The Duke of Edinburgh’s painful past in Greece is thought to be the reason the Queen has not visited since her coronation.
For if there ever was a princely pauper, it was Philip Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, who was born on a kitchen table in a derelict home without electricity, hot water or plumbing, on the Greek island of Corfu.
He was the fifth child of Princess Alice, born into a British family of German origin who switched their name from Battenberg to Mountbatten during the First World War. His father, Prince Andrew, was the seventh son of a Danish prince, who became King of the Hellenes — a title Philip never inherited.
When he was 18 months old, his family fled Greece, carting off the infant Philip in an orange basket. His father was a professional soldier in the Greek army and faced execution for treason, defying military orders in a war against the Turks in 1922.
Thanos Veremis, a historian, said: “From then on it was all down hill for him, a life traumatised by the absence of his father.”
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Philip lived in exile in Paris for the next eight years. His father became increasingly addicted to gambling; his mother grew deaf, communicating only via sign language.
Philip mastered English, French and German, but never Greek. “I don’t think he ever uttered a word of it,” Veremis told The Times. “Why would he? It evoked terrible memories.”
By the age of ten, Philip had been left behind by his father, leaving Princess Alice to rely on the charity of friends and relatives to bring up her son and four daughters.
Alice sought solace in her Greek-Orthdox faith, becoming a nun at a monastery on the white-washed island of Tinos. Her daughters married in distant places and Philip shuttled between relatives and boarding schools, bouncing between France, England and Germany.
Years later, when asked which language he spoke at home, the Duke of Edinburgh responded: “What do you mean by ‘at home’?”
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It is understood that Philip returned to Greece on several occasions to visit his mother privately. She fell ill and was moved to Buckingham Palace, where she died in 1969. In line with her wishes, she was buried in Gethsemane, on the Mount of Olives, in Jerusalem.
The duke’s death was barely marked in Greece, in fifth place on the day’s news columns, behind the unsolved assassination of a local journalist, the prime minister’s meeting with senior citizens and rising rates of Covid-19 as the country prepares to reopen its tourist industry next month.
“Greeks do not have a warm relation with the monarchy,” said Veremis. “It’s something alien to them and a paradox. Many just wonder how Greek is this Greek prince?”
“There was no real appetite or desire from Philip’s side to ever recapture any bit of his Greek past. He did not cultivate any bond, and honestly, who blames him with such a sad, sad story hanging over him.”
The British royal family’s frostiness with Greece deepened in 1974 when Greeks voted to oust the monarchy, toppling the Duke’s cousin and close friend, King Constantine, in a controversial referendum.