The royals - Kitty Kelley [71]
“Why, that German princeling,” snapped the Queen’s private secretary, Tommy Lascelles, who did not understand or appreciate Philip’s efforts to keep his wife attuned to the real world.
“That man is no gentleman,” said Commander Sir Richard Colville, the Queen’s press secretary, fuming. “And he has no friends who are gentlemen.” For a courtier whose honor was invested in being considered a gentleman,* this was a debasing insult, but the swipe was passed privately. As so-called gentlemen, the courtiers were careful to be correct in public because they could not afford to be openly hostile to the Queen’s husband. On the surface they acted civilized, and in his presence they addressed him respectfully. Behind his back they savaged him. Philip, who cared little about being defined as a gentleman, barged ahead with his sweeping innovations.
“It’s our job to make this monarchy business work,” he said. He functioned for the Queen in much the same way Eleanor Roosevelt had done for the President. She had been his eyes and ears, his emissary to the masses. Philip was determined to revitalize the Crown and make it relevant to people’s lives. He accepted honorary positions with groups like the National Playing Fields Association and fought hard to establish the Duke of Edinburgh Awards Scheme, which rewards young people for outstanding achievements in sports, cultural activities, and voluntary service.
The Ministry of Education was highly suspicious of a scheme bearing the obvious imprint of Dr. Kurt Hahn, the German founder of Gordonstoun, which was Philip’s alma mater. The Minister of Education was more than a little dubious about the Duke of Edinburgh. “I had a rather difficult interview,” admitted Philip many years later. “As with all our organization, it worked on the ‘not invented here’ syndrome. Anything you haven’t thought of yourself is bound to be wrong…. But gradually, as they came to realize what the scheme was about, and that it wasn’t a new Hitler Youth movement, people began to realize that there was some merit in it.”*
With frenetic energy Philip toured plants and factories and schools, constantly asking questions: “How do you make that work? Can’t you find a better way? Faster? More efficient?” He fought the courtiers at every turn, refusing to let them write his speeches and, worse, refusing to follow their advice to say nothing. He insisted on being heard, and to their dismay, he was.
As President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, he hectored the members for being complacent.
“It’s no good shutting your eyes and saying, ‘British is best’ three times a day after meals and expecting it to be so,” he said. “I’m afraid our no-men are a thousand times more harmful than the American yes-men. If we are to recover prosperity, we shall have to find ways of emancipating energy and enterprise from the frustrating control of the constitutionally timid.”
The courtiers worried about negative press reaction to Philip’s outspokenness. Already overworked, they had been trying for months to squelch a potential scandal involving the Queen’s twenty-three-year-old sister, Princess Margaret, and Group Captain Peter Townsend, the thirty-eight-year-old equerry who had served her father since 1944 and was now working for her mother as Deputy Master of the Household. For months the courtiers had been denying rumors of a romance, but a newspaper photograph taken during the coronation showed the Princess flicking a piece of fluff from Townsend’s shoulder. The intimacy of that small passing gesture revealed the truth and threw the Palace into confusion.
A fighter pilot in World War II’s Battle of Britain, Peter Townsend had received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Distinguished Service Order for valor. He then became the King’s favorite equerry. With the same gentle appeal of Leslie Howard playing Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind, Townsend was a charming man with humor. He was not robust and swaggering like Prince Philip, but slightly fragile and emotional. He stammered,