Prince Philip, the subject of a new biography by Ingrid Seward, with the Queen. Photo / AP
Prince Philip, the subject of a new biography by Ingrid Seward, with the Queen. Photo / AP
Leah McFall reviews two new royal biographies.
Every man and his dog has churned out an unauthorised royal biography this year and it must pain the likes of Robert Lacey and Ingrid Seward, the lifers of the royal press corps. Lacey has written at least six books on the Windsorsand is historical consultant to The Crown; although since the recent furore over the creative licence taken in season four, I might drop that credit from the cover of Battle of Brothers: William, Harry and the inside story of a family in tumult.
Prince Philip Revealed, by Ingrid Seward
Meanwhile Seward, with 13 royal books to her name, has been around long enough for the Duke of Edinburgh to have insulted her in person at least once. Examples of his bilious attitude to reporters, hapless hosts and unfortunate guests abound in Prince Philip Revealed: a man of his century, but Seward's book seeks to understand his behaviour.
People in power, she tells us, just break off a conversation if you fail to interest them. "They know people only want to talk to them because of who they are, not as a real person, so they have no sensitivity towards the other individual's feelings."
Seward is a dogged, conscientious biographer and doesn't let her relative insignificance to Prince Philip put her off. She details the sweep of his life – born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, exiled with his family and making the best of an aristocratic childhood lived in other people's fine houses.
Boarding schools and the Royal Navy prepared him for the institutional life of a consort to the Queen, whom he first met when she was 13 and proposed to in 1946. He was broke but his lineage was beyond reproach. He was naturalised in 1947 and given the name Mountbatten.
His life after marriage was packed with appointments but strangely uneventful and this is one of Seward's problems as she sifts through 99 years of evidence in search of the man. His is not an era-defining personality. His job, which he did dutifully, if not with evident pleasure, has been to foreground someone else. Essentially Prince Philip is the product of extraordinary circumstances - and those circumstances are more interesting than he is.
He was a brilliant naval officer, Seward argues, packing her chapters with examples. He was skilful at polo and cricket, is a reader, an armchair philosopher, a dabbler in painting, a carriage-driving competitor, a religious man who can't stand long sermons. He likes shooting and fishing and commanding the barbecue at Balmoral.
He may have had affairs, Seward says too delicately but we can't be sure. The Queen may simply have turned a blind eye. "She came from the old school of marriage, which believed that, unlike today, a husband has the right to his own personal freedom and there is no point trying to control him more than necessary." The Queen deferred to him in private but outranked him in public - and the arrangement worked for both parties.
His many gaffes attempted to relieve the tedium of thousands of engagements in support of the Queen. He was rude to Elton John, Madonna and Tom Jones ("What do you gargle with, pebbles?"). He liked it, occasionally, when things went wrong but couldn't bloody stand the small talk. When the Queen asked a cadet partly blinded by an IRA bomb how much he could still see, the Prince remarked: "Not a lot, judging by the tie he's wearing."
However irascible and unkind, Prince Philip had a tireless innings in service to the Crown. He is a man of post-war values that appear to have run their course. As Seward shows, they don't make princes like him anymore. None of his descendants will pay the same price. Some, like his grandson Harry, will reject his example outright. Philip has lived long enough to witness this and this may be the tragedy of his privileged life.
Battle of Brothers, by Robert Lacey
Lacey's book is as florid as Seward's is stolid. It's a lighter read, with more white space, but is let down by his decision to narrate the story like a jolly tour guide at Windsor Castle: "So that's enough for the moment from those wacky Windsors – not to mention the manic Markles on the other side of the Atlantic …" Put it this way: there's too much sherry in his trifle.
In fact, he has a serious premise, which is that long before Meghan Markle, the royal brothers were destined to grow apart. Rivalry was baked into their relationship at birth. Diana openly referred to Harry as Number Two. William was singled out by the Queen for weekend tete-a-tetes as a schoolboy. William dodged criticism and Harry copped it when both experimented with drinking, drugs and dubious party costumes – with Palace press officials sometimes spinning these scandals to reflect well on Charles' parenting. Meanwhile, both boys were emotionally harmed by their parents' fractious marriage - not only by their mother's death.
Harry would ultimately reject the "dirty rascal" role assigned to him, with the support of a self-actualised American divorcee.
Lacey is even-handed in this book, balancing the princes' good points against their faults. But you're left with the depressing impression that William is hot-tempered and controlling in private as much as Harry is self-pitying in public and that neither heir nor spare will ever be free of each other.
Prince Philip Revealed: A Man of His Century, Ingrid Seward (Simon & Schuster, $38)
