The royals - Kitty Kelley [38]
After Philip proposed to Elizabeth, he applied for naturalization as Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten, RN. First he took his uncle’s advice, then his name. Years later Philip discounted his uncle’s influence. “I wasn’t madly in favour [of the name],” he told a biographer in 1971, “but in the end I was persuaded, and anyway I couldn’t think of a better alternative…. Contrary to public impression, Uncle Dickie didn’t have that much to do with the course of my life.”
Having given up his royal title, Philip next renounced the Greek Orthodox Church to join the Church of England. On December 16, 1946, The New York Times reported on the front page that “only politics, which has blighted so many royal romances, is delaying the announcement of the engagement of Princess Elizabeth, heiress to the British throne, and Prince Philip of Greece.” Again the Palace issued a denial.
The King was beside himself. Becoming increasingly irritable and bad tempered, he drank heavily from the whiskey decanter that he insisted be placed next to his plate at every dinner. His war-weary country, though, was still scraping by on rations for food and fuel. Besides these shortages, Britain was beset by another problem: with millions of military being demobilized, the ranks of the unemployed swelled. And with Winston Churchill banished in defeat, the King was forced to deal with a new Prime Minister in Clement Attlee and a Labor government that the conservative monarch considered “far too socialist.” (When someone told Churchill that Attlee was a modest man, Churchill agreed: “He has every reason to be modest.”)
The King wrote gloomily in 1946, “Food, clothes and fuel are the main topics of conversation with us all.” He grew impatient with everyone, especially his cousin Dickie Mountbatten, who strutted like a peacock after the new Labor government appointed him Viceroy of India, where he was to oversee that nation’s progress to independence. The Queen complained that Dickie was “showing off his medals again” and getting more coverage on Movietone News* than the King. Years later she would ridicule Mountbatten’s two-column entry in Who’s Who as overblown and characteristically pompous. She became especially annoyed when he insisted on having his own honors list so he could bestow knighthoods in India just as the King did in England. She expressed her objection to Prime Minister Attlee, who agreed with her. “No one in a century has had such powers,” Attlee said, “but he insisted as a precondition to accepting the job.” As irritated as the King was, he felt that his biggest problem was not Mountbatten but his nephew Philip and the problems he posed as consort to the future Queen of England.
His beloved daughter was balking at having to leave her secret fiancé at home to accompany her family on a ten-week tour of South Africa, which would include her twenty-first birthday. But the King insisted. The trip had been planned for four months to thank the South Africans for throwing out their Prime Minister and supporting Great Britain during the war. The King believed that the wounds splitting South Africa could be healed by the balm of royalty. As the first monarch to travel with his family, he wanted Elizabeth by his side as he opened the Union Parliament in Cape Town. Expecting a royal reception from the Africans, he decreed a ration-busting wardrobe for himself and his family, consisting of pearls and diamonds, cloths of gold, and endless yards of silk and satin, which required weeks of fittings and interminable work by dozens of seamstresses. The ordinary Briton received an annual clothing ration of 48 to 66 coupons. But the royal family received 160 extra coupons a year. For their South Africa wardrobe, they were issued 4,329 coupons. The New York Times described the result as “the most sumptuous wardrobe ever worn by British royalty.”
On her twenty-first birthday Elizabeth was to make a coming-of-age speech in which she, as the future monarch, dedicated herself to her countrymen. The