Prince Philip’s childhood was such that he had every right to be emotionally repressed and psychologically disturbed. Born sixth in line to the Greek throne, at the age of 18 months he was hounded from what, in name at least, was his homeland. His father came within an ace of being executed for high treason. When he was only eight his mother suffered a devastating nervous breakdown; in 1930 she was drugged into placidity, bundled into a car and consigned to a sanatorium-cum-prison. His father shrugged off his responsibilities towards his children, of whom Philip was by far the youngest, and installed himself with his mistress in the south of France. Philip was entrusted to relations in England, notably the Milford Havens, who treated him with kindness but never gave him the confidence to feel that he belonged. ‘When, years later,’ writes Philip Eade, ‘an interviewer asked him what language he spoke at home, his immediate retort was, “What do you mean — at home?”.’
Not only did he have no home, he had no homeland. In theory he was Greek, in practice German. His early education took place at an American school in Paris; he was then moved to an English preparatory school, followed by the rigours of Gordonstoun. By the time he was ready to begin a career he felt more English than anything, but he seemed as likely to join the Greek as the British Navy and, by the time war broke out, he was next in line to the Crown Prince to become King of Greece.
It was his uncle, Lord Mountbatten, who recognised the resilience and determination that enabled Philip to overcome the traumas of his youth, and who privately resolved that he would make a most suitable husband for the young Princess Elizabeth. It was he who ensured that Philip joined the British Navy, and in due course became a British citizen — a superfluous manoeuvre, since by the 1705 Act of Naturalisation of Princess Sophia he had enjoyed British citizenship from birth. Mountbatten himself was a suspect figure in the eyes of the stuffier elements of the British establishment; his championship of Philip reinforced the doubts of those courtiers who felt that Princess Elizabeth’s suitor came from the wrong country, had been to the wrong school and was indecently informal and disrespectful of hallowed traditions. ‘Lords Salisbury, Eldon and Stanley think him no gentleman,’ wrote the Queen’s first private secretary, Jock Colville, ‘and in a sense they are right.’ In another sense they were wrong. Philip was, indeed, uninhibited by traditional English upper-class shibboleths and cast a refreshingly acerbic eye on the atrophied rituals by which much of the machinery of monarchy was governed. He perhaps gave more offence than was necessary, but he was badly needed.
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