Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh was the husband of Queen Elizabeth II and served as consort of the British monarch from her accession on 6 February 1952 until his death in 2021, making him the longest-serving royal consort in British history.
Philip was born in Greece into the Greek and Danish royal families. His family was exiled from the country when he was eighteen months old. Educated in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, he joined the Royal Navy in 1939 at the age of 18. In July 1939, he began corresponding with Princess Elizabeth, then aged 13, the elder daughter and heir presumptive of King George VI. During the Second World War, Philip served with distinction in the Mediterranean and Pacific fleets of the Royal Navy.
In the summer of 1946, King George VI granted Philip permission to marry Elizabeth, who was then 20. Prior to the official announcement of their engagement in July 1947, Philip renounced his Greek and Danish royal titles and styles, became a naturalised British subject, and adopted the surname Mountbatten from his maternal grandparents. In November 1947, he married Elizabeth, was granted the style His Royal Highness, and was created Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich. Following Elizabeth’s accession to the throne in 1952, Philip left active naval service, having attained the rank of commander. In 1957, he was formally created a British prince.
Philip and Elizabeth had four children: Charles, Anne, Andrew, and Edward.
A keen sportsman, Philip played a significant role in the development of the equestrian discipline of carriage driving. He served as patron, president, or member of more than 780 organisations, including the World Wide Fund for Nature, and was chairman of The Duke of Edinburgh's Award, an international youth awards programme for people aged 14 to 24. Philip is the longest-lived male member of the British royal family. He retired from public duties in 2017 at the age of 96, having completed 22,219 solo engagements and delivered 5,493 speeches since 1952. He died at Windsor Castle two months before his 100th birthday.
Early life and education
Family, infancy and exile from Greece
Philip was born on 10 June 1921 on the dining room table at Mon Repos, a villa on the Greek island of Corfu. He was the only son and fifth and final child of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and his wife, Princess Alice of Battenberg. Philip's father was the fourth son of King George I and Queen Olga of Greece, and his mother was the eldest child of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Milford Haven, and Victoria Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven. A member of the House of Glücksburg, Philip was a prince of both Greece and Denmark by virtue of his patrilineal descent from George I of Greece and George's father, Christian IX of Denmark; he was from birth in the line of succession to both thrones. Philip's four elder sisters were Margarita, Theodora, Cecilie, and Sophie. He was baptised in the Greek Orthodox rite at St. George's Church in the Old Fortress in Corfu. His godparents were his paternal grandmother, Queen Olga of Greece; his cousin George, Crown Prince of Greece; his uncle Lord Louis Mountbatten; and the municipality of Corfu, represented by its mayor, Alexandros Kokotos, and by the president of the council, Stylianos Maniarizis.Shortly after Philip's birth, his maternal grandfather died in London. The Marquess of Milford Haven was a naturalised British subject who, after a career in the Royal Navy, had renounced his German titles and adopted the surname Mountbatten—an Anglicised version of Battenberg—during the First World War, owing to anti-German sentiment in the United Kingdom. After visiting London for his grandfather's memorial service, Philip and his mother returned to Greece, where Prince Andrew had remained to command a Greek Army division embroiled in the Greco-Turkish War.
Greece suffered significant losses in the war, while the Turks made substantial gains. Philip's uncle and high commander of the Greek expeditionary force, King Constantine I, was blamed for the defeat and was forced to abdicate in September 1922. The new military government arrested Andrew, along with others. General Georgios Hatzianestis, who was commanding officer of the army, and five senior politicians were arrested, tried, and executed in the Trial of the Six. Andrew's life was also believed to be in danger and Alice was under surveillance. Finally, in December, a revolutionary court banished Andrew from Greece for life. The British naval vessel evacuated Andrew's family, with Philip carried to safety in a fruit box.
Upbringing in France, Britain and Germany
Philip's family settled in a house in the Paris suburb of Saint-Cloud lent to them by his wealthy aunt Princess George of Greece and Denmark. During his time there, Philip was first educated at The Elms, an American school in Paris run by Donald MacJannet, who described Philip as a "know it all smarty person, but always remarkably polite". In 1930 Philip was sent to Britain to live with his maternal grandmother at Kensington Palace and his uncle George Mountbatten, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, at Lynden Manor in Bray, Berkshire. He was then enrolled at Cheam School. Over the next three years, his four sisters married German princes and moved to Germany, his mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and placed in an asylum, and his father took up residence in Monte Carlo. Philip had little contact with his mother for the remainder of his childhood.In 1933 Philip was sent to Schule Schloss Salem in Germany, which had the "advantage of saving school fees", because it was owned by the family of his brother-in-law Berthold, Margrave of Baden. With the rise of Nazism in Germany, Salem's Jewish founder, Kurt Hahn, fled persecution and founded Gordonstoun School in Scotland, to which Philip moved after two terms at Salem. In 1937, his sister Cecilie; her husband, Georg Donatus, Hereditary Grand Duke of Hesse; their two sons; and Georg Donatus's mother were killed in an air crash at Ostend; Philip, then 16 years old, attended the funeral in Darmstadt. Cecilie and Georg Donatus were members of the Nazi Party. The following year, Philip's uncle and guardian Lord Milford Haven died of bone marrow cancer. Milford Haven's younger brother Lord Louis took parental responsibility for Philip for the remainder of his youth.
Philip did not speak Greek because he had left Greece as an infant. In 1992 he said that he "could understand a certain amount". He stated that he thought of himself as Danish and spoke mostly English, while his family was multilingual. Known for his charm in his youth, Philip was linked to several women, including Osla Benning.
Naval and wartime service
After leaving Gordonstoun in early 1939, Philip completed a term as a cadet at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, then repatriated to Greece, living with his mother in Athens for a month in mid-1939. At the behest of King George II of Greece, his first cousin, he returned to Britain in September to resume training for the Royal Navy. He graduated from Dartmouth the next year as the best cadet in his course. During the Second World War, he continued to serve in the British forces, while two of his brothers-in-law, Prince Christoph of Hesse and Berthold, Margrave of Baden, fought on the opposing German side. Philip was appointed as a midshipman in January 1940. He spent four months on the battleship, protecting convoys of the Australian Expeditionary Force in the Indian Ocean, followed by shorter postings on, on, and in British Ceylon. After the invasion of Greece by Italy in October 1940, he was transferred from the Indian Ocean to the battleship in the Mediterranean Fleet.Philip was commissioned as a sub-lieutenant on 1 February 1941 after a series of courses at Portsmouth, in which he gained the top grade in four out of five sections of the qualifying examination. Among other engagements, he was involved in the Battle of Crete and was mentioned in dispatches for his service during the Battle of Cape Matapan, in which he controlled the battleship's searchlights. He was also awarded the Greek War Cross. In June 1942, he was appointed to the destroyer, which was involved in convoy escort tasks on the east coast of Britain, as well as the Allied invasion of Sicily.
Promotion to lieutenant followed on 16 July 1942. That October Philip, aged 21, became first lieutenant of HMS Wallace, one of the youngest first lieutenants in the Royal Navy. During the invasion of Sicily, in July 1943, he was second-in-command of Wallace. The ship was attacked at night by German aircraft, which would return to finish off the damaged ship; it was saved by Philip's devising a plan to launch a raft with smoke floats that successfully decoyed the bombers, allowing the ship to slip away unnoticed. In 1944, he moved on to the new destroyer,, where he saw service with the British Pacific Fleet in the 27th Destroyer Flotilla. He was present in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed. Philip returned to the United Kingdom on the Whelp in January 1946 and was posted as an instructor at, the Petty Officers' School in Corsham, Wiltshire.
Marriage
In 1939, the British King George VI and Queen Elizabeth toured the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. During the visit, the Queen and Lord Louis Mountbatten asked his nephew Philip to escort the royal couple's daughters, 13-year-old Elizabeth and 9-year-old Margaret, who were Philip's third cousins through Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and second cousins once removed through King Christian IX of Denmark. Philip and Elizabeth had first met as children in 1934 at the wedding of Elizabeth's uncle Prince George, Duke of Kent, to Philip's first cousin, Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark. After their 1939 meeting, Elizabeth fell in love with Philip, and they began to exchange letters.Eventually, in the summer of 1946, Philip asked George VI for his daughter's hand in marriage. The King granted his request, provided that any formal engagement be delayed until Elizabeth's 21st birthday the following April. By March 1947, Philip had adopted the surname Mountbatten from his mother's family and had stopped using his Greek and Danish royal titles upon becoming a naturalised British subject. The engagement was announced to the public on 9 July 1947.
The engagement attracted some controversy; Philip had no financial standing, was foreign-born, and had sisters who had married German noblemen with Nazi links. Marion Crawford wrote: "Some of the King's advisors did not think him good enough for her. He was a prince without a home or kingdom. Some of the papers played long and loud tunes on the string of Philip's foreign origin." Later biographies reported that Elizabeth's mother had reservations about the union initially and teased Philip as "the Hun". In later life, however, she told the biographer Tim Heald that Philip was "an English gentleman".
Though Philip appeared "always to have regarded himself as an Anglican", and he had attended Anglican services with his classmates and relations in England and throughout his Royal Navy days, he was baptised in the Greek Orthodox Church. The archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, wanted to "regularise" Philip's position by officially receiving him into the Church of England, which he did in October 1947. The day before the wedding, the King bestowed the style of Royal Highness on Philip, and, on the morning of the wedding, 20 November 1947, he was made the Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich of Greenwich in the County of London. Consequently, being already a Knight of the Garter, between 19 and 20 November 1947, he bore the unusual style Lieutenant His Royal Highness Sir Philip Mountbatten and is so described in the letters patent of 20 November 1947.
Philip and Elizabeth were married in a ceremony at Westminster Abbey, recorded and broadcast by BBC radio to 200 million people around the world. In post-war Britain, it was unacceptable for any of Philip's German relations, including his three surviving sisters, to be invited to the wedding. After their marriage, Philip and Elizabeth took residence at Clarence House. Their first two children were born before Elizabeth's accession in 1952: Prince Charles in November 1948 and Princess Anne in August 1950. The couple's marriage was the longest of any British monarch, lasting over 73 years until Philip died in 2021. Concerned by her father's poor health, Elizabeth insisted that Philip give up smoking, which he did on their wedding day.
Philip was introduced to the House of Lords on 21 July 1948, immediately before his uncle Louis Mountbatten, who had been made Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Philip ostensibly never spoke in the House of Lords. He, his sons and other royals ceased to be members of the House of Lords following the House of Lords Act 1999, although Philip's former brother-in-law, Lord Snowdon, remained in the House.