For seventy years, Prince Philip stood at the side of Queen Elizabeth II, and for almost as long, rumors about his private life swirled around the marriage. The allegations of affairs have been repeated so often that many people now treat them as fact. Yet the evidence behind them has always been thin, contested, and in several cases flatly denied.
One of the earliest flashpoints came in late 1956, when Philip left his wife and their two young children, Charles and Anne, for a tour of far-flung Commonwealth outposts. The trip lasted more than four months, and gossip about wild parties followed it. Whether that gossip had any foundation has never been settled, and it seems unlikely that anything untoward could have occurred without the knowledge of at least some of the 220 men and 20 officers aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia.
The following year, a London-based correspondent for the Baltimore Sun reported that rumors were rife about Philip's interest in an unnamed woman he allegedly met regularly at a society photographer's apartment in the West End. "Queen, Duke in rift over party girl," ran the headline. The story gained traction because Philip's private secretary, Mike Parker, chose that moment to resign. Many took his departure as a sign that he had been leading the prince astray.
In fact, Parker resigned because his wife had just filed for divorce. According to him, the Duke was incandescent about the reports, very angry and deeply hurt. In a rare break from the palace rule of never commenting on rumor, the Queen authorized her press secretary to state that it was quite untrue there was any rift between her and the Duke.
Some wondered whether the unnamed party girl was Pat Kirkwood, a beautiful musical comedy star. Rumors about her and Philip had surfaced as early as 1948, when Princess Elizabeth was pregnant with Prince Charles. Pat was then the highest-paid star on the London stage and the girlfriend of society photographer Baron Nahum, a member of the Thursday Club in Soho, which Philip regularly attended for a boys' night out.
Years later, Pat described one evening after she performed in the musical Starlight Roof at the London Hippodrome. Baron had brought Philip and another guest to her dressing room, and the foursome went on to dinner at Les Ambassadeurs, a club in Hamilton Place run by a Polish ex-wrestler. Afterwards, at Philip's request, they moved on to the Milroy club for music and dancing. According to Pat, the prince would not let her sit down, dancing with her to whatever the band played. They stayed out until dawn and had scrambled eggs and champagne.
Pat insisted the only time she ever met the prince again was at theatrical command performances. After she died in 2007, her fourth husband, Peter Knight, announced that at her request he would one day give correspondence between Pat and the Duke of Edinburgh to Philip's official biographer. It would prove, he said, that there was no illicit relationship. That did not explain why Pat and the prince were corresponding at all.
Another woman linked to Philip was Helene Cordet, formerly Helene Foufounis. They became friends as children, spending holidays together at her parents' villa in Le Touquet, France. Helene, who later hosted the BBC variety show Cafe Continental, had two children while separated from her first husband but refused to reveal who their father was. When Philip became godfather to both children, some assumed he must be the father. Helene allowed the paternity to remain a mystery, though one of her sons flatly denied that the prince was his father.
The rumor mill kept grinding. It alleged relationships with Sarah Ferguson's mother, Susan Barrantes; the Countess of Westmorland, wife of the Queen's Master of the Horse; the novelist Daphne du Maurier, who was married to Boyd Browning, a former controller of the royal household; the actresses Merle Oberon and Anna Massey; the TV personality Katie Boyle; the Duchess of Abercorn, wife of the Lord Steward of the royal household; his cousin Princess Alexandra; and his carriage-driving companion Lady Brabourne, now Lady Mountbatten.
The satirical magazine Private Eye even linked Philip with Stephen Ward, the society osteopath at the center of the Profumo affair that rocked the Conservative government in 1963. Ward, also a member of the Thursday Club, was notorious for throwing wild parties at which a man in a mask served drinks wearing only a skimpy apron. Private Eye took to calling Philip "the naked waiter." There is no evidence that this is true, just as there is no convincing evidence to support any of the other allegations.
Of Philip's respected biographers, only Sarah Bradford has been adamant that he had affairs. "There is no doubt in my mind at all," she told author Giles Brandreth in 2004. "The Duke of Edinburgh has had affairs, yes, full-blown affairs, and more than one. Not with Pat Kirkwood or Merle Oberon or any of those people. All that was nonsense, complete nonsense. I don't think there was ever anything in any of that. But he has affairs and the Queen accepts it. I think she thinks that's how men are."
Bradford added that Philip was never one for chasing actresses. His interest, she said, was quite different. The women he went for were always younger than him, usually beautiful, and highly aristocratic. She claimed Philip and Sancia, Duchess of Abercorn, certainly had an affair, a claim the Duchess has denied.
Philip's own response to the gossip came in 1992, when he told a reporter: "Have you ever stopped to think that for the past 40 years I have never moved anywhere without a policeman accompanying me? So how the hell can I get away with anything like that?"
What is not in doubt is that Philip always enjoyed the company of pretty women, preferably years younger than he was. One observer recalled seeing him gliding around the dance floor at the Royal Yacht Squadron ball during Cowes Week with Penny Ramsay, wife of Lord Romsey. Neither of them gave a damn who saw them or what anyone might say, and Philip, an excellent dancer, was completely in thrall to the beautiful Penny.
He was undoubtedly close to her. In 1996, at the height of what was dubbed the "War of the Waleses," a snooping radio ham taped a mobile phone call made by Philip to a plummy-voiced woman in which they discussed the bitter battle between Charles and Diana. The plummy voice turned out to be Penny's, but at one point in the conversation she handed the phone to her husband, rather destroying any illusion of a clandestine affair.
Since 1975, when she was first introduced to Prince Charles, Penny had been popular with the royal family. It was her lively mind as well as her beauty that turned this former meat trader's daughter into a central figure at the heart of royal life. She was often at Windsor Castle at weekends and told both Philip and the Queen about what was going on in the outside world. As a man with an eye for a pretty woman who easily got bored, the prince found her company irresistible. He taught her the rudiments of carriage driving, and more recently found another reason for them to spend time together: painting in watercolours.
How the Queen felt about it all we will never know. Philip always liked to flirt and make suggestive remarks, and she was the first to joke about his lascivious nature. Equally, she would never let on if she had been hurt by rumors of her husband's supposed dalliances. Quite possibly she resorted to her usual trick of burying her head in the sand and pretending nothing was happening.
It was lucky for Philip that the Queen held what many would consider an old-fashioned view of marriage. In her early thirties she remarked that there was nothing worse than to fence a man in and stop him from doing what he wants.
Philip was aghast when a royal maid even joined them on honeymoon. For a sailor used to traveling light and looking after himself, many aspects of royal life came as an unpleasant shock. The first problem surfaced on his otherwise blissful honeymoon in Scotland, and her name was Bobo MacDonald. As Princess Elizabeth's devoted maid of many years, she had automatically accompanied them. What Philip had not expected was to find her at his bride's side at all times of the day and night, even when the princess used the bathroom.
Not surprisingly, this irritated him. He resented not being able to be alone with his wife whenever he wanted. The princess genuinely could not understand what the fuss was about. She was used to being constantly surrounded by staff and often ignored their presence. The battle over Bobo would never be quite resolved. Like many female retainers who have devoted their lives to royal service, she always faintly resented the presence of her mistress's husband. Philip, in turn, tried to keep her firmly in her place, believing Bobo's role was to open the door each morning and let the dogs in. Eventually prince and maid came to an amicable, nonverbal agreement to keep out of each other's way. As for the Queen, she viewed Bobo, who served her for 67 years, as a friend and a crucial link with her childhood.
Philip was not only unable to escape the maid on his honeymoon. He was also forced to live with his in-laws at Buckingham Palace for the first year of his marriage while Clarence House was being refurbished at a cost of fifty thousand pounds. Princess Elizabeth was already well aware that it would be difficult for a man so used to doing what he wanted to be tied to a suite of rooms in a huge, old-fashioned palace where everything was subject to endless protocol. She also knew that he found many of the courtiers pompous and ridiculously stuck in their ways.
"Life at court was very frustrating for him at first," said the late Lord Brabourne, whose wife Patricia Mountbatten was Philip's cousin. "It was very stuffy. Tommy Lascelles, private secretary to the King, was impossible. They were bloody to him. They patronized him. They treated him as an outsider. It wasn't much fun. He laughed it off, of course, but it must have hurt. I'm not sure Princess Elizabeth noticed it. She probably didn't see it."
In a way, marriage hardly changed her life. She was able to carry on much as before. In getting married she did not sacrifice anything. His life changed completely. He gave up everything.
Back in 1947, courtiers and senior members of the household wielded great influence, often making important decisions over a few large whiskies or a rubber of bridge. Unobtrusively powerful, they never admitted to mistakes, never complained about one another, never resigned, and were never proved wrong. The straight-talking prince, who once described himself as a cosmopolitan European, did not fit into this world one little bit, and the palace old guard found him abrasive and rude.
His cousin Lady Pamela Hicks recalled that he knew he was going into the lion's den. He was very conscious of the way he had been treated and how hard he would have to fight for his position and his independence against the establishment. What he did not know was just how fearsome it was going to be.
For the first few months of married life, Philip was given a desk job at the Admiralty, which did little to improve his mood. "I was just a dogsbody shuffling ships around," is how he described it later. He was then posted to a residential staff course at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, a welcome respite from the palace if not from his wife. He also became patron to several organizations and joined Princess Elizabeth on official visits and tours.
No matter how busy he was, Philip found time to have fun with old friends like Parker as part of the Thursday Club, a group of men who held weekly meetings in a private room at Wheeler's fish restaurant in Soho. The club was started by photographer Baron Nahum, and there were usually 10 to 15 people at each gathering. Members included actors David Niven, James Robertson Justice, and Peter Ustinov, the poet John Betjeman, and Iain Macleod, later Chancellor of the Exchequer. Princess Elizabeth referred to this motley crew as Philip's "funny friends."
There were rumors of wild parties, even of orgies, all denied by Parker, but exactly what went on at the club has never been substantiated. Whatever the truth, marriage had not mellowed Philip. He was a man of his time and background, just as his wife was a woman of hers, and he did not see why he should not continue to enjoy jesting with cronies. The palace old guard did not approve. There was great concern about Philip's apparent desire to continue bachelor friendships with people of somewhat dubious reputation, but rather than reining him back, their attitude seemed only to spur him on.
The move to Clarence House was a welcome reprieve. Under Philip's supervision it had been kitted out with the latest household gadgets, including an intercom system, washing machines, and an electric trouser press.
In 1949 the prince became first lieutenant to HMS Chequers, the leadership of the Mediterranean destroyer fleet based in Malta. Princess Elizabeth frequently flew out for lengthy stays. Her time in Malta has often been described as the only time she could live like an ordinary naval wife, driving herself, going to the hairdresser, and shopping. In truth it was a life less ordinary: their villa had a staff of 19, and the princess also had her lady-in-waiting and a detective in tow.
In 1950, much to Philip's delight, he was appointed to his first command, the frigate HMS Magpie. Back home, however, the news was grim. The King was ailing with a bug he could not shake off. The following year Philip took leave and came home to share his wife's duties as she stood in for her father at official functions. An operation to remove one of the King's lungs seemed to go well, so the next year the royal couple flew to Nairobi on the first leg of a Commonwealth tour.
It was Mike Parker who picked up news of the King's death on a shortwave radio. After speaking to Martin Charteris, Princess Elizabeth's private secretary, he woke Philip at a Kenyan lodge. According to Parker, the prince looked as though the whole world had dropped on his shoulders. Lady Pamela Hicks, who was also there, recalled that Philip's first reaction was to put a newspaper over his face and remain motionless for five minutes. Then he pulled himself together and said he must go and find the princess.
She was having a rest in her bedroom, so they went for a walk in the garden. You could tell, walking up and down, up and down, that he was telling her. She came back to the lodge, and one just thought: this poor girl who really adored her father, they were very close. Lady Pamela gave her a hug and said how sorry she was, and then suddenly thought: my God, but she's Queen. The awful thing, Pamela added, was that the couple had not expected her to take on the job until they were in their fifties.
Elizabeth requested that no pictures be taken as she left the lodge, but a couple of photographers were already outside. "We stood silently outside the lodge," one of them recalled, "as the cars drove away in a cloud of dust, not one of us taking a shot at that historic moment. Seeing the young girl as Queen of Great Britain as she drove away, I felt her sadness as she just raised her hand to us as we stood there silent, cameras on the ground."
When the Queen arrived back at Heathrow on February 7, 1952, Winston Churchill and the rest of the Privy Council lined up to greet her. At that moment Philip knew that his life had changed forever. Years later he said that people used to come to him and ask him what to do. In 1952, the whole thing changed very considerably.
Churchill insisted that he and the new Queen move to the palace, an enormous wrench for Philip, for whom Clarence House had been the only home he had ever been able to call his own. For the Queen, however, it was simply a matter of going to the place where she had lived very happily for much of her life.
For the prince, problems soon multiplied. "Philip was constantly being squashed, snubbed, ticked off, rapped over the knuckles," said Mike Parker. "It was intolerable." The problem was simply that Philip had energy, ideas, and get-up-and-go, and that did not suit the establishment one bit.
In his new role, Philip sought the guidance of Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, who as the husband of Queen Juliana had 15 years of experience as consort. Bernhard told him that practically everything he did would be a subject of criticism. He could not ignore it, because some of it might be justified, and even if it was not, it might be politic to heed it. But he should not let it get him down. In that job, he needed a skin like an elephant.
For Philip at this point, frustration, irritation, and disappointment were daily occurrences. But with Parker's help he set about modernizing the palace, much to the consternation of the old guard. Among other things, he started a footmen training program, oversaw the redecoration of the gloomy private apartments, and installed a nearby kitchen so that food did not have to be traipsed down miles of drafty corridors.
As chairman of the Coronation Commission, he oversaw every detail of the ceremony, leaving nothing to chance. He even stood on the palace balcony to find the best angle from which the Queen, still wearing her heavy crown, could watch the flypast after the ceremony without getting a crick in her neck.
Losing his career and being relegated to backroom status could not help but occasionally grate on him. His chief role in the coronation on June 2, 1953, was to kneel before his wife and take the ancient oath of fealty: "I, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, do become your liege man of life and limb and of earthly worship." He then had to stand, kiss her cheek, and back away. But at the rehearsal, possibly feeling a bit emasculated, he mumbled the words quickly, missed the Queen's cheek, and retired backwards fast. The Queen told him off: "Don't be silly, Philip. Come back here and do it properly."
Half a million people turned out in the rain to line the coronation route. Inside Westminster Abbey, photographer Cecil Beaton noted the Queen's sugar-pink cheeks and tightly curled hair, and her demeanour of simplicity and humility as she walked. He said she allowed her heavy skirt to swing backwards and forwards in a beautiful rhythmic effect.
The coronation was a deeply moving spiritual experience for her, said the Queen's cousin Margaret Rhodes, especially the part that was not filmed, when she stood bareheaded wearing only a white linen shift as the Archbishop of Canterbury marked the sign of the Cross on her with the words: "As Solomon was anointed by Zadok the priest, so be thou anointed, blessed and consecrated Queen over the people thy God hath given thee to govern."
When it came to Philip's part, he performed well, though his touch on the crown was a bit heavy-handed and his wife had to adjust it. Over the years he never forgot his pledge to be her liege man of life and limb. At times he could be irascible, laddish, and difficult, but he would always give the Queen his wholehearted support.