PHILIP: The Final Portrait

Our dear friend Gyles is and always was a huge fan of the Duke of Edinburgh, and together with our Annie dined at a banquet with the Duke at the Natural History Museum in London several years ago, and he had had the pleasure of meeting him on many occasions and enjoying his wit, intellect and bon viveur. Elusive, complex, controversial, challenging, often humorous and sometimes irascible, Prince Philip was the man Elizabeth II once described as her 'constant strength and guide'. What was he really like and what is the truth about those 'gaffes' and the rumours of affairs? Gyles is the writer who got closest to the human truth about our long-serving senior royals and this is the revised and updated 2022 paperback edition. 'I knew the Duke of Edinburgh over a period of more than 40 years. I was accustomed to his sense of humour. I liked it, I liked him. I admired him as much as any man I have known. It was knowing him as I did that led me to write this book about him, and his wife, and their remarkable marriage - the longest-lasting marriage of any sovereign and consort in history. I first met Prince Philip in the 1970s, when he was in his 50s and I was in my 20s, and I became involved in the world of the National Playing Fields Association.' 'I suppose the polo was fun. Playing cricket was fun, in the old days. The carriage driving is fun - when you don't fall off the box seat. Then it's just bloody painful.' 'I enjoyed flying... I think I should have joined the Air Force instead of the Navy.' Prince Philip's grandfather King George I of Greece was assassinated a few years before he was born. His favourite sister Cécile was killed in an aeroplane accident when he was still a teenager. His favourite uncle and guardian at the time George Milford Haven died of cancer soon after. His father, Prince Andrew of Greece, died when Philip was just 23. His other favourite uncle, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was murdered by the IRA when blow up in his own boat in 1979. 'I'm quite ready to die. It's what happens - sooner or later.' And now it has and how sad we are here at Bibliophile since he was our patron and gave us a Royal Warrant, by Royal Appointment, which by the gracious gift of the Queen, we can still refer to in perpetuity. Here are candid photos like the tell-tale photograph of Philip and Elizabeth in October 1946 entitled 'The First Look', and their first dance, seen together publicly for the first time in July 1947 in Edinburgh. Gyles' book tells the story of two contrasting lives and assesses the Duke of Edinburgh's character and achievements, relationships with his wife, children and their families, and with the press and public and those at court who were suspicious of him in the early days. A moving account of a long life well lived and a remarkable royal partnership the likes and length of which we shall never see again. 513pp, paperback, well illus. with many colour plates.