As he prepares to celebrate a landmark birthday, the Duke of Edinburgh is content in his own skin – and in the spotlight – like never before. Photo / Getty Images
The Duke of Edinburgh, who celebrates his 60th birthday on Sunday, is about to receive the first of many birthday cakes presented to him at a royal engagement.
Nodding his head in pantomime resignation as his host tells him he is “about to get his bus pass”, he is tickled to hear there has been debate over which name to call him for their rendition of “Happy Birthday to You”.
“Nobody ever knows what to say,” he says, delighted. “I will look forward to that bit.”
In the end, the group plumps for “Edward”. Grinning, he cuts the cake.
On the eve of a landmark birthday, and at a time of undeniable crisis for the Royal family, Prince Edward - who could equally have been called His Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh, the King’s brother and late Queen Elizabeth II’s youngest child - seems a man content in his own skin.
More unusually, he is that rare modern species: a Prince who has found a way to genuinely enjoy his royal role.
This week, he has found himself hovering near the media spotlight, with senior members of the Royal family seemingly dropping out of public engagements like flies.
As the world knows, the King has cancer; the Prince of Wales has been caring for the Princess as she recovers from major surgery, while the 76-year-old Queen, quite understandably in the circumstances, has taken a short holiday.
Nevertheless, reports that Prince Edward is “stepping up” his engagements to keep the royal show on the road have caused much amusement at the palace.
This week, for example, he has done eight engagements across three days in three regions.
“Eight engagements?” said one member of staff drily. “I think that’s probably below his average.”
The extra attention is not altogether unappreciated. “If there is a bit more of a spotlight on them [the Edinburghs], they’re pleased if it gives their causes more attention,” said an aide.
“He’s been doing this his whole life. It’s about service to the institution. The same thing he did for his mother, it’s now for his brother.”
“A lot of it,” they add, “is continuing his father’s legacy.”
In person, people remark on how closely the current Duke of Edinburgh resembles his late father in mannerisms.
Taller than he looks in photographs, he clasps his hands behind his back in Prince Philip’s favoured pose and stoops a little in conversation.
His causes, too, are designed to continue the Duke of Edinburgh legacy. As well as being patron of the eponymous awards, he has deliberately continued work on youth clubs, sport and non-traditional education.
“Like an iceberg, what is seen above the water or in public is only a small proportion of what goes on behind the scenes,” says the Duchess of his work.
“A lot of his work is invisible,” says a palace source. “Three hours chairing trustee meetings, generally trying to support organisations as much as possible behind the scenes.”
In terms of the Royal family as a whole, they add, the Edinburghs’ place is “a supporting role, fundamentally”.
“They very particularly think about, ‘Where are the gaps? Which bits of the country haven’t had a visit recently?’ and then they make sure they fill in.”
The Duke is said to be “really hands-on” in organising the Edinburghs’ programme, chairing planning meetings himself.
“It’s not about him, that’s the important thing. The Duke has picked that up from his father.”
He has also found his own niche. From an early career in theatre and television, he has gravitated to the arts sector and has spent his birthday week at local theatre halls, community radio stations and, on Friday night, at the ballet with his wife.
For Ingrid Seward, who wrote his biography in 1995 and recently published a book about King Charles called My Mother & I, his “first love was always the theatre, but his position as a member of the royal family prevented him doing what he wanted”.
“He had an excellent relationship with his father,” she says. “So much so that not only did Philip decree that Edward will become the Duke of Edinburgh, but he put him in overall charge of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme. He also put him in charge of organising the shooting parties on the royal estates, which may not seem much but was a great personal honour.”
It is a fascinating journey for a Prince who became the first child of a reigning monarch to take a full-time job outside of military service, first in a junior theatre company role for Andrew Lloyd Webber and then in a television career which saw him painfully ridiculed for It’s a Knockout.
An authorised biography of Prince Edward in 1992 saw him described as a “royal wanting to live an ordinary life”. In the book, author Paul James put Edward’s self-confidence – evidenced by his controversial but firm decision to leave the Royal Marines despite what had been expected of him – down to a stable childhood with a doting mother who was more present than she had been in the early years of his siblings.
One staff member then described him as the “best of the Queen’s children”, who was not addressed as “Prince” or “Your Royal Highness” until he turned 18. The young Edward was characterised as placid, bookish, often seen holding his mother’s hand but with a dislike of being seen as “goody-goody”.
Born third-in-line to the throne and now 14th, he had a degree of freedom to make his own choices, and spent his young adulthood at Buckingham Palace, with a hobby of turning magic tricks, and became the first royal to attend his own Madame Tussauds waxwork unveiling.
“The dilemma Edward faces,” wrote James in 1992, sympathetically, “is that he is a prince too many.” Thirty years later, having long accepted full-time working Royal life as the most suitable option, he could be forgiven for congratulating himself on making it work.
His not-so-secret weapon, once Sophie Rhys-Jones and now Duchess of Edinburgh, has been instrumental.
The couple celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary later this year, with their 20-year-old daughter Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor in her second year of an English degree at St Andrews and 16-year-old James, Earl of Wessex, still at school.
The family, who live at the 120-room Bagshot Park in Windsor, delighted in their closeness with the late Queen and Prince Philip, and their relatively – by royal standards – ordinary lives.
“She wears the trousers,” says one who has visited them, approvingly. “He makes the tea.”
The couple have a small team of five palace staff, and work under the auspices of Buckingham Palace along with the rest of their generation of royals. Prince Edward carried out 297 engagements last year, putting him third in the “hardest-working” league table below the King and Princess Royal.
He unwinds in the outdoors, say friends: time in the garden tending to the rhododendrons, and walking the dogs.
“Finding the time where he can for the gardening gives him the space to unwind,” says one.
“Whatever he is doing he gives 150 per cent of himself,” says Sophie. “And if all else fails he gives any energy he has left to our exhausted dogs or laying waste to the garden.”
In his younger days, he gravitated to individual sports: tennis, squash, golf, swimming, skiing. He gave up rugby, he once said, because “I became sort of a target, and I got fed up with being beaten up all the time”.
Nowadays, he presents a trim figure who has recently lost weight, explained by a “bit of a health kick” which has seen him pay attention to diet and exercise. In other words, says one source: “He’s cut out the pudding.”
A typical engagement in Leatherhead this week sums it up nicely. The Duke of Edinburgh arrives at The Lighthouse Church Hall by Range Rover with his late father’s treasured OXR1 number plate. Driving himself, he takes off his spectacles before springing out of the car for two hours – far longer than most royal jobs – of meeting dozens of people working in the field of arts accessibility.
With an air of an interested uncle, he quizzes young people on their ambitions, and laughs uproariously at their anecdotes.
By the end, he has been persuaded to join the “Freewheelers” collective to play in a jazz band, stencil paint on a bird puppet, and wave it aloft on a 10ft-high bamboo stick for an amateur theatre performance of a murmuration.
“What could possibly go wrong?” he wonders loudly.
Sir Richard Stilgoe, songwriter and founder of the Orpheus Centre Trust, which helps young disabled people live independent lives, praised Prince Edward for his royal ability to get organisations together.
“The first time he rang me up, it was as the stage manager for Cats,” Sir Richard recalled. “He was tea boy for Andrew Lloyd Webber.”
He later asked Prince Edward to be patron of the charity. “He is terrific whenever we need him. He’s a huge help, as is [the Duchess of Edinburgh].
“It’s an absolute boost. It makes people feel, ‘gosh, a member of the Royal family is interested in me’.
“Everyone expects it to be very stiff and starchy, but with Edward it never is.”
Speaking on Friday afternoon at a sporting engagement in Leeds, the Duchess of Edinburgh snatched a rare opportunity to publicly sing her husband’s praises.
“I am so proud of the man he is,” she said. “He is the best of fathers, the most loving of husbands, and still is my best friend.
“So here’s to you my darling Edward, and may I along with all your family and so many friends and many others wish you the happiest of birthdays!”
A live cook-off featured ox heart, wapiti, wild boar and plenty of edible wildlife.