so long. was he trying to get away from the queen? what was happening? to that is added a scandal. not just a whiff of scandal but a real scandal. a shadow falls on the last stages of the duke of edinburgh s tour. mike parker his friend and secretary has resigned. mike parker, the prince s private secretary, leaves the tour early. he s being divorced by his wife for adultery. certain london papers have given front page publicity to his family troubles. so what s going on here? his best friend s getting divorced. he s his closest companion and ally. is something similar going on in the life of prince philip? mike parker had introduced prince philip into this slightly disreputable soho world. and people think they re all at it in the thursday club. this led to an enormous amount of rumor and speculation
he let off steam by going to what s known as the thursday club in soho, which is more like the red-light district of london. the thursday club is a predominantly male luncheon club. it was a place philip felt he could sort of escape and let his hair down in private. and there was a lot of drink drunk and a lot of dirty jokes told and a general sort of air of dissoluteness. and of course prince philip occasionally would go out in the evening with friends and once or twice he found himself in a nightclub late at night. he was seen dancing with an attractive young actress. he might only have met her that evening. but some of his behavior was considered fast and reckless by courtiers at the time. but the british press, deferential toward the royal family, largely ignores rumors of philip s partying. it s a very difficult problem
just how young the queen was at this time. she had no experience of being queen. so of course she s going to listen to the prime minister. winston churchill was a friend of her father s, and he was the man who people saw as having won the war. he s an incredibly formidable figure. and the idea that this very young, almost child-like queen, should defy the prime minister, that is completely off limits. the queen issues a proclamation. the name of the royal house will remain windsor. for the first time in british history heirs to the throne will take their family name from their mother and not their father. for philip this is a terrible, terrible humiliation. a typical marriage at that social rank in the early 1950s would be one with a superior husband and a charming, deferential wife. had prince philip married anybody else, that s what he would have got. he thought there s no other father in the united kingdom who can t give his own name to his
for the queen because of the way she d been brought up in this royal bubble she had no idea of the sort of bohemian world that existed outside the walls of buckingham palace. and we get a slight feeling i think within the royal marriage of a kind of separateness. so when he came back smelling rather heavily of drink i think she was uneasy about it and she retreated rather into herself. and there to see off the duke of edinburgh are the queen, princess anne and the duke of cornwall. in 1956 philip leaves for a solo tour of the commonwealth, triggering widespread speculation. the official reason for it is that he s opening the olympic games in australia. but he s away for about four months. and very, very slow to come home. at the time there were people asking questions about why the duke of edinburgh was away for
elizabeth, was very reluctant to leave. that s never easy. however big a place is, and she d been queen of england. that was quite awkward, that situation. the queen mother and prince philip are not natural soulmates. she would have seen him as a sort of brash kind of independent type of person. he would have seen her as very conservative. the queen mother has a huge amount of influence over her daughter and says i know how things are done. the queen retains her parents courtiers. these royal advisers are traditionalists, determined to keep an iron grip on the running of the palace. and of course these courtiers think that because the queen is just a woman, she s a young woman, that they can have all the influence because she ll be so easy to control. and philip is shut out. for quite a macho chap that second role a step behind his wife i think was a difficult role.