid Seward

  The satirical magazine Private Eye even linked Prince Philip with Stephen Ward, the society osteopath at the centre of the Profumo affair which rocked the Conservative government in 1963. Ward, a fellow member of the Thursday Club, was notorious for throwing wild parties at which ‘The Man in the Mask’ served drinks wearing only a skimpy apron. Private Eye took to referring to Prince Philip as ‘The Naked Waiter’, but in the investigation by Lord Justice Denning into the Profumo affair he described Ward as an unreliable witness.

  Of all Prince Philip’s respected biographers, only Sarah Bradford is adamant that Philip has had affairs. ‘There is no doubt in my mind at all,’ she told Gyles Brandreth. ‘The Duke of Edinburgh has had affairs – yes, full-blown affairs and more than one. Not with Pat Kirkwood or Merle Oberon or any of those people. You’re quite right, all that was nonsense, complete nonsense. I don’t think there was ever anything in any of that. But he has affairs. And the Queen accepts it. I think she thinks that’s how men are. He’s never been one for chasing actresses. His interest is quite different. The women he goes for are always younger than him, usually beautiful and highly aristocratic . . . Philip and Sacha Abercorn certainly had an affair. Without a doubt.’ Sacha Abercorn denied that they did.

  Because the rumours persisted until late in his life, when Prince Philip told Princess Diana that her wayward behaviour was destroying the essence of everything that he and the Queen had dedicated their life to preserving, and that her actions were also damaging her children’s inheritance, she decided that she was going to do her utmost to discover about his alleged affairs as a revenge for what she saw as his disloyalty. According to her, after much careful detective work, she came to believe he had illegitimate children, as the rumours suggested, and that they had been financially cared for in perpetuity, though their identity was never going to be allowed to come to light.

  So prevalent did the stories become that he was even asked directly about them himself. When a female journalist quizzed him about the rumours of extra-marital infidelities, Philip said: ‘Have you ever stopped to think that for the past forty years I have never moved anywhere without a policeman accompanying me? So how the hell could I get away with anything like that?’

  There is no doubt that Prince Philip enjoys the company of pretty women, preferably years younger than he is. I have seen him myself gliding around the dance floor at the Royal Yacht Squadron Ball during Cowes week with Penny Romsey. Neither of them gave a damn who saw them or what anyone might have said. Philip was with his yachting cronies and no one seemed to take any notice. Philip, an excellent dancer in the old-fashioned style, was completely in rhythm with the beautiful Penny Romsey as they moved around the floor.

  He is undoubtedly close to Penny. In 1996, at the height of what was dubbed ‘the war of the Waleses’, a snooping radio ham Neville Hawkins taped a mobile phone call made by Philip to a ‘plummy voiced’ woman in which they discussed the bitter marriage battle between Charles and Diana, with Prince Philip likening it to a soap opera. It turned out to be Penny, but at one point she handed the phone to her husband, rather breaking any illusion of some clandestine contact between them. She is around at many Windsor weekends and often acts as the eyes and ears of both Prince Philip and the Queen as to what is going on in the outside world. Ever since 1975, when she was first introduced to Prince Charles, she has always been popular with the royal family. It was her lively mind, as well as her beauty, that turned this former meat trader’s daughter into a central figure at the heart of royal life.

  Friends of Philip knew, as a man who always had an eye for a pretty woman but who also gets bored easily, he was certain to find her intelligent and amusing company irresistible. He taught her the rudiments of carriage driving, at which she excelled, and now, at an age when the Duke is unable to do much carriage driving, he has found another reason for them to spend time together – painting in watercolours. Philip has always liked to flirt and make suggestive remarks, and the Queen is the first one to make jokes about his lascivious nature.

  If all of these stories were to be heard in a trial for divorce, there is certainly not enough evidence of both desire or opportunity on Philip’s part to permit a judge to reach a definite conclusion on this score. What the Queen feels about it all, we will never know. She would never let on that she might have been hurt when the rumours of her husband’s supposed dalliances reached her ears. Or perhaps they never did. It is quite possible she would have been the last one to ever know and, even if she did, she could have buried her head in the sand and pretended it wasn’t happening. It was lucky for him that the Queen has what many would consider an old-fashioned view of marriage and always advocated accepting a husband for what he is. In her early thirties she once remarked: ‘There’s nothing worse than to fence a man in and stop him from doing what he wants.’

  With her approval, Philip has managed to get through his life doing just that. Her serene acceptance of the man has kept the marriage alive, and within the home she has always deferred to him. She has always been wise enough to appreciate his phenomenal energy and let him get on with things. He, in turn, has been her greatest support and has always protected her. And their partnership was about to produce another new arrival.

  Chapter 8

  BRINGING UP ANDREW AND EDWARD

  The Queen and Prince Philip had been married for twelve-and-a-half years when Andrew came along on the afternoon of 19 February 1960, becoming the first child to be born to a reigning British monarch in 103 years. The pregnancy was unplanned, coming on the eve of a Canadian tour which was scheduled to cover 16,000 miles in six weeks. It was not a practical journey for a woman in the early stages of pregnancy, but the Queen refused any advice to change her plans. She was, she insisted, in the best of health and had found her other two confinements relatively uncomplicated. However, the strain of the intervening years had taken their toll and the hormonal changes the Queen experienced made her very tired, but she refused to give in and rest. Stubborn to the last, she came home from the tour at the beginning of August exhausted and was immediately ordered to bed by her gynaecologist Lord Evans. Five days later, she had recovered sufficiently to journey to Balmoral for the rest of the summer.

  The announcement of the 7lb 3oz infant prince’s arrival was greeted with the usual British fervour reserved for royal births. There was much rejoicing among the crowd in the Mall, who were deafened by a fly-past of thirty-six Hunter jets over Buckingham Palace as well as the traditional twenty-one-gun salute. As with her two previous births, Prince Philip remained in his study as the baby was being delivered; his wife had made it perfectly plain she didn’t want him hanging around, let alone being by her side for the birth. The whole idea was loathsome to her and she was far happier to be in the care of her medical team headed by Lord Evans, John Peel – later Sir John, who had spent the night in a nearby room – and midwife Sister Rowe.

  Lord Evans was the first to tell Philip that his anxious hours of waiting were finally over and as soon as he heard the news he ran out of his study, taking the stairs two at a time, and burst into the bedroom of the Belgian Suite, so named in honour of King Leopold of the Belgians, situated on the ground floor of Buckingham Palace next door to the swimming pool. He took his new-born son from the nurse and held him in his arms. ‘It’s a boy!’ he shouted excitedly to the nursery staff.

  There was more good news for him on the vexed question of the baby prince’s name. A few days before Andrew’s birth, a decree was issued by Buckingham Palace declaring that from henceforth the Queen’s children would use the surname Mountbatten-Windsor. Under a declaration made in the Privy Council, the name Mountbatten-Windsor applies to male-line descendants of the Queen without royal styles and titles. It was a combination of Philip’s adopted name of Mountbatten and hers of Windsor. So, when Andrew Albert Christian Edward was christened in the Music Room of Buckingham Palace, on 8 April 1960, he became the first royal child to hold the new family name from the moment of his birt
h. After having complained about the exclusion of his name when Charles and Anne had been born, it was a mark that his own status had been enhanced.

  Andrew was also the first recent royal child not to have any official christening photographs. Instead, his father snapped away with his own Hasselblad as the godparents (or sponsors as they are known in royal circles) stood around the silver lily font. The late Duke of Gloucester, Princess Alexandra, Lord Elphinstone, the Earl of Euston and Lady Kennard were the honoured friends and relatives chosen.

  Both Prince Philip and the Queen were aware that Charles and Anne had suffered unnecessarily from over-zealous media attention during their formative years and decided to best way of avoiding a repetition of the situation was to keep the baby, who was second in line to the throne, away from public places. Instead of going to the park, his nanny would restrict walks to the gardens of Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, a discreet distance from any public highway. That way the palace could control the amount of coverage the baby received. Like any parents, they were learning from their previous experiences, and trying to ensure they could provide the best environment for their child.

  The first photographs to be released of Prince Andrew were those taken by Cecil Beaton, when the baby was already one month old. As always, Beaton’s diaries give a revealing and acerbic account of the event. He thought the Queen’s bright red dress was ‘better than most of hers’, but he ‘felt that the odds were ganging up against me . . . I clicked like mad at anything that seemed even passable. But the weight of the Palace crushed me. The opposition of this hearty naval type must be contended with, and due deference to the Queen. She seemed affable enough but showed no signs of real interest in anything . . . Not one word of conversation – only a little well-bred amusement at the way I gave my instructions in a stream of asides.’ Philip, ‘in that maddening Royal way’, kept on making suggestions, including that Beaton should climb a ladder to take the photos. Eventually, Philip decided to take his own pictures with his own camera.

  Prince Philip behaved in the same dismissive way to Beaton’s 1990s equivalent, Terry O’Neill, at the christening of Prince Andrew’s younger daughter, Princess Eugenie, in December 1990. When Terry, who works very quickly with just one assistant, was snapping the christening group at Sandringham, Prince Philip kept saying, ‘Come on! Come on! Haven’t we done enough?’ Then he added what is known as his photographer’s phrase: ‘If he hasn’t got what he wants by now, he’s an even worse photographer than I thought!’

  After that time, there was a lack of news about the royal baby and, because of the lack of photographic evidence to the contrary, whispers began that there might be something wrong with the baby. People were noting how Andrew had been kept away from public gaze much more than was the case with Charles or Anne. Eventually, it was left to the foreign press to make the first move and a French newspaper ran a story claiming that the baby was malformed. Prince Philip was furious, the Queen upset and Buckingham Palace defeated in its aim to keep things private. Then as now, the Palace are reluctant to give way to media pressure, but they saw little sense in keeping Andrew hidden any longer. So, at sixteen months old, he made his public debut on the Buckingham Palace balcony for the Queen’s birthday parade. When the crowd spotted the baby dressed in his best embroidered romper suit bobbing up and down in his mother’s arms, a huge cheer went up. This was what they had waited to see.

  Nanny Mabel Anderson was thirty-four when Prince Andrew was born and she ran the nursery in the traditional royal manner: unchallenged, unopposed and almost as a private fiefdom. She had the assistance of an under-nanny, June Waller, who helped her in much the same way as she herself had helped Helen Lightbody with Charles and Anne, and a nursery footman. Royal nannies do not have to clean, cook or do the laundry. Their job is to purely see to the children’s wellbeing and run the nursery, which Mabel did perfectly. She set up an unswerving routine, like so much of their structured royal lives. Mabel was the central pivot around which everything revolved for Andrew. His parents were almost strangers by comparison.

  By now, the Queen had been on her throne for eight years, and compared with the austerity years when Charles and Anne were younger and the Queen seldom had the time to see them during the day, she was now able to find more time for Andrew. Where previously she might have sometimes popped into the ballroom where they had their weekly dancing lessons with Madame Vacani, now, with Andrew, it was different. She had more time available, and so was able to schedule time with him into her diary in a way that had not been possible before.

  ‘Leave him with me, Mabel,’ she would say some mornings, and Andrew would be left with his mother, playing on the floor of her study while she worked at her desk. Perhaps because he was older, perhaps because he had finally found the right niche for himself, but Philip also found fatherhood the third time around more enjoyable. He liked doing things with Andrew, who was an endless source of entertainment. With a brother almost twelve years older and a sister nine years older, he could have been spoilt, as he was very much the youngest member of the family, but he was encouraged to be self-reliant.

  Andrew recalls his parents divided their responsibilities towards him half and half: ‘Compassion comes from the Queen,’ he said. ‘And the duty and discipline and duty comes from him [Philip]. I think our mother probably put a bit more effort to make sure there was time for us as children, bearing in mind she was Queen when we came along. We used to see her in the afternoons and in the evenings the usual standard bath time sort of routine. And Father would usually read us a story or we would read to him – the Just So Stories – all sorts of things like that.’

  Philip would also tell his children stories he had invented himself. However, his appearance in the nursery filled Mabel with apprehension, as it had Nanny Lightbody before her. It was usually a prelude to tears, as Andrew often became over-excited when playing with his father, leaving his nanny to sort out the mess – though not before once collecting a black eye in the rough and tumble.

  With Charles and Anne away at boarding school, Andrew and later Edward should have been able to enjoy the individual attention of their parents, but the reins of monarchy were always pulling. When the Queen and Prince Philip did join their children for tea in the nursery, they never arrived unannounced and the staff always knew when one of them was coming. Mabel would fuss around making sure everything was in place and the children were clean and tidy. Sometimes, on Mabel’s day off or when she went to her evening pottery classes, the Queen would babysit the two children.

  It was still very formal, however, and she would bring her own page and footman who would serve her supper in front of the nursery television. If the children awoke she would soothe them back to sleep. She relished those private moments with her children and in later years admitted she felt guilty about not spending more time with them. Although there was no escaping from the merry-go-round of royal duties, the Queen and Prince Philip would never go out to dinner without saying goodnight to their children. If they were going out to an official function, such as a film premier, nanny would take them out into the corridor so they could wave goodbye. Before she got into the car wearing her tiara and a long dress, the Queen would always look up to the nursery floor and see their anxious faces pressed against the glass and give them a wave, while Philip would blow a kiss.

  The Queen and Philip’s theories about bringing up children had been tempered by experience. As Philip explained: ‘It’s no good saying do this, do that, don’t do this, don’t do that. It’s very easy when children want to do something to say no immediately. I think it’s quite important not to give an unequivocal answer at once. Much better to think it over. Then if you eventually say no I think they really accept it.’

  When the Queen wasn’t around, Philip took charge of the children, but he became easily distracted and often let them wander off. One weekend, when he was five, Andrew took advantage of this and made his way to the Royal Mews at Windsor while his father was o
ut carriage driving. The coachmen and grooms who worked there had little time for the prince, having often seen him aim sly kicks at the dogs and taunting the helpless guardsmen. Sensing their studied indifference and trying to attract attention, the prince started beating the ground with a large stick. No one took any notice, so Andrew doubled his efforts and beat the ground even harder, taking a sideways swipe at the legs of the horses.

  When he refused to stop, two grooms picked him up, threw him into the dung heap and shovelled manure all over him. The prince was too shocked to cry, but the impact of his humiliation hit him and, when he managed to extract himself from the foul-smelling mess, he ran as fast as he could up the hill to the castle saying: ‘I’ll tell my mummy on you! I’ll tell my mummy.’ No one knows if he ever did but there were no repercussions.

  Nor were there on another occasion when his taunting so annoyed a young footman that he took a swipe at Andrew that deposited him on the floor and left him with a black eye. Fearing for his job, the footman confessed what had happened and offered his resignation. When the Queen came to hear of it, she refused to accept it. She said her son had obviously deserved it and the footman was on no account to be punished for Andrew’s bad behaviour.

  By that time, of course, Andrew had a younger brother to keep him company. Prince Edward was born on the evening of Tuesday 10 March 1964 and there at the bedside, holding the Queen’s hand, was the Duke of Edinburgh. It was the first time he had been present at the birth of one of his children and he was there at the express invitation of his wife.

  The Queen was thirty-seven. She had not found giving birth easy, but sixteen years had passed since Charles was born and fashions had changed in the interim, even in matters as primary as obstetrics. Now the accent was more on the relationship between mother and baby and how that could be enhanced, both physically and emotionally, by the mother being aware of what was happening – and how important it was to involve the father in the process.