The royals - Kitty Kelley [104]
The Duke of Edinburgh was far too discreet to indulge in anything beyond harmless flirting in public. “Arrangements were made privately,” said Regine Traulsen, a Moroccan woman now married and living with her husband in New York. “I was living in London in the late ’60s and going to parties with a painter, Felix Topolski, who had done a portrait of Prince Philip and become good friends with him. I told Felix I thought Philip was quite handsome and I’d like to meet him.
“A few weeks later, Felix said, ‘I made a date for you to meet Philip. The Queen will be busy with the regatta. He has a flat on top of the hill and you’ll meet him there at 10:30 in the evening.’
“ ‘I’m not a one-night stand, Felix,’ I told him.
“ ‘But you said you fancied him.’
“ ‘Oh, I do but not to sleep with….’ Felix was taken aback and the date with the Duke of Edinburgh was canceled. I’m sure I wasn’t the only woman propositioned in this way.”
Philip was always careful and, according to one recollection, frequently colorful. “Many years ago,” said Elke Gzndlowski in 1997, “I worked in a country house between Isha and Oxford where the Duke of Edinburgh visited with his private secretary, Sir Rupert Nevill…. I was serving the table when Prince Philip was talking. He said he used red condoms for happy sex and black condoms for required sex.”
Philip certainly was not going to court criticism that might embarrass the Crown. The Profumo affair had already subjected the country to enough embarrassment. At the height of the Cold War, Britain’s War Minister, John Profumo, shared a prostitute, Christine Keeler, with Soviet naval attaché Eugene Ivanov, and the scandal nearly toppled the government. The War Minister was forced to resign after he lied in a personal statement to the House of Commons. Years later the Queen honored him with a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). At the time, the sex scandal made the British the butt of international jokes, and the disgrace lasted for years, tarnishing the country’s prestige.
Even before the scandal, the country seemed to be stumbling under the burden passed down from two world wars. “Britain still has shameful slums, obsolete housing, derelict dockyards,” wrote John Gunther in Look magazine. “The rank and file of citizens seem apathetic about the future, despondent or confused.”
Some citizens were angry. “Damn you, England,” wrote John Osborne, the young playwright who transformed British theater with his blistering social drama. “In sincere and utter hatred… you’re rotting now, and quite soon you’ll disappear… untouchable, unteachable, impregnable.”
Former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson saw a country stripped of glory and floundering with no direction. “Great Britain has lost an empire,” he said, “and has not yet found a role.”
Even the weather aggravated the country’s misery. The winters in England during the early sixties were so severe that power failed and people shivered. Then the impossible happened: the Queen was booed. She and her husband were attending a theatrical performance with King Paul and Queen Frederika of Greece when a group of Greek protesters in London yelled and hissed at her for associating with fascists.
Queen Elizabeth appeared not to notice. Having never encountered such criticism, she did not comprehend that the screaming was directed at her. She was equally unconcerned by the death threats she received when the Palace announced her plans to tour Canada in 1964.
“The Queen must not come,” warned the Toronto Telegram.
“An innocent life is at stake,” said the Times of London.
The Daily Mirror raised the specter of “a second Dallas” if the Queen ventured into Canada, where the French minority in Quebec railed against the English majority in Ottawa.
But she