There was also something else, alluded to in the last chapter: Philip’s supposed (and actual) connections with the nation which, at the time of his first overtures, Britain was engaged in fighting. For all his acquired Englishness, there was something in Philip’s character, in his tendency to put backs up, and in his mixture of rootlessness and dubious roots, that stirred in the previous generation of high aristocrats a mixture of snobbery and xenophobia. ‘The kind of people who didn’t like Prince Philip were the kind who didn’t like Mountbatten,’ suggests an ex-courtier. ‘It was all bound up in the single word: “German”.’7
In view of the Germanic links of the British Royal Family over the preceding two centuries, this was scarcely a rational prejudice, but it was undoubtedly there. The strongest evidence of its existence is provided by unpublished sections of the diary of Jock (later Sir John) Colville, who had been a private secretary to Neville Chamberlain and then to Winston Churchill, and became Princess Elizabeth’s private secretary in the summer of 1947. During his first stay at Balmoral in the same year, Colville noted with fascination the prevailing atmosphere of bitterness towards the ex-Greek prince. ‘Lords Salisbury, Eldon and Stanley think him no gentleman,’ he recorded; ‘and in a sense they are right. They also profess to see in him a Teutonic strain.’8 ‘People in the generation which had fought in the First World War were not very much in favour of what they called “the Hun”,’ says a former adviser to George VI.9 An aristocrat linked to the Conservative Party used privately to refer to Philip as ‘Charlie Kraut’.10 One of the fiercest of Philip’s opponents was the Queen’s brother, David Bowes-Lyon, who did his best to influence his sister against the match.11
What exactly did being ‘no gentleman’ mean? There were several, generally unspoken elements. ‘He wasn’t part of the aristocracy’, suggests a former courtier meaning that he did not share British aristocratic assumptions.12 This point was linked to the unfortunate matter of his schooling. The problem was not its extent – if high scholastic attainment had been a requirement for joining the Windsor family, few twentieth century consorts (let alone the royals they married) would have passed muster – but its location. It was a significant disadvantage that he was not a member of the freemasonry of old Etonians to which virtually everybody in the inner circle who was not actually a Royal Highness, almost by definition, belonged.13
Philip’s unusual academy, regarded by the world at large as an interesting variation, contributed to the sense of him as an outsider – even possibly, like his uncle, as a kind of socialist. ‘He had been at Gordonstoun,’ points out a former royal aide. ‘So he had very few friends. Eton engenders friendships. The more severe ethos at Gordonstoun leaves you without friends.’ (Being ‘without friends’ should not, of course, be taken literally: what it meant was friends of an appropriate type. The same source acknowledges that, though Philip did have friends, they tended to be ‘Falstaffian’ ones.14) In addition, Gordonstoun’s ‘progressive’ ethos could give rise to disturbing ideas. Thus, one member of the Royal Family apparently complained that the would-be consort ‘had been to a crank school with theories of complete social equality where the boys were taught to mix with all and sundry.’15
There was no single, or over-riding, objection: just the raised eyebrow, the closing of ranks at which royalty and the landed classes were peculiarly adept. If there was a unifying theme, it was a kind of jealous, chauvinistic protectiveness – based on a belief that so precious an asset should not be lightly handed over, least of all to the penniless scion of a disreputable house who, in the nostrils of his critics, had about him the whiff of a fortune-hunter. Contemplating the presence of ‘Philip of Greece’ and his cousin the Marquess of Milford Haven at the Boxing Day party at Windsor Castle in 1943, Sir Alan Lascelles laconically observed: ‘I prefer the latter’.16 Whatever the full reason, a courtly and aristocratic distaste for the young suitor, and suspicion about his motives, hindered his full acceptance into courtly and aristocratic circles for years to come.
ONE PERSON had no doubts: Princess Elizabeth herself. ‘She was a stunning girl’, a close friend fondly remembers, ‘longing to be a young wife without too many problems.’17 In this ambition she was supported by most public opinion, apart from a sliver of the Labour Party on the pro-Communist left, which continued to associate Philip not with the Hun, but with the Greek right. In general, however, press and public took what they saw: a handsome, eligible naval officer, who happened to be a prince. So far from objecting, most early commentators found his combination of royal status, a British naval commission, and lack of celebrity, entirely appropriate for the back-seat but decorative role that would be required. Yet for the time being, Philip remained a shadowy figure.
Elizabeth, by contrast, was ever more visible in the popular magazines – with interest enhanced by speculation about the developing but unannounced romance. The American press, always ahead of the British, anticipated an engagement early in 1947 by turning her into a cover girl, a newsreel star, and – highest compliment – the ultimately desirable girl-next-door. In January 1947, the International Artists’ Committee in New York voted her one of the most glamorous women in the world. In March, Time declared her ‘the Woman of the Week’, and praised her for her ‘Pin-Up Charm’. Devoting four pages to her life story, it revealed her as a princess the magazine’s readers could take to their hearts. She was practical, down-to-earth, human – the essence of suburban middle America. As well as being an excellent horsewoman she was, the article declared, a tireless dancer and an enthusiastic lover of swing music, night clubs, and ‘having her own way’. She enjoyed reading best-sellers, knitting and gossipy teas with her sister and a few girlfriends in front of the fire at Buckingham Palace.17
According to Crawfie, she was an indifferent knitter.18 However, the picture was not entirely false. Whatever she may have read in her teens, her adult tastes in literature and drama were, as a British observer put it delicately in the 1950s, ‘those of the many rather than the few’.19 In this respect, as in others, efforts to nip any blue-stocking tendency in the bud had succeeded.
It was also true that she enjoyed music, especially if it was not too demanding. She took a keen interest in the ‘musicals’ currently in vogue on the London stage. She liked the satirical entertainment 1066 and All That so much that she obtained a copy of the song ‘Going Home to Rome’ from the management.20 Jean Woodroffe (then Gibbs), who became her lady-in-waiting early in 1945, remembers that the two of them would while away the time on long car journeys to and from official engagements by singing popular songs.21 After the war ended, weekly madrigal sessions were held at the Palace – either Margaret or a professional musician played the piano and both girls sang, together with some officers in the Palace guard.22
One madrigal singer was Lord Porchester (now the seventh Earl of Carnarvon) who had known Princess Elizabeth when he was in the Royal Horse Guards at the end of the war, and had taken part in the Buckingham Palace VE-Night escapade. Porchester (‘Porchey’)* also shared the Princess’s interest in riding, breeding and racing horses. During the war, they had seen each other at the Beckhampton stables on the Wiltshire Downs, where horses bred at the royal studs were trained. Porchester was the grandson of the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, who, as well as being the joint discoverer of the tomb of Tutenkhamun, had been the leading racehorse owner-breeder at the beginning of the century, and had set up the Highclere Stud at his Hampshire home. His father, the sixth Earl, had bred the 1930 Derby winner Blenheim. ‘The King thought I was a suitable racing companion of her age group,’ says Lord Carnarvon. ‘There were not many people then who could accompany her to the races.’ Since the 1940s, he says, ‘We have developed our interest together, and it has got sharper.’23 He was beside her at