One effect of the Christmas 1943 get-together, and of its publication in the press, was to fuel the rumours. Prince Philip himself was reticent. Parker knew that Philip had begun to visit the Royal Family when he was in England, but he did not find out the significance of the visits until after the war.57 Others had more sensitive antennae. In February 1944, Channon again got the story, this time from a source very close to the throne – his own parents-in-law, Lord and Lady Iveagh, who had just taken tea with the King and Queen. The Windsor party had evidently been a success. ‘I do believe,’ Channon reaffirmed, ‘that a marriage may well be arranged one day between Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip of Greece.’58 Meanwhile, in Egypt, where the Greek royal family presided over the Government-in-exile, interest had deepened, and with good reason. Within months, or possibly a few weeks, of the Windsor meeting, Philip had declared his intentions to the Greek king. The diary of Sir Alan Lascelles contains a significant entry for 2 April 1944 in which he records that George VI had told him that Prince Philip of Greece had recently asked his uncle, George of Greece, whether he thought he could be considered as a suitor for the hand of Princess Elizabeth. The proposition had been rejected.59 However, it was early days.
In August 1944, the British ambassador, Sir Miles Lampson, recorded meeting Prince Philip, once again on leave, at a ball in Alexandria, in the company of the Greek crown prince and princess. Lampson found him ‘a most attractive youth’. In the course of the evening, the crown princess let slip ‘that Philip would do very well for Princess Elizabeth!’ an idea now of long-standing, and one on which the beleaguered Greek royal family was evidently pinning high hopes.
Philip’s presence in Egypt, however, inspired more than a minor indiscretion from a relative. On 23 August, according to Lampson, Lord Mountbatten, now Supreme Allied Commander in South East Asia, arrived in Cairo by air and proceeded to unfold a most extraordinary cloak-and-dagger tale. The purpose of his mission, Mountbatten explained as they drove to the embassy from the aerodrome, was to arrange for Prince Philip, ‘being a very promising officer in the British Navy,’ to apply for British nationality. Gravely, Mountbatten explained that King George VI had become concerned about the depleted numbers of his close relatives, and believed that, if Philip became properly British, ‘he should be an additional asset to the British Royal Family and a great help to them in carrying out their royal functions’. It was therefore his intention, he continued, to sound out Philip, and then the king of Greece, about his proposition. In the course of the same day, both were sounded, together with the crown prince, and all three agreed. Early that afternoon, a satisfied Mountbatten left by aeroplane for Karachi to resume his Command.60
What should we make of this very curious account? Mountbatten’s explanation for his ‘soundings’ is obviously unconvincing – the one thing the British Monarchy did not need was functional help from a young foreign royal, let alone a Greek one, just because he happened to be on the market. The only way that Philip could be ‘an additional asset’ to the Windsors was by marrying into them, and this, as Lascelles’s note the previous April shows, he by now wished to do. It seems much more likely that Mountbatten’s mission was part of a considered plan, aimed at remoulding Philip for the requirements of the position both uncle and nephew wished him to hold. To make such an objective obtainable, Philip needed to be, not so much British, but non-Greek, in view of the unsavoury connections of his own dynasty. In short, the Egyptian whistle-stop visit was an opening move. Such an explanation is consistent with the behaviour of Lord Mountbatten over the next two or three years, as he bent ears and pulled strings in Buckingham Palace, Westminster and Whitehall, at every opportunity. So great, indeed, was Mountbatten’s determination on his nephew’s behalf, that at one point Prince Philip was moved to chide him gently for almost forcing him ‘to do the wooing by proxy’.61
The wooing proceeded apace. There were meetings between Philip and Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace, and also at Coppins, the home of the Kents, as the ubiquitous Channon discovered when he inspected the visitors’ book there in October 1944.62 The problem from the start was not the Prince’s courtship, but the British Government, concerned about its wartime Balkan diplomacy, and the hesitation of the Princess’s parents. Despite Mountbatten’s bold claim to Lampson in August that the British King was behind the naturalization initiative, nearly six months elapsed before Buckingham Palace made even tentative inquiries at the Home Office on Philip’s behalf. ‘The King asked me recently what steps would have to be taken to enable Prince Philip of Greece (Louis Mountbatten’s nephew) to become a British subject,’ Sir Alan Lascelles wrote to the relevant official in March 1945. The King, he explained, did not want the matter dealt with officially yet: he only wished to know ‘how it could be most easily and expeditiously handled’ at an appropriate time.63 In August, Lascelles went to see the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, at the King’s behest, observing crustily, ‘I suspect there may be a matrimonial nigger in the woodpile.’64
The question of Philip’s naturalization, however, only became a matter for political discussion at the highest level in October 1945, by which time Greek politics, and the Greek royal family’s embroilment, had become even more tangled. The Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary now considered the proposal put to them by the Palace but, faced with the prospect of stirring a hornet’s nest, postponed a decision. The danger, it was explained to the King, was that such a step would be interpreted in Greece as support for the Greek royalists. Alternatively, given the feverish nature of politics in the Balkan peninsula, it might be taken ‘as a sign that the future prospects of the Greek Monarchy are admitted to be dark,’ and that Greek royals were scurrying for safety abroad. In view of these competing risks, Attlee suggested that the question should be left until after elections and a plebiscite had been held in Greece the following year.65
When Prince Philip returned from the Far East early in 1946, the problem acquired a new urgency. Philip’s undemanding peacetime job, as a member of staff of a naval training establishment in North Wales, provided ample opportunity for frequent visits to Buckingham Palace, where his charm worked, not only on Princess Elizabeth, but on Crawfie, who found him a breath of fresh air in the stuffy Court, ‘a forthright and completely natural young man, given to say what he thought’. Above all, he could talk to Elizabeth as no outsider had ever dared to do before. Soon, she was taking more trouble over her appearance, and began to play the hit record ‘People Will Say We’re in Love,’ from the musical Oklahoma! incessantly on the gramophone.66 In May, in an atmosphere of continuing uncertainty, Philip went to Salem for the second marriage of his sister Tiny, whom he had not seen for nine years, and whose first husband had been killed in the war. He told her about his relationship with Princess Elizabeth. ‘He was thinking about getting engaged,’ Tiny recalls. ‘Uncle Dickie was being helpful.’67
There was as yet no engagement, official or unofficial. The real reason for Philip’s request for naturalization was coyly avoided in official memoranda – though the involvement of senior members of the Government indicated that it was known or suspected. Publicly, a pretence had to be kept up. If the Prince and Princess were present at the same party, they did not dance together, as a precaution.68 However, there were clues which led to leaks. The addition of Philip’s name to the guest list for Balmoral in 1946, when it had not been included on the advance list, aroused much below-stairs interest at the Palace.69 A pattern developed which became the norm with royal betrothals: stories in the foreign press, picked up by British popular newspapers, followed by Palace denials whose cautious nature fuelled speculation. In September 1946, after a year of mounting gossip, Sir Alan Lascelles took the novel step of repudiating reports of an engagement, but without commenting on the future possibility of one. The story finally broke, not in words but – and it was another significant precedent – on celluloid: a newsreel shot of an exchange of tender glances at the wedding of Lord Mountbatten’s daughter Patricia to Lord Brabourne, as Philip, an usher, helped Elizabeth, a bridesmaid, with her fur wrap.
A Greek plebiscite took place on 1 September 1946, restoring the Greek Monarchy: the restoration of George II, however,