Prince Philip is being remembered as the longest-serving consort in British history, who sacrificed
a naval career to give steadfast support to his wife.
But it is easy to forget he had endured an exceptionally turbulent childhood, writes
historian Philip Eade.
He was abruptly separated from his parents and four elder sisters at the age of eight,
and destined never again to live in the same home as his immediate family.
His tendency to hide his feelings meant that even those who knew him well were occasionally
taken aback.
Prince Philip was born in Corfu in 1921 eight years after the assassination of his grandfather,
King George I of Greece.
He was the youngest child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess
Alice of Battenberg.
He was little more than a year old when his father was sent into exile by an army court
martial following Greece's calamitous defeat in a war with Turkey.
The family's subsequent flight across the Adriatic Sea to Italy aboard a British warship,
with the infant Philip sleeping in a converted orange crate.
Eventually, the family settled on the outskirts of Paris at St-Cloud, in a garden cottage
owned by Philip's aunt.
Philip attended a small day school nearby, but in 1930 his world was again thrown apart
when his mother, whom he had always adored, suffered a severe mental breakdown.
King George VI was at first far from eager to give his consent, not least since several
of his closest friends were vehemently opposed to Philip.
They whispered darkly about his "Teutonic strain" and suspected that his uncle Louis
Mountbatten, a notorious intriguer, was proposing to use him as a Trojan horse to help bring
the monarchy more into line with his own "rather pink" political outlook.
For Prince Philip, on the other hand, the prospect of marriage to Princess Elizabeth
offered the chance at long last for him to regain the family life that he had lost at
the age of eight.
He was a complex, clever and eternally restless man.
He was forged by the turmoil of his first decade and then moulded by his schooling.
His early years were spent wandering, as his place of birth ejected him, his family disintegrated
and he moved from country to country, none of them ever his own.
When he was just a year old, he and his family were scooped up by a British destroyer from
his home on the Greek island of Corfu after his father had been condemned to death.
They were deposited in Italy.
One of Philip's first international journeys was spent crawling around on the floor of
the train from an Italian port city, "the grubby child on the desolate train pulling
out of the Brindisi night," as his sister Sophia later described it.
In Paris, he lived in a house borrowed from a relative; but it was not destined to become
a home.
In just one year, while he was at boarding school in Britain, the mental health of his
mother, Princess Alice, deteriorated and she went into an asylum; his father, Prince Andrew,
went off to Monte Carlo to live with his mistress; and his four sisters married and went to live
in Germany.
In the space of 10 years he had gone from a prince of Greece to a wandering, homeless,
and virtually penniless boy with no-one to care for him.
"I don't think anybody thinks I had a father," he once said.
Andrew would die during the war.
Philip went to Monte Carlo to pick up his father's possessions after the Germans had
been driven from France; there was almost nothing left, just a couple of clothes brushes
and some cuff-links.
By the time he went to Gordonstoun, a private school on the north coast of Scotland, Philip
was tough, independent and able to fend for himself; he'd had to be.
Gordonstoun would channel those traits into the school's distinct philosophy of community
service, teamwork, responsibility and respect for the individual.
And it sparked one of the great passions of Philip's life - his love of the sea.
Philip adored the school as much as his son Charles would despise it.
Not just because the stress it put on physical as well as mental excellence - he was a great
sportsman.
But because of its ethos, laid down by its founder Kurt Hahn, an exile from Nazi Germany.
When princess became Queen, it revealed another great contradiction of Philip's life.
He was born and brought up in a world almost entirely run by men.
He was a rugged, physical man who was brought up and then worked in an entirely male environment.
He celebrated masculinity, telling Mike Parker on the birth of his first son Charles, "It
takes a man to have a boy."
But literally overnight, and for 65 years to follow, it became his life to support his
wife, the Queen.
He would walk behind her.
He would give up his job for her.
He would apologise if he came into a room after her.
At her coronation he knelt before her, his hands enclosed by hers, and swore to be her
"liege man of life and limb".
His children would not bear his name, Mountbatten.
"I'm nothing but a bloody amoeba," he exclaimed at that.
But there was nothing to be done.
She was the Queen.
He was her husband.
"He believes he has a creative mission," wrote an early biographer, "to present the monarchy
as a dynamic, involved and responsive institution that will address itself to some of the problems
of contemporary British society."
He was young and very good looking; he smiled and joked and was at ease in front of the
cameras.
When he visited a boys' club in London in the late 1950s, a photo shows him with a broad
smile on his face, looking crisp in a double-breasted pinstripe suit, his hair slicked back with
brilliantine, surrounded by the upturned faces of boys and their mothers all shoving and
trying to get close to him.
There is more than a whiff of Beatlemania to the moment.
He was an environmentalist before anyone really knew what that was.
He warned of the "greedy and senseless exploitation of nature."
And he constantly did himself down, shrugging as to why anyone should want to hear him speak:
"I have very little experience of self-government," he told one audience, "I am one of the most
governed people you could meet...."
His example of irrational behaviour?
- "making and listening to speeches on important occasions".
Or speaking before the Brussels Expo in 1958 - "I feel I can claim to be an expert at going
round exhibitions."
He knew most speeches were a dull formality that had to be got through - and he was happy
to let his audience have a laugh at his expense.
[News taken from BBC]
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