The world knew Prince Philip as the man who walked two steps behind the Queen for 73 years—a symbol of unwavering support. But behind that public silence lay an entirely different life, one the Palace spent decades shielding from public view. It included a secret men’s club above a Soho oyster bar, a divorce that nearly shattered the throne, and a circle of women whose names were kept out of the papers. In his final years, he lived largely alone in a farmhouse at Sandringham, and at his funeral, a companion 32 years his junior sat just one row behind the Queen.
Philip was born on June 10, 1921, on a dining table at Mon Repos, a villa on the Greek island of Corfu. He was the fifth child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. When he was just 18 months old, the family was forced into exile following the Greek military’s disastrous campaign in Anatolia and the subsequent revolution. His father was arrested and tried by a revolutionary court martial on charges of disobeying orders.
While six other senior figures were convicted and executed, Prince Andrew was saved by the intervention of Britain’s King George V, who sent a cruiser to evacuate the family. Aboard the British destroyer HMS Calypso, there was no proper bed for the infant. A sailor famously fashioned a makeshift crib from an orange crate, lining it with cloth. The boy who would become the most photographed husband in the world thus began his life in a wooden box.
The family settled in a borrowed house in Saint-Cloud, outside Paris, with virtually no money. Princess Alice ran the household on credit, and the children’s clothes came from the charity of cousins. Young Philip’s parents, who had married for love in 1893, had grown apart by the late 1920s. When Philip was nine, his father left for Monte Carlo to live with his mistress, Countess Andrée de La Bigne, on her yacht, and never returned to his wife.
The same year, Princess Alice, who had begun exhibiting behavior described as religious mania—believing she received messages and could heal the sick—was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia by German psychiatrist Ernst Simmel and, later, Sigmund Freud. She was sent, without her consent, to a sanatorium in Switzerland, where she stayed for two and a half years. Philip did not see his mother for nearly five years. He was educated at schools in England and Germany, eventually following educator Kurt Hahn to Gordonstoun in Scotland.
By the age of ten, he had learned that the best way to protect his inner world was to hide it. He learned to deflect emotional questions with humor and to behave at the dinner table as if no news, even bad news, could touch him. In 1937, his beloved sister Cecilie, who was eight months pregnant, died in a plane crash in Belgium alongside her husband, her two young sons, and her mother-in-law. The 16-year-old Philip attended the funeral in Darmstadt, walking between his two German brothers-in-law, both wearing Nazi party badges.
His face was still and calm. He did not cry, and he made no public statement. In 1939, at the age of 18, Philip was a cadet at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. On July 22, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited with their two daughters.
Thirteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth was tasked with being entertained by the tall, fair-haired Greek cadet. According to the royal governess Marion Crawford, the Princess did not take her eyes off him for the rest of the visit. Crawford wrote, “From that moment, she decided she was going to have him. ” The future Queen had made her decision at thirteen, and she never changed it.
Philip served with distinction in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. He wrote to Elizabeth throughout the conflict, and she kept his photograph on her dressing table at Windsor. Before the engagement could go ahead, he renounced his Greek and Danish royal titles, converted to the Church of England, took the surname Mountbatten from his uncle’s line, and became a British citizen through an Act of Parliament. They married at Westminster Abbey on November 20, 1947.
He was 26; she was 21. He was created Duke of Edinburgh, and he remained an active naval officer for the first years of their marriage. That life ended on February 6, 1952, when Elizabeth learned that her father had died in his sleep at Sandringham. The news was given to Philip first, and he then told his wife.
Philip’s active naval career was over. He would never command a ship again. While the public Philip stood beside the Queen for the next 69 years, the private Philip maintained a separate existence. Starting in 1947, a group of men met every Thursday afternoon in a private room above Wheelers oyster restaurant on Old Compton Street in Soho.
The Thursday Club included journalists, actors, a photographer, newspaper editors, and Philip himself. Its founding members were journalist Shân Fielding, actor James Robertson Justice, and photographer Stirling Henry Nahum, known professionally as Baron. Regular attendees included Mike Parker, Philip’s equerry and later private secretary; David Milford Haven, Philip’s cousin and best man; actor Peter Ustinov; playwright Compton Mackenzie; and, in the late 1950s, osteopath Stephen Ward. The club’s unwritten rule was that whatever was said at the table stayed at the table.
The group functioned, among other things, as a highly effective mechanism for keeping certain stories out of certain newspapers. The two men who edited the country’s largest tabloids—Arthur Christiansen of the Daily Express and Frank Owen of the Daily Mail—sat next to the man whose stories they could have published. In October 1948, while Princess Elizabeth was eight months pregnant with her first child, Philip attended a performance of the musical revue “Starlight Roof” at the London Hippodrome. After the show, he and his companions went backstage to meet the star, 32-year-old Pat Kirkwood, the highest-paid actress on the London stage.
The four of them dined at Les Ambassadeurs, went to a nightclub to dance, and ended the night at Baron’s flat in Marylebone, where they ate scrambled eggs at around 4:30 AM. Kirkwood insisted for the rest of her life that nothing improper occurred. She said Philip was charming and she liked him. She never saw him alone again, though she received a Christmas card from him every year for the next 60 years.
Rumors that she was the Duke’s mistress circulated in gossip columns but were never printed in British papers. Kirkwood later blamed those rumors for the destruction of her career, as she was repeatedly offered low-grade roles until the work dried up. In 1993, she wrote to Philip asking for a formal denial. She received a reply from his private secretary stating the Duke felt unable to do so, which prompted her to write back accusing him of cowardice.
She received no further response. Kirkwood died in 2007 at age 87. Another woman linked to Philip was Hélène Cordet, a childhood family friend of Greek origin. Divorced with two children, she worked as a BBC television presenter.
Philip was godfather to both her children. In particular, he paid for the school fees of her son, Max Buazac, which were discreetly routed through Mountbatten family lawyers. Rumors circulated that Max was Philip’s illegitimate son, a claim both Hélène and Max denied throughout their lives. Max died in 2011, maintaining his denial.
The longest-lasting test of the system came in 1957. Philip’s closest friend and private secretary, Mike Parker, had been with him throughout a five-month Commonwealth tour aboard the royal yacht Britannia. On February 5, 1957, Parker’s wife Eileen filed for divorce on the grounds of adultery, naming a woman as co-respondent. The story broke within days.
American and Australian papers were blunt. The Baltimore Sun ran the headline: “Rift Between Queen and Duke. ” No woman was named in connection with Philip, but the implication was clear. The Palace’s reaction was sharp.
On February 12, a public denial was issued. On February 22, a second, stronger denial was issued, stating that the reported rift was “completely untrue. ” Such court circular statements were almost never issued. On that same day, the Queen granted her husband the title of Prince of the United Kingdom by Letters Patent.
Constitutional commentators understood what had happened: the new title placed Philip above the reach of legal proceedings, meaning he could not be subpoenaed as a witness in Parker’s divorce case. The Queen had used her prerogative to protect her husband. Parker resigned on February 8, returning to London to face the press. He gave a brief statement and then retreated behind closed doors.
He never returned to royal service. He moved to Australia in 1960 and died in Melbourne in 2001. Philip attended his funeral privately. The Thursday Club faded after Baron’s death in 1956 and Parker’s departure.
But the discipline of silence had been reinforced. From 1957 onward, the rule was complete silence on all rumors and names, no matter how loud the press became. Philip maintained this discipline for the next 64 years. In the early 1960s, Stephen Ward, the osteopath who had sketched Philip’s portrait in 1961, became entangled in a scandal that shook the British government.
Ward had introduced 19-year-old showgirl Christine Keeler to the married Secretary of State for War, John Profumo. Keeler was also involved with a Soviet naval attaché known to be an intelligence officer. The security implications were enormous. When the Profumo affair broke in 1963, Ward was put on trial for living off immoral earnings.
After eight days of proceedings, his lawyer informed him the jury was going to convict him. Ward took an overdose of barbiturates on August 3, 1963, and died the next day. The Thursday Club’s name surfaced in the press for the first time during the scandal. Philip’s name was never mentioned in any British newspaper in connection with Stephen Ward.
Following Ward’s death, sketches of Philip that Ward had drawn were collected from a London gallery by an intermediary acting for the Palace. They were never publicly seen again. Investigative journalist Tim Tate later reported that the collection was handled through the office of Sir Anthony Blunt, who was the Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures and, secretly, a Soviet spy. Blunt was publicly exposed by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1979 after a 15-year secret confession.
In the mid-1960s, Philip’s private life shifted from Soho to the countryside. He developed a deep friendship with Alexandra “Sacha” Phillips, who became Duchess of Abercorn. She described the relationship as “an emotional friendship” and “a very powerful chemistry,” adding that they were “playmates” and “intellectual companions. ” She insisted it was not a full sexual affair, stating flatly, “I didn’t go to bed with him.
” Biographer Gyles Brandreth, who interviewed her at length, concluded the friendship was at some point physical, citing unnamed sources. American biographer Sally Bedell Smith, who spoke with different sources, concluded the marriage was essentially faithful and that the friendships, however close, were only friendships. The Duchess died in 2018 at 72. In 1979, Lord Mountbatten, Philip’s uncle and mentor, was killed by an IRA bomb planted on his fishing boat off the coast of County Sligo, Ireland.
Also killed were Mountbatten’s 14-year-old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull, a 15-year-old local boy named Paul Maxwell, and Lady Brabourne, the 83-year-old dowager. On the boat that day was Nicholas’s twin brother, Timothy, and their parents, Patricia and John Brabourne, all of whom were seriously injured but survived. Not on the boat was Nicholas’s older brother, Norton Knatchbull, then 32. He was on shore when the bomb exploded.
He inherited the Mountbatten earldom. Norton had married Penelope Eastwood just six weeks after his grandfather’s funeral, in October 1979. Philip, who was Norton’s godfather, attended the wedding, where he met the bride for the first time. Penelope, known as Penny, was 26, the daughter of a wealthy Manchester businessman.
For the first decade of their acquaintance, their relationship was no more than a customary family connection. That changed in 1990, when Penny’s five-year-old daughter, Leonora, was diagnosed with a Wilms tumor, a kidney cancer. The child underwent 14 months of grueling chemotherapy and radiotherapy at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. Princess Diana visited her nearly every week, sitting with the child and her mother.
Leonora died on October 22, 1991, two weeks before her sixth birthday. Philip did not write a letter of condolence. Instead, he invited Penny to come to Windsor when she was ready, telling her the horses would be there. She later said the horses saved her.
Philip, then 72, taught her carriage driving. They trained together, competed together, and spent long mornings at the Windsor stables. By the late 1990s, staff had nicknamed her “And Also,” because Philip would add “and also Penny” to invitation lists. The Queen always welcomed her.
The arrangement became institutionalized. Penny was invited to Christmas at Sandringham, to shooting weekends at Balmoral, and to Royal Ascot. In 2020, a photograph showed her driving her own carriage out of Windsor Castle with Philip beside her; it was one of the last images taken of Philip before his death. From August 2017, Philip retired from public life.
He moved to Wood Farm, a five-bedroom Edwardian farmhouse on the Sandringham estate, two miles from the main house. He lived there alone. He made his own breakfast, read his own newspapers, answered his own correspondence, and pursued his own interests. Penny was his most regular visitor, driving up from Hampshire several times a month and staying for two or three nights.
She had her own bedroom. The Queen visited at least fortnightly, staying at the main house and driving over for lunch and a walk in the garden. In March 2020, due to the pandemic, both Philip and the Queen were moved to Windsor Castle to form a “bubble. ” Philip never returned to Wood Farm.
He died at Windsor Castle on the morning of April 9, 2021, at the age of 99. His funeral took place at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, on April 17, 2021, limited to 30 mourners due to pandemic restrictions. The Queen sat alone in the choir stalls. In the row directly behind her sat Penelope Knatchbull, now the Countess Mountbatten of Burma.
She was one of only three non-family guests. Newspapers identified her the next day. The Sun’s caption read: “Penny, Philip’s special companion. ”
In September 2021, a High Court judge ordered that Philip’s will be sealed for 90 years.
The Times newspaper challenged the secrecy and lost. The contents of the will are known only to its executors and the court. It is believed to contain provisions for Penny, for the children of Hélène Cordet, and for members of the Mountbatten family. The sealing, however, suggests there may be matters the Palace does not wish the public to know.
Philip’s public record is vast: 22,219 solo engagements, 5,493 speeches, 14 books, 780 patronages, and a 73-year marriage. But the deepest truth of his life, as reconstructed from the available record, is that he created a parallel world of friendships, activities, residences, and emotional refuge that the Crown did not own and could not see. The woman in the row behind the Queen at his funeral was, for the public, the only glimpse inside that world.