The royals - Kitty Kelley [300]
* About $6 million in U.S. dollars.
* Philip’s rage over the press coverage given to his marriage and his equerry’s divorce surfaced later at a reception. As an official pointed out Gibraltar’s famous cave-dwelling monkeys, Philip asked in a loud voice: “Which are the press and which are the apes?”
* Although Philip had been born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, he renounced his title in 1947 when he became a British subject and assumed the name of Philip Mountbatten to marry Elizabeth. Upon his marriage, he became the Duke of Edinburgh. But most people continued to call him Prince Philip—incorrectly. Technically he was not a prince until his wife made him one.
* The three major U.S. wire services—Associated Press, United Press, and International News Service—filed four hundred thousand words on the royal state visit. The preceding week they sent out three hundred thousand on Sputnik.
* In 1959 Prince Philip made an extended trip to the Far East for almost four months. The Daily Express ran a series of articles entitled “The Woman of the World with an Absent Husband.” Philip had made so many trips out of England that upon his return, one newspaper carried the headline “The Duke Visits Britain.”
† The Garter King of Arms, who is in charge of the sovereign’s heraldic ceremonies, wrote to the Queen to ask whether the entire College of Arms should attend Princess Margaret’s wedding. The Queen shuddered. Her private secretary responded: “While Her Majesty appreciated the loyal feeling of the Officers at Arms, they would understand that for obvious reasons she did not want the wedding to be made more of an occasion of state than was absolutely necessary.”
* Three years later the Queen sadly accepted Macmillan’s resignation as Prime Minister. In a letter, she thanked him for being “my guide and supporter” in international matters. “There have also been, I am afraid, a number of problems affecting my family… which must have occupied a great amount of your time. I should like to put on record my appreciation and gratitude for the unstinting care which you have taken in giving me your advice about them and helping me to find a solution.”
† The Sunday Express, one of Lord Beaverbrook’s three newspapers, acidly congratulated Prince Philip when the Queen was about to give birth: “We are edified that he was able at last to leave his bird shooting at Sandringham and rejoin his wife at this exciting moment of her life.”
* Mountbatten made no pretense about favoring his older daughter, Patricia. In 1953 he wrote her a letter saying, “You know how basically fond I am and always have been of Mummy, you know pretty well about my girl friends, but none of them have [sic] had that magic ‘something’ which you have.” He said that he was fond of his second child, Pamela, “but the mainspring of my love [for her] is that she is your sister and you love her.”
† In 1946 Lord Louis Mountbatten was created Viscount Mountbatten of Burma. The next year he was created Baron Romsey and Earl Mountbatten of Burma, with “special remainder” to his male heirs, and if no males, to his eldest daughter and her male heirs. This special remainder, which allowed the title to pass to a female, was a rare concession by the monarch and granted only to military veterans with a record of distinguished war service. After the death of his wife in 1960, Mountbatten told his beloved daughter, Patricia, that he could not contemplate remarriage because he might have a son and disturb the plans he had made for her succession to his title.
† Mountbatten never developed deep affection for David Hicks and never accepted him as a surrogate son the way he did John Brabourne and Prince Philip. In 1972, twelve years after Hicks had married his younger daughter, Mountbatten wrote a letter to Philip in which he said, “Patricia and Pammy could not be sweeter or more affectionate daughters, but one does miss