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pleaded with his equerry to reconsider because he could not bear to lose the one person who was his friend and ally in the Palace, but both men knew, and Philip later admitted, that Parker “had to go,” especially after the Townsend affair. The Queen’s courtiers demanded that the equerry be put ashore before Philip’s reunion with the Queen. Furious at having to follow their orders, Philip insisted on accompanying his friend to the airport in Gibraltar. “It’s the least I can do,” he said. He looked unhappy as he emerged from a government limousine with Parker. Philip walked him to his waiting plane, and in front of reporters,* he clasped his hand in silence. Parker forced a smile, bounded up the steps without a backward glance, and flew to London, where he held a press conference with his lawyer.

Waiting for him at the London airport was the Queen’s formidable press secretary, Commander Richard Colville. The equerry brightened when he saw the courtier and approached to thank him for coming to run interference with the reporters. The press secretary cut him off before he could say a word and made it clear that he was not there to help him.

“Hello, Parker,” said Colville. “I’ve just come to let you know that from now on, you’re on your own.” That said, Colville turned and walked away.

In Lisbon the Queen’s plane circled the airfield because the Queen’s husband was running late. On board the Viscount airliner, Her Majesty and her twenty-five passengers, including Foreign Secretary Selwyn Lloyd, and all her ladies-in-waiting, giggled as they pasted fake beards on their chins in preparation for Philip’s arrival. He had sent the Queen a picture of himself after weeks without a shave. “It was the Queen’s idea,” said one of the women. “She has a wonderful sense of humor.”

At the time, few people around the throne were laughing. The press in Germany, France, and Italy had published another round of stories about the Duke of Edinburgh’s “bachelor apartment close to London’s famous Berkeley Square” and questioned whether the weekly dinner parties of the Thursday Club that met “in the infamous Soho district” had been confined to Philip’s male friends. On February 5, 1957, the Evening Standard of London had implied a less-than-happy marriage by reporting that Philip had ordered a new bed for his room at Windsor Castle. The bed was made to his exact specifications (“It’s a single bed,” reported the newspaper). Other than mentioning that the Queen “rode alone” in Windsor Great Park and opened Parliament “without her husband by her side,” the British press had remained silent about the Queen’s rocky marriage and relied on the American press to spread the bad news. On February 8, 1957, the Baltimore Sun delivered. The story ran on the front page under the headline “London Rumors of Rift in Royal Family Growing.” Filed by the paper’s London correspondent, Joan Graham, the article linked Michael Parker’s resignation to whispers that the Duke of Edinburgh had had more than a passing interest in an unmarried woman and had met her regularly in the apartment of the late royal photographer, the Duke’s friend Baron Nahum. Asserting that rumors about the splintered royal marriage “are now percolating down to the British masses, who only know about the royal family from what is printed in the British press,” the dispatch concluded the real reason for the four-month cruise was that Philip “was being got out of the country to cool down.”

The Queen, who according to people close to her had been troubled enough about her marriage to consult a psychiatrist three times during this period, acted stunned. “How can they say such terrible things about us?” she asked her dresser, BoBo MacDonald. The Palace courtiers became concerned, thinking the monarchy was being sullied. Commander Richard Colville, the Queen’s press secretary, quickly denounced the story. “It is quite untrue that there is a rift between the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh,” he said. “It’s a lie.” His denial was reported around the world with a recapitulation of the offending story, which