In a comment piece for MailPlus, Mr Hardman said: "The same tenacious quality which saw him refuse an anonymous ambulance yesterday - he chose to go home in an ordinary car - runs through the entire story of his life. "We have heard a lot in recent days from two former Windsor residents who found the royal existence a burden so intolerable that they felt impelled to emigrate. "Yet Prince Philip endured rather more hostility than a spat about who made who cry at a dress fitting. "‘They were absolutely bloody to him. They patronised him. They treated him as an outsider,’ his friend, Lord Brabourne (married to the duke’s cousin Patricia Mountbatten) revealed many years later."