with exploring by bringing along the famous veteran of Antarctic expeditions, Sir Raymond Priestley; grew a trim mustache and beard known in the Royal Navy as a “full set”; and practiced painting with a private tutor, Norfolk artist Edward Seago, who had been instructing him since the beginning of the year. In a nostalgic touch, Philip signed his paintings with the Greek “Phi”—a circle bisected by a vertical line.
Back home, critics began calling his protracted journey “Philip’s Folly,” noting his conspicuous absence during the aborted Middle East invasion, not to mention his ninth wedding anniversary (although he did send the Queen white roses and a photo of two iguanas embracing), and Christmas, when he broadcast a brief radio address from halfway between New Zealand and Cape Horn, referring to men and women in the Commonwealth “willing to serve others rather than themselves.”
By the fifth year of his wife’s reign, Philip had firmly established a range of causes and passions that he would expand in the years to come. “He has one of those minds where you may be sure the door that is closed is the one he wants to look behind,” said one Buckingham Palace adviser. “He wants to know what is going on. That is the nature of the man.”
From his years as a naval officer, he had been absorbed by science and technology, and he spoke frequently on improving education in those fields. But he equally emphasized the development of the “whole man” by building character along with intellect. He was passionate about the links between mental, moral, and physical health, and the need to give young people opportunities for physical fitness to prevent the spread of what he called “sub- health.” He was an early promoter of Outward Bound, the wilderness schools launched by Gordonstoun founder Kurt Hahn to develop leadership skills and self-confidence by meeting rigorous physical challenges. In 1956 Philip began the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, a worldwide program to recognize teenagers and young adults for completing courses of community service and physical endurance.
Toward the end of Philip’s trip, his longtime friend and loyal private secretary, Mike Parker, suddenly left for London when his wife, Eileen, filed for divorce, accusing her husband of adultery. The news splashed across the British tabloids, and Fleet Street conflated Parker’s prominent position in the royal household with Philip’s months overseas to raise questions about the stability of the royal marriage. The press focused on the duke’s attendance for several years at a stag luncheon group in Soho called the Thursday Club that included Parker as well as actors David Niven and Peter Ustinov. While nothing untoward was said to have occurred at these gatherings except drinking, smoking, and telling racy tales, one of the participants, celebrity photographer Stirling Henry Nahum, popularly known as “Baron,” was alleged to have provided his apartment for assignations between the duke and an unnamed “party girl,” causing a “rift” in his marriage.
Given Philip’s matinee idol looks and eye for feminine beauty, he had been linked in the rumor mill for some time to various actresses and society beauties such as Pat Kirkwood, Helene Cordet, and Katie Boyle—all of whom denied anything more than friendship or a glancing acquaintance. The story of the “party girl” had no basis in fact, and Philip was “very hurt, terribly hurt, very angry” about the allegation. The Queen took the unusual step of authorizing her usually tight-lipped press secretary, Commander Richard Colville, to issue an explicit denial, saying, “It is quite untrue that there is any rift between the Queen and the Duke.” There the matter rested, although rumors of Philip’s supposed dalliances would continue to surface whenever he was spotted on the dance floor or in lively conversation with a pretty woman.
Parker resigned his position to quell the publicity while his case wound through the courts. Elizabeth II and Philip were reunited on February 16, 1957, in Portugal, a moment she used in her own sly fashion to dispel questions about the state of her marriage. When her tanned and freshly shaven consort boarded the Queen’s plane, he found her and the members of her household all wearing false beards. The royal couple spent two days alone before they resumed their public roles on a three-day state visit in Portugal. Reporting on his tour at a luncheon in London on the 26th, the duke took pains to note that in his younger days being away for four months would have meant “nothing at all,” while now for the “obvious reasons” of his wife and family, the prolonged absence “meant much more to me.” But he went on to say that “making some personal sacrifice” was worthwhile to advance the well-being of the Commonwealth “even a small degree.”
Just four days earlier, the Queen had rewarded that sacrifice and Philip’s work generally as her consort by officially making him a Prince of the United Kingdom—a more elevated title than the royal duke designation he had held since their marriage. The idea had come from Harold Macmillan, the new prime minister, who shrewdly saw it as a way to further reinforce Philip’s standing with his wife, as well as in the eyes of Britain and the Commonwealth.
Despite a naturally gloomy cast of mind, Macmillan took charge with a burst of optimism, moving smartly away from the Suez shame and reaffirming Britain’s status as a great country filled with industrious citizens. “Most of our people have never had it so good,” he famously said on July 20, 1957. Under his watch, Britain did indeed grow more prosperous. Shortly after moving into 10 Downing Street, Macmillan also worked deftly to mend the special relationship frayed by Suez, quietly orchestrating an invitation from Eisenhower to the Queen for a state visit to the United States in the fall of 1957.
Macmillan had an easier relationship with Elizabeth II than his jittery predecessor, not as cozy as Churchill’s but sympathetic, notably on her part, although she sometimes became irritated by his antique affectations and tendency to pontificate. Like Churchill, Macmillan had an American mother (invariably described as pushy or dominating) and what his biographer Alistair Horne characterized as an “instinctive reverence towards the monarchy.” The prime minister was astute, witty, and urbane, capable of the sort of penetrating character assessments that intrigued the Queen, who savored political gossip.
Macmillan was a complicated character, a combination of cunning and vulnerability, deeply religious as well as ruthless. The grandson of an impoverished Scottish farmer who built a fortune as a book publisher, Harold had received all the advantages of an education at Eton and Oxford. In World War I, he was wounded five times, an experience that gave him unusual affinity with the working-class men who had served with him in the trenches, along with a measure of survivor’s guilt.
He vaulted into the aristocracy when he married the third daughter of the 9th Duke of Devonshire, Lady Dorothy Cavendish, who tormented him by conducting a decades-long affair with Robert Boothby, a flamboyant and amusing bisexual politician. The relationship was an open secret (“We all knew about it,” the Queen Mother years later told her friend Woodrow Wyatt, a conservative columnist for
More at ease in the like-minded company around the bar at White’s, the men’s club on St. James’s Street, he nevertheless quickly warmed to the Queen, a different sort of woman from his social acquaintances, with an intelligence and detailed mastery of domestic and foreign policy issues that astonished him from the outset. He readily took advantage of her total discretion and maternal kindness, describing her as “a great support, because she is the one person you can talk to.”
Butler, the veteran lieutenant who made the Tuesday evening trip to Buckingham Palace when Macmillan was traveling abroad, held a similar view of her gifts as an interlocutor. “She never reacted excessively,” he later said. “She never used a phrase carelessly. She would never give away an opinion early on in the conversation.” Rather, she would solicit an opinion and “listen to it right through.”
In his nearly seven years in office, Macmillan and Elizabeth II had a genuine working partnership. He frequently sent her long letters filled with appraisals of world leaders and confessions about his setbacks, as well as droll vignettes and grim prognostications. The Queen dispatched handwritten replies that were unfailingly encouraging and appreciative. Macmillan was taken with her informality and her sense of fun. Like many others, he wished she could “be made to smile more” in public. On learning of his reaction, she remarked that she “had always assumed people wanted her to look solemn most of the time.”
AFTER A HIATUS of six years, the thirty-one-year-old sovereign was now keen to have more children, as was her husband. Dickie Mountbatten blamed the delay on Philip’s anger over the Queen’s rejection of his family name after the accession. But by her own account, she had postponed her dream of having a large family primarily because she wanted to concentrate on establishing herself as an effective monarch.
During a visit to Buckingham Palace in May 1957, Eleanor Roosevelt met with Elizabeth II for nearly an hour the day after Prince Charles had undergone a tonsillectomy. The former first lady found her to be “just as calm and composed as if she did not have a very unhappy little boy on her mind.” The Queen reported that Charles had
