Читать книгу The Book of Royal Useless Information - Noel BothaM & Bruce Montague - Страница 9

Prince Philip was born into the Greek Royal Family in a house called Mon Repos on Corfu.

At the age of 18 months, Philip escaped a military junta by being carried aboard a Royal Navy rescue ship in an orange box.

Prince Philip was stateless until the King of Denmark provided him with a Danish passport.

He is the youngest child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice of Battenberg. His grandfather was a Prince of Denmark, who became King of Greece. The Duke is also related to Kings of Prussia and Emperors of Russia. The Duke renounced his Greek royal title in 1947 and became a naturalised British subject following his service in the Royal Navy.

Prince Philip’s mother separated from his father and retreated to a nunnery. His father died in the arms of his mistress in Monte Carlo. On the death of his father, Prince Philip inherited some suits and an ivory-handled shaving brush.

Prince Philip was educated at Cheam School in Hampshire and at the German public school Salem.

Salem’s Jewish headmaster, Kurt Hahn, moved to Scotland to escape persecution and founded Gordonstoun School. Philip followed.

When he married Elizabeth, Philip had to change his name from Philip Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg to Philip Mountbatten.

Prince Philip’s official title is HRH the Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich, KG, KT, OM, CBE, AC, QSO, PC – Prince of the United Kingdom and First Gentleman of the Realm.

Prince Philip once called town dwellers ‘ignorant about country pursuits’ such as hunting, which animal rights campaigners want to ban.

Prince Philip has been linked romantically with Princess Alexandra of Kent, Merle Oberon, Susan Barrantes, Pat Kirkwood, Katie Boyle and Helene Cordet. Lauren Bacall mooted that Douglas Fairbanks Jr acted as Prince Philip’s ‘beard’, escorting women in the Duke’s presence when they were really with Prince Philip. The Duke of Edinburgh himself has remained aloof from all such rumours.

Prince Philip names his dogs after orchestral conductors.

When Prince Philip gave away Helene Cordet, the television personality, at her wedding and became godfather to both her children, it raised suggestions, not surprisingly, that they were his own.

Yevgeny ‘Eugene’ Ivanov, Senior Naval Attaché at the Russian Embassy in London and local head of the GRU, the Soviet military intelligence service (who was involved in the Profumo/Christine Keeler affair in 1963), advised his Moscow masters that Prince Philip had been involved in a romantic affair with Princess Margaret in the 1950s – and quoted Stephen Ward, a friend of the Prince, as his source.

After they had run a series of revealing palace stories, Prince Philip described the Daily Express as ‘a bloody awful newspaper. It is full of lies, scandal and imagination. It is a vicious newspaper.’

Prince Philip keeps a collection of press cartoons of himself on the walls of his lavatory in Sandringham.

Trade union leader Clive Jenkins once said of Prince Philip: ‘He’s the best argument for republicanism since George III.’

Prince Philip wears contact lenses.

In 1957, within minutes of delivering a speech on road safety, Prince Philip crashed his car.

Sometimes Prince Philip hides a radio in his top hat when he attends the Ascot races – because he hates racing, and prefers to listen to the cricket.

Prince Philip quit smoking on the night before his wedding.

The Duchess of Württemberg had her spectacles accidentally knocked off during the wedding banquet for Prince Philip’s parents. When she lashed out with her handbag in furious retaliation she hit the wrong person over the head. She couldn’t see.

The Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen are both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria. The Duke is a direct descendent of Princess Alice, the third child of Queen Victoria. The Queen is a direct descendent of Queen Victoria’s eldest son, Prince Albert Edward (later King Edward VII).

The Duke was head boy of his school. From 1934 Prince Philip went to Gordonstoun School in Morayshire, Scotland. He excelled at sports and physical activities, ending as captain of the school’s hockey and cricket teams.

After leaving school the Duke of Edinburgh took the Civil Service examination and was accepted into the Royal Navy as a Special Entry Cadet. At the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, the Duke was awarded the King’s Dirk as the best all-round cadet of his term and the Eardley-Howard-Crockett Prize for the best cadet (the prize was a £2 book token).

The Duke was in active service in the Royal Navy throughout the Second World War. The Duke’s first naval appointment, aged 18, was as a midshipman to HMS Ramillies, which escorted the first contingents of the Allied Expeditionary Force from Australia to Egypt.

The Duke of Edinburgh was mentioned in dispatches for his service in the Second World War. His Royal Highness joined HMS Valiant in the Mediterranean Fleet and was involved in several engagements, including, on 21 March 1941, the battle of Matapan against the Italian fleet. For his work in control of the searchlights, Prince Philip gained his honourable citation by Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham (later Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Cunningham of Hyndhope). Prince Philip was subsequently awarded the Greek War Cross of Valour.

At the age of 21, Prince Philip was one of the youngest officers in the Royal Navy to be made First Lieutenant and second-in-command of a ship – destroyer escort HMS Wallace of the Rosyth Escort Force. In July 1943 Wallace was despatched to the Mediterranean and provided cover for the Canadian beachhead of the Allied landings in Sicily.

Four of Prince Philip’s sisters married German princes who became colonels or officials for the Nazis during the Second World War. One of them, Prince Christoph von Hesse, was Hermann Göring’s chief of the Forschungsamt (the intelligence service). Three of Philip’s sisters, Sophie, Cécile and Margarita, were members of the Nazi party. They were frequently photographed with Hitler and other German leaders.

Prince Philip later served in the destroyer HMS Whelp in the Pacific, and was present in Tokyo Bay for the Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945.

After marrying Princess Elizabeth, the Duke of Edinburgh continued his naval career, reaching the rank of Lieutenant-Commander in charge of the frigate HMS Magpie. He was stationed away from home but was visited at his base in Malta by his new wife.

From July 1951 the Duke of Edinburgh took up no more active naval appointments owing to Princess Elizabeth’s increased royal responsibilities. He was promoted to Admiral of the Fleet on 15 January 1953. His other service appointments are Field Marshal and Marshal of the Royal Air Force.

Most people know him as HRH the Duke of Edinburgh but Prince Philip has two other titles: Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich. All three titles were conferred upon the Duke in 1947 by King George VI.

The Duke is a qualified pilot. He gained his RAF wings in 1953, his helicopter wings in 1956 and his private pilot’s licence in 1959. Prince Philip has notched up 5,986 hours in 59 types of aircraft. The Duke’s final flight was on 11 August 1997 from Carlisle to the island of Islay; since then His Royal Highness has decided to stop flying.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme and International Award were founded by the Duke to introduce young people to new experiences, including physical, skills-based and community challenges. The scheme has been a huge international success. Since 1956, almost 5.5 million young people from over 90 countries have taken part.

With his naval background, Prince Philip remains a keen sailor and has competed regularly at Cowes Regatta. He is Admiral of the Royal Yacht Squadron and patron of many sailing clubs. He was President of the Royal Yachting Association from 1956 to 1970, and from 1975 to 1980.

The Duke of Edinburgh is a prolific writer on environmental, technological, equestrian and animal subjects. His books include: Selected Speeches 1948–1955 (1957); Prince Philip Speaks (1960); Birds from Britannia (1962); Wildlife Crisis (with James Fisher, 1970); The Environmental Revolution (1978); Competition Carriage Driving (1982, revised 1994); A Question of Balance (1982); Men, Machines and Sacred Cows (1984); A Windsor Correspondence (1984); Down to Earth (1988); Survival or Extinction: A Christian Attitude to the Environment (1989); Driving and Judging Dressage (1996); and 30 Years On and Off the Box Seat (2004). Down to Earth is even available in Japanese.

Although he is a Privy Counsellor, the Duke has no constitutional role. He is a member of the House of Lords, but has never spoken there, owing to his proximity to the Queen, who remains politically neutral.

Care of the environment has been one of the Duke of Edinburgh’s greatest passions since before it became a matter of general public concern. The Duke was the first President of the World Wildlife Fund UK, from its foundation in 1961 until 1982, was International President of WWF (now World Wide Fund for Nature) from 1981 to 1996, and is now President Emeritus. His involvement has always been more than acting as a mere figurehead. He has served on the organisation’s boards and committees, given numerous addresses and speeches on the subject, and visited WWF projects in over 40 countries on five continents.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s official livery colour is dark green, known as ‘Edinburgh Green’. It has been used for staff liveries – the Duke of Edinburgh’s page at the coronation wore dark green and silver – and for private cars.

The Duke enjoys painting in oils. He describes it as ‘an absorbing challenge, for which I have nothing like enough time’.

The Duke is an enthusiastic ‘twitcher’. He became interested in bird watching during two round-the-Commonwealth voyages in Royal Yacht Britannia in 1956–57 and 1959. During the trips he was captivated by the seabirds flying round the yacht in the South Pacific and South Atlantic. The Duke published a book of his photographs from the trips, Birds from Britannia, in 1962. Since 1987 His Royal Highness has been Patron of the British Trust for Ornithology.

The Duke of Edinburgh was the first member of the Royal Family to be interviewed on television. The interview took place in May 1961 when Prince Philip was interviewed by Richard Dimbleby, probably on a subject related to the City & Guilds of London, of which His Royal Highness has been President since 1951.

The islanders of Tanna, one of the islands in Vanuatu in the South West Pacific, worship the Duke of Edinburgh as a god. Vanuatu was formerly the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides, which Prince Philip visited in 1971.

The Duke of Edinburgh is Colonel of the Grenadier Guards. At Trooping the Colour he wears the uniform of Colonel of the Grenadier Guards and always accompanies the Queen, formerly on horseback and, since 2003, in the carriage.

Prince Philip has put together a significant collection of contemporary paintings. These include a number of Australian paintings; around 150 pictures by contemporary Scottish artists bought for the Palace of Holyroodhouse; bird and wildlife paintings; and a specially commissioned series of views of Windsor and of castles in Germany.

In 1963 the Duke of Edinburgh founded a bagpiping trophy for the Pakistan Army. He offered to present the challenge cup after witnessing a display of massed bands of the Pakistan Army while visiting the country with the Queen in 1961.

In 1976, at the museum of Madame Tussauds in London, the Duke of Edinburgh was immortalised as a waxwork.

The Duke of Edinburgh is the Grand Master and First or Principal Knight of the Order of the British Empire, founded in the 20th century to reward the work and service of members of the general public.

Prince Philip still relishes adventurous challenges. In May 1985, His Royal Highness drove a coach and four across Morecambe Bay, Lancashire, as the tide was coming in. The feat involved negotiating both treacherous quicksands and the incoming water.

The Duke of Edinburgh has been President of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) twice – in 1949–50 and 1974–75.

On the occasion of the Duke of Edinburgh’s birthday, a royal gun salute is fired, and the Union Flag is flown on government buildings from 8.00am until sunset.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s badge shows a coronet surmounting the garter, encircling a heraldic Edinburgh Castle. It was originally designed in 1948 as the Edinburgh Badge for use by both Prince Philip and Princess Elizabeth, as Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh. After the Queen’s accession in 1952, Prince Philip continued to use it for himself.

The Duke of Edinburgh has his own standard. The first three quarters show Prince Philip’s lineage: Denmark (lions and hearts); Greece (white cross on blue); Mountbatten (two black ‘pales’ on white). The fourth quarter contains the arms of the City of Edinburgh and represents his title.

In addition to founding design prizes, the Duke has dabbled in design himself. The Prince Philip Greyhound Collar – a prize awarded for greyhound racing – was produced in silver to the Duke’s own design.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s coat of arms bears the motto ‘God is my help’ as well as the motto of the Order of the Garter: ‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’.

The Duke of Edinburgh had four elder sisters – Princess Margarita (1905–81), Princess Theodora (1906–69), Princess Cécile (1911–37), and Princess Sophie (1914–2001).

The ‘Silver Wink’ has been awarded by the Duke since 1961 – to the winner of the Inter-University Tiddlywinks Championships.

Quotes from Prince Philip:

‘Constitutionally I don’t exist.’

‘“Dontopedology” is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it.’

‘How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them to pass the test?’ (Quizzing a Scottish driving instructor.)

‘If I’m re-incarnated, I’d like to come back as a deadly virus to counter over-population.’ (In the foreword to a book.)

‘You managed not to get eaten then?’ (To a student who had just visited Papua New Guinea.)

‘We live in what virtually amounts to a museum, which does not happen to a lot of people.’

‘The biggest waste of water in the country is when you spend half a pint and flush two gallons.’

‘It looks as if it was put in by an Indian.’ (Pointing at an old-fashioned fuse box while on a tour of a factory near Edinburgh in 1993.) [The word he was probably searching for was ‘cowboy’.]

‘You were playing your instruments, weren’t you? Or do you have tape recorders under your seats?’ (‘Congratulating’ a school band on their performance in Australia, in 2002.)

‘I talk too much about things of which I have never claimed any special knowledge; just contemplate the horrifying prospect if I were to get my teeth into something even remotely familiar.’

‘The problem with London is the tourists. They cause the congestion. If we could just stop tourism, then we could stop the congestion.’ (On London’s congestion charge.)

‘Are you still throwing spears at other tribes?’ (To an Aborigine elder, on a royal visit to Australia.)

‘Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?’ (To a wealthy resident of the Cayman Islands.)

‘I never see any home cooking – all I get is fancy stuff.’

‘I must confess that I am interested in leisure in the same way that a poor man is interested in money.’

‘Ghastly.’ (On Beijing, China, in 1986.)

‘A few years ago everybody was saying: “We must have more leisure, everybody’s working too much.” Now that everybody’s got more leisure, they’re complaining they’re unemployed. They don’t seem to be able to make up their minds what they want, do they?’ (On the recession.)

‘If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, are you going to ban cricket bats?’ (Responding to calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane massacre.)

‘If it has got four legs and it is not a chair, if it has two wings and it flies but it’s not an aeroplane, and if it swims and it is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it.’ (Commenting on Chinese eating habits to a WWF conference in 1986.)

‘Are you Indian or Pakistani? I can never tell the difference between you chaps.’ (At a Washington embassy reception for Commonwealth members.)

‘You can’t have been here that long, you haven’t got a pot belly.’ (To a Briton residing in Hungary.)

‘What a po-faced lot these Dutch are.’ (On a visit to Holland.)

‘I don’t think a prostitute is more moral than a wife, but they are doing the same thing.’

‘All money nowadays seems to be produced with a natural homing instinct for the Treasury.’

‘Just as we can’t blame people for their parents, we can’t blame South America for not having been members of the British Empire.’ (At the British and Latin Chambers of Commerce.)

‘I declare this thing open – whatever it is.’ (At the opening of Vancouver City Hall’s new annex.)

‘Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf.’ (To deaf people, in reference to a nearby school’s steel band, playing in his honour.)

‘I rather doubt whether anyone has ever been genuinely shocked by anything I have said.’