Her Majesty (54 page)

It is the same with the Duke’s sporting pursuits. During his life, he has competed internationally at both polo and carriage driving. He founded the world-famous Guards Polo Club and wrote the international rule book for carriage driving. For twenty-four years he was President of the International Equestrian Federation, a full-time job and a lifetime’s ambition in itself. He was also a reasonably talented cricketer, holding his own against international opposition on the charity circuit and once bowling England’s Tom Graveney. On the water, he was sailing competitively (very competitively at times) well into his seventies. He is entitled to wear the tie and blazer of more clubs than, surely, any man alive, being a member of more than 250 of them, from the Royal Gibraltar Yacht Club to the Singapore Polo Club. But he does not. Once he stops doing something, he likes to move on. It’s that lack of sentimentality again. He is, by his own admission, a terrible spectator: ‘I’ve never been a dedicated watcher of anything. I’d much rather be taking part.’

He still enjoys shooting, fishing and recreational carriage-driving (plus the occasional stint as a judge at competitive events). As for all the other sports which once claimed him as their own, he simply has better things to do than sit around watching and reminiscing.

But even if some charities and sporting bodies see less of him these days, it is largely business as usual for the 800 organisations which are still on the Duke’s list of patronages. He will remain on their letterheads, attend the occasional event, follow their progress. It will all be stored
in the Duke’s bespoke filing monster, a rotating vault which hoards tons of paperwork in the bowels of the Palace and then grinds and creaks and serves it up as required.

The Duke’s office remains much the same. The unflappable Sir Miles Hunt-Davis retired at the end of 2010 (with the ultimate accolade of a GCVO from a grateful Monarch) to be replaced by another retired brigadier, Archie Miller-Bakewell, late of the Scots Guards. But the Duke continues to be served by a handful of devoted, long-serving staff including his librarian and archivist, Dame Anne Griffiths, who joined the Palace before the Coronation. And today’s quartet of young ladies, like the other ‘girls’ before them, must still handle sackloads of correspondence and feed them into the monster. It remains high on the list of fun postings at the Palace. ‘He’s always pushing the boundaries,’ says one of his team. ‘He’s got quite a low boredom threshold.’ In 2008, Prince Philip took all his staff – plus spouses and partners – for a Christmas treat at Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant The Fat Duck, in Bray, Berkshire. Instead of another turkey lunch, the Edinburgh team were served all Blumenthal’s famous eccentricities – egg and bacon ice cream, ‘foie gras benzaldehyde’ and so on. The Duke enjoyed it so much that he subsequently invited Blumenthal to Windsor to cook for the Queen during Royal Ascot. Her own thoughts on snail porridge and ‘nitro-green tea’ have not been disclosed.

His example has certainly not been lost on the younger royal generations. ‘He’s been a stalwart of the Queen but let’s not forget how much he’s done himself independently,’ says Prince William, reeling off a list of his grandfather’s great causes from climate change – ‘he’s been at the forefront of that’ – to the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. ‘There are some fantastic things he’s been in front of,’ says the young Prince. ‘He’s always been thinking ahead.’

The Duke’s gradual slowdown has no bearing on his military role. He has no intention of cutting back on the dozens of formal ties he enjoys with the Armed Forces, be it as Colonel-in-Chief of the Queen’s Royal Hussars or Admiral of the Canadian Sea Cadets. If any member of one of his units is killed, the Duke writes a personal letter to the next of kin. If it is typed, it will have been typed by the Duke himself. ‘He types quite a lot of his own letters and memos,’ says Hunt-Davis. ‘He’s thoroughly computer literate.’ The Duke has always enjoyed being at the forefront of modern technology. He was very gratified to become the President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1951 and spent months working on his inaugural address, despite
commanding a frigate in the Mediterranean at the time. Few members of the Royal Family have done more to promote technology and trade since Prince Albert. George VI, as both Duke of York and King, worked hard to promote industrial relations, so much so that the rest of the family nicknamed him ‘The Foreman’. His emphasis was on output rather than commerce. As Frank Prochaska notes in
Royal Bounty
, a single wartime visit by the King and Queen to an Accrington aircraft factory boosted production by 12 per cent in the following week (according to the chairman of the Globe Works, ‘Their Majesties sent two extra Lancaster Bombers over Germany’). But the idea of promoting a brand and a balance sheet still remained faintly unroyal as far as the Palace old guard was concerned. The Duke changed all that. Not only did he make a point of visiting the technological front line – he was seldom happier than when stomping through a research lab or testing station in a white coat and goggles – but he took an aggressively proactive stance in trade promotion at home and abroad. In 1962, he led a delegation of British aviation industry executives on an eleven-nation tour of South America. In 1965, he set up a committee which would go one further and slap royal branding all over commercial products. Under the Duke’s chairmanship, the Queen’s Award to Industry was formally instituted by Royal Warrant. Over the years, it has been reborn as the Queen’s Awards for Export and, latterly, as the Queen’s Awards for Enterprise but the idea is exactly the same. It’s a separate honours system for businesses and business people. And every year, hundreds of winners come to the Palace to receive their prizes in person. The Queen and the Duke shake the hand of every single one. Afterwards, they can look forward to a full grilling from the founder. He likes to pick up new ideas and his staff are well used to being pioneers – guinea pigs, perhaps – for new technology.

It was the Duke who installed some of Britain’s first solar panels on the Sandringham Estate. He bought the first royal barbecue after an outdoor lunch at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and has been grilling ever since. He also acquired one of Britain’s earliest personal computers – at the age of sixty-four. ‘We had to buy British and so we got this huge thing with a tiny screen called an Apricot,’ a member of staff recalls. ‘It would be carried around the world with him in a large canvas bag with a little printer. He got the hang of it very quickly.’ These days, he happily surfs the internet, often at the behest of the Queen. Although she does not use a computer, she frequently turns to the Duke after learning something new and says: ‘You’d better Google that.’ He retains an enthusiasm not just for inventing things – be it his barbecue trailer or a shooting
brake known as the ‘Jumbo’ – but mending them, too. Sir Miles Hunt-Davis recalls a no-frills trip to north-eastern Russia on WWF business. ‘We were put up in a “guest house” – I think it was a former gulag – and I came in to find Prince Philip standing on the bowl of the lavatory, fiddling with the cistern and saying: “There’s no water.”’ Gadgets continue to enthral him, as long as they have a practical use. Late on a sunny May afternoon, the Royal Family arrives en masse at the Chelsea Flower Show. The various royal groups are so large that they come in a succession of minibuses. For the Queen, this remains one of the highlights of the old summer ‘Season’. She might not bother with the rowing at Henley or the sailing at Cowes any more but she never misses Chelsea. There is an Edwardian flavour to the occasion, despite the transport arrangements. The Duchess of Gloucester arrives in a minibus with the Dowager Duchess of Bedford and half a dozen lords and ladies. Princess Alexandra’s bus contains an archduchess and a pair of earls. The Queen and the Duke have invited a coachload of cousins and senior Royal Household staff. Once inside, the Queen heads for an urban garden created by prisoners and homeless people – ‘very therapeutic, gardening’, she concurs with them – and a spectacular display by W. Robinson & Son, fourth-generation Lancashire growers of giant fruit and veg.

But the Duke is off in another direction. He knows that the Queen will want to do her own thing here and he is not interested in pretty flowers. He comes to Chelsea for inspiration and for gadgets. And he doesn’t like to stand still. It was here that he picked up the idea for his Sandringham truffle farm a few years ago and he likes to cover as much ground as he possibly can. He drops in on Hunter Boot Ltd – its Wellington boots have earned it a royal warrant – and is baffled by some of the funky new designs. ‘You’ve gone into patterns!’ he exclaims in mock horror, examining a special edition in floral pink. He stops to inspect the latest in garden shed chic from tool manufacturers Fiskars. There is a long discussion about shears. Over on the Bosch stand, the staff have high hopes. The previous year, the Duke passed by and bought a Ciso, cordless secateurs which can prune almost anything at the click of a button. But he’s not in a buying mood tonight. He’s just checking what’s new on the market. The Queen and the rest of the royal party adjourn to the President’s Marquee for drinks but the Duke is still at large. ‘Would you like to see our garden, sir?’ asks the editor of the
Daily Telegraph
, Tony Gallagher. The Duke takes one look and replies: ‘No.’ He hasn’t the time. But he quickly regales Gallagher with the story of a previous Chelsea Flower Show when an over-zealous exhibitor showered the press with water and the Duke got the blame. With that, he is off. ‘I
was impressed by his agility,’ says Gallagher afterwards. ‘He was striding and I mean
striding
.’ The Duke’s escorts are quick-stepping to keep up as their man heads off down another avenue of exhibition stands. Just as they think they have got him safely to the President’s Marquee, he darts off again. His eye has been caught by a display of botanical artists and he starts chatting at length to Barbara Oozeerally. ‘He was interested in my painting, my name and my accent,’ she says afterwards. ‘I am Polish, my husband’s Mauritian and I’ve been a botanical artist for fifteen years.’ The Duke looks through some of her paintings and is off. If he doesn’t get a move on, the Queen will leave without him.

But Oozeerally may get a call in the future. The Duke’s interest in botanical art is not a cursory one. In 1963, he received a letter from Molly Martin, a woman desperate to find a publisher for a lifetime’s work by her father-in-law. The retired clergyman had spent sixty years painting and drawing the wild flowers of Britain but no publishing house could see a market for his 1,400 pictures. The Duke was captivated and got his equerry on the case. It was an uphill struggle but eventually they found a publisher. In 1965,
A Concise British Flora
was printed with a foreword by the Duke. It was an instant bestseller, hitting six figures in no time and was still in print more than twenty years later. At the age of eighty-eight, the Revd William Keble Martin was the toast of the book world, picked up an honorary degree, had four of his paintings turned into stamps and lived long enough to publish his autobiography.

The Duke’s credentials as a patron of the arts are considerable. Despite marrying into one of the world’s finest art collections, he has been an assiduous collector in his own right, assembling more than two thousand pieces. Contrary to the old seadog of popular perception (who would, presumably, cover his walls in maritime prints and sea battles), Prince Philip has a keen eye for landscapes, wildlife and post-war Scottish art. The results are spread around the royal residences. It all began in Edinburgh. As one of his staff explains: ‘In the early days, when they started using Holyroodhouse, it was full of these awful
Monarch of the Glen
prints and very depressing. So Prince Philip started going to the Royal Scottish Academy’s summer exhibition and buying eight or nine pieces a year. Now the place is transformed.’

During early Commonwealth tours, the Duke developed a taste for Australian art and has bought paintings by William Dobell and Sidney Nolan as well as a number of Aboriginal works. He became a keen painter himself – and still is. His 1956 tour of Antarctica – in the company of Edward Seago – was something of an epiphany, sparking not only his life-long passion for conservation but also for oil painting (he signs his work
with a Greek ‘P’). It seems to be hereditary. The Duke’s father, Prince Andrew of Greece, was a keen amateur artist (a pretty scene,
Tower and Trees
, hangs at Sandringham). The Duke, who prefers oils, believes that Prince Charles has inherited his grandfather’s love of watercolour. The Duke and the Queen share a fondness for paintings of birds. The ornithologist Emma Faull is a current favourite. And throughout the reign, the Duke has commissioned pieces from a cross section of artists. Some, like Feliks Topolski, were already famous. Others, like the watercolourist Alan Carr Linford, were barely out of art school when the Duke commissioned a series of Windsor sketches. Today, as the Prince of Wales tours the world with a succession of travelling artists, he is not being oldfashioned or eccentric, as some have suggested. He is simply following in his father’s footsteps.

The Duke is also a great collector of books. His personal library at Buckingham Palace now numbers some 13,000 books and is so large that it occupies two rooms, floor to ceiling, on the north side of the Palace. New arrivals are piling up all the time. Favourite subjects of the moment include cookery books (
The Complete Licence to Grill
is just in), anything on carriage-driving, books on religion and any contribution to the ‘Who was Shakespeare?’ debate. He enjoys poetry – at the recent state banquet in Dublin, he was delighted to find himself seated next to the great Irish poet and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney – but fiction does not feature prominently in his collection. Apart from a few detective stories, the Duke does not enjoy novels. In a random week of 2010, the deliveries were as follows:
A History of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, England’s Last War Against France, The Woman Who Shot Mussolini, The Mastery of Money, Winston Churchill’s Toy Shop, The Shakespeare Handbook: The Bard In Brief
, two books on Archbishop Gregorios of the Greek Orthodox Church and
The Alpine Journal
.