Young Prince Philip: His Turbulent Early Life. Philip Eade

the former headmaster was sent a rough rhyme:

      Whoever of his friends then thought,

      When, venturing, Cheam School he bought,

      He’d lay his cane athwart

      The bottom of a Prince Consort.⁷

      His first taste of this punishment as a new boy prompted Philip to ask the headmaster’s wife, ‘Do you like Mr Taylor?’ The experienced Mrs Taylor countered expertly, ‘Do you, Philip?’ she asked. ‘No,’ said the young boy unequivocally, ‘I do not.’⁸

      However, as time passed, Philip grew to like not only Mr Taylor but also everything else about Cheam, whose tough regime he later extolled in a preface to an exhaustive history of the school, published in 1974: ‘Children may be indulged at home,’ he wrote, ‘but school is expected to be a spartan and disciplined experience in the process of developing into self-controlled, considerate and independent adults. The system may have its eccentricities, but there can be little doubt that these are far outweighed by its values.’⁹

      His son, Prince Charles, who had a miserable time at Cheam, may not have entirely agreed with this credo, but Philip himself settled quickly into his new school. The headmaster’s son, Jimmy Taylor, who was at Cheam at the same time, says the fact of having arrived late (aged nine rather than the normal starting age of eight), with a ‘strange name and a shock of white hair’ ought to have made life difficult for the prince. There was an aura about him of ‘having arrived in England virtually an orphan and more or less friendless and speaking or certainly writing French better than he did English. So he was distinctly different from the other boys and must have been aware of that … But he was good at games so he was soon accepted.’¹⁰ He remained, though, ‘quite private, not much given to confiding in others’. He was also physically strong and had a fairly quick temper, which deterred too much teasing, although he did get landed briefly with the nickname Flip-Flop. Another contemporary, John Wynne, remembers Philip as ‘extremely gifted’ but that he ‘didn’t show off his talents’. He was ‘a most charming person, very popular’.¹¹ ‘When you think of all the problems he had being shovelled around, it was a remarkable achievement. He wasn’t bullied. Nobody would ever have had a poke at him, because they’d have got one back!’¹² Wynne remembered thinking that Philip had ‘tremendous confidence from somewhere’, and later, just before they left Cheam, while they were unpacking, seeing a photograph of George V beneath a pile of clothes in Philip’s trunk signed ‘From Uncle George’ which he had never displayed.¹³

      At the end of his first term at Cheam, Philip spent the 1930–31 Christmas holidays in Germany, where the festivities got under way on 15 December with the wedding of his sister Sophie and Christoph Hesse at Schloss Friedrichshof (now a five-star hotel) in the town of Kronberg in the Taunus foothills. Philip joined his sisters in helping to dress the excited Sophie in her room before the two ceremonies, Orthodox and Protestant, during which he carried her train. Their mother Alice was not there, feeling ‘not strong enough & too shy of strangers’, so Victoria told her lady-in-waiting, and after everything that had happened everyone felt sorry for Andrea, who ‘behaved splendidly’, reported Louise, although he ‘had the greatest difficulty not to break down’.¹⁴

      The wedding took place against a backdrop of deepening political crisis in Germany, Hitler’s National Socialists having established themselves as the main party of opposition in the Reichstag elections that autumn. Sophie’s bridegroom Christoph had long grown disillusioned with the Weimar Republic, whose laws repeatedly challenged the Hesses’ property and position, and his elder brother Philipp had signed up to the Nazi party in October 1930 – he would eventually come to be regarded as Hitler’s second closest friend after Albert Speer.¹⁵ To begin with Christoph resisted following Philipp’s example, but he was just the sort of dashing type whom the Nazis proved so successful in recruiting – Hitler was obsessed with fast cars and planes, which sped him about between rallies, and National Socialism’s association with sports, adventure and modernity were big attractions to Christoph.¹⁶ Within a year of his marriage to Sophie, he, too, had joined as a clandestine member, and by early 1932 he was in the SS and beginning to demonstrate ‘a discipline and a commitment to a cause that was unprecedented in his life’.¹⁷

      These developments doubtless seemed rather less sinister at the time than they do in retrospect and in any case they would almost certainly have meant very little to nine-year-old Philip, although they would have some bearing on his future – not least when it came to the question as to which of his family would be invited to his wedding. For the time being, after spending Christmas Day 1930 with uncle Ernie and aunt Onor at Darmstadt, on Boxing Day Philip was taken to see his mother at her sanatorium, he and his grandmother staying for a few days at a nearby hotel. The visit went smoothly enough, although Alice confided to Victoria that she did not think she had long to live.¹⁸

      A month later, on 8 February 1931, Philip attended the next family wedding, that of his other younger sister, Cecile, and Don Hesse. Some fifty relations gathered for the event at Darmstadt amid a densely packed and enthusiastic crowd of townspeople, who blocked Andrea and Cecile’s route to the church, and afterwards cheered the bride and groom on the balcony. ‘It seemed funny in a “republic”,’ wrote Victoria, ‘but was a nice sign of the affection of the people for Uncle Ernie & his family.’¹⁹