ROBERT HARDMAN: Now THAT'S a royal example to follow!

16/03/2021

ROBERT HARDMAN: Prince Philip was an outsider who found a role and battles on uncomplainingly… now THAT’S a royal example to follow!

After a week she would rather forget – on the back of twelve months we would all rather forget – the Queen deserves a spot of good news. Yesterday, that walked through the Sovereign’s Entrance to Windsor Castle in the form of the Duke of Edinburgh.

Having spent four weeks in two hospitals, the duke was finally back in his own bed last night, much to the relief of the entire castle. For this is not just home to the Queen and the duke but to a community of around 300 – clergy, curators, military, musicians and their families. And everyone there is acutely aware of the debt this place owes to the duke.

When much of it burned down in 1992, it was the duke who ran the monumental restoration scheme. Beyond the castle walls, the entire estate has been transformed by him. One of the first things the Queen did on acceding to the throne was to appoint the duke as Ranger of the Great Park. His handiwork is everywhere.

It was the duke who restored the deer herd after the Second World War, who opened up a thriving farm shop, who presided over a new vineyard producing sparkling wine now good enough for state banquets.

And even though he has retired from most of his 800 positions in public life, he has yet to relinquish the post of Ranger. The same tenacious quality which saw him walk out of hospital yesterday – he could have left in a wheelchair or an ambulance but refused – runs through the entire story of his life.

We have heard a lot in recent days from two former Windsor residents who found the royal existence a burden so intolerable that they felt impelled to emigrate. Yet Prince Philip endured rather more hostility than a spat about who made who cry at a dress fitting.

‘They were absolutely bloody to him. They patronised him. They treated him as an outsider,’ his friend, Lord Brabourne (married to the duke’s cousin Patricia Mountbatten) revealed many years later.

When much of it burned down in 1992, it was the duke who ran the monumental restoration scheme. Beyond the castle walls, the entire estate has been transformed by him

He got on with his primary duty of supporting his spouse – at state occasions and on royal tours – and, at the same time, threw himself into making a difference. In his case, he did it through actions rather than words

As the duke himself once acknowledged to his friend Gyles Brandreth: ‘I was told “keep out” and that was that. I tried to find useful things to do.’

In his case, though, it was not to dwell on himself. It was a discussion of ‘Commonwealth technical training week’ with the BBC’s Richard Dimbleby. That was in 1961.

By that point, he had already founded the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award – which would boost the confidence and life chances of millions of young people around the world – and was in the middle of setting up the World Wildlife Fund, precursor to Greenpeace and all the rest. He had yet to turn 40.

As it happened, at the age of 80 he was off to Jamaica, Australia and New Zealand with the Queen. At the age of 85, he was to be found visiting one of his regiments, the Queen’s Royal Hussars, while they were on active operations – in Iraq. At the age of 90, he was still to be found regularly charging around the carriage-driving circuit

Younger generations never saw the action man who clocked up 5,000 flying hours and played cricket and polo to international level

Four years later, he was interviewed again on the BBC – this time by teenagers. One of them asked him what he planned to do at 80, to which he replied: ‘I haven’t even contemplated the possibility of being alive at 80.’

Younger generations never saw the action man who clocked up 5,000 flying hours and played cricket and polo to international level.

They tend to know him for his forthright remarks, the so-called ‘gaffes’ which have periodically enlivened a royal tour or awayday – such as asking a Scottish driving instructor: ‘How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?’

These have only ever been a way of breaking the ice at a stiff event, though as the duke once said those who break the ice ‘go through occasionally’. A lesser man might have been cowed into keeping his trap shut. Fortunately, the duke is not that sort.

A questing, original thinker – he drove one of Britain’s first electric cars and, back in the Sixties, installed some of Britain’s first solar panels – this is the man who has been chancellor of several universities despite never attending one himself. The war saw to that.

‘I doubt whether I’ve achieved anything likely to be remembered,’ said the man who, some years later, would be nominated for a Nobel Prize.

His greatest achievement in the eyes of most people, however, is that he is the longest-serving royal consort in history, married to our longest-reigning Queen.

And, as of yesterday, he is back at her side.

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