If we live long enough then gradually, imperceptibly and without ever meaning to, we may become caricatures of ourselves. This was the Duke of Edinburgh’s lot. The caricature entertained the nation but did less than justice to the man.
Since long before his death Prince Philip had become an almost pantomime version of the glamorous young naval officer who, more than 60 years ago, received (in a treehouse game observation lodge in Kenya) the news that he was now consort to the Queen.
A Britain that knows only the vinegary and sometimes grumpy figure the duke presented to the 21st-century world would hardly recognise the progressive consort he was about to become. Philip was a moderniser: a go-ahead royal representative of a postwar Britain excited by the future and trusting of science, industry and technology to carry us forward. Think of the Festival of Britain in 1951; think the “International Modernist” architecture of London’s South Bank; think concrete; think pylons; think what we then called “atomic” power stations — think the sci-fi silhouette of the Dounreay reactors, commissioned in 1955.
What distinguished the young Prince Philip from the pomposity and stuffed-shirtery of what was in many ways still an Edwardian royal household was his impatience with the old ways of doing things, and his fascination with substance rather than ceremony.
A royal patron for science who was actually interested in science? A royal visitor to a hydroelectric power station who actually wanted to discuss the turbines? A consort to the monarch who immersed himself in plans for children from Britain’s cities to go tramping the countryside in the rain? Not since Prince Albert had a missionary for technological progress made it through to the very heart of the stuffy British establishment.
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Philip chafed at the constraints of traditional monarchy, and won (and lost) scores of internal battles with what he saw as an apparatus of royalty designed to turn his wife into a full-time ribbon-cutter and animated waving machine. And it was here that the pantomime version began to emerge, its outlines powerfully sketched by a newly impertinent press. Philip hated the media, hated the intrusion and was not inclined to conceal his irritation.
He had always had — it is true — a testy side. Accustomed to command, he had always done so without apology and sometimes harshly. He had the impatience that comes with a good, sharp mind, and a disinclination to put up with waffle. He knew that this was noticed and perhaps he played along with it. He had a strong if mordant sense of humour, he thought people could take it, and for the most part they could.
But when it was brought home to him that he had hurt or embarrassed people or abused his position, he could be contrite. Lord McLoughlin told me that as a new and very young shipping minister, during what seemed like an unrelenting ear-bashing from the duke over a Buckingham Palace luncheon about the problems faced by the British merchant navy, he respectfully interrupted to suggest that Prince Philip may be well placed to have a word with the Queen about it. Philip looked embarrassed, apologised, changed the subject and never returned to it.
He always had another side. Take, for instance, his treatment of the cargo cult on the island of Vanuatu, who after a royal visit got it into their heads that he was a returning god. They began writing to him and sending him ceremonial paraphernalia.
Apparently Philip never snubbed, ridiculed or ignored them, and on receipt of a special pig-killing club, posed with it for a photograph in the grounds of Buckingham Palace and sent it to his South Pacific followers.
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We do not always sentimentalise royalty. We turned Prince Philip not into a Prince Charming but a reactionary old grump. He was neither. He was handsome when young: a sharp, clever, dashing, energetic and innovative consort. Put away the caricature of a gnarled old stick-in-the-mud, and remember that.
