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‘Parker was a terrible pilot – took it as a joke.’ Other people at the Palace were less
sorry about the disappearance of Baron and Parker, both of whom were considered
responsible for leading Philip astray.
Boy Browning collapsed with a nervous breakdown in July 1957 and finally had to
retire from his position as treasurer to the Duke of Edinburgh in 1959. He was highly
strung and frequently in bad health; according to friends, he blamed himself for some of
the disaster at Arnhem. He was under the emotional stress of having a serious affair
with a woman in London while remaining devoted to Daphne du Maurier and, as a
result of his difficulties, he drank too much. He had kept his personal problems to
himself; when Margaret Forster’s excellent but grim biography of Daphne came out,
Elizabeth wrote to his family saying how surprised she had been to read that he had such
a sad life. Browning, like the rest of Elizabeth’s male senior household, was a little in
love with her. ‘You could always tell when he was going in to see her,’ a Clarence House
aide said. ‘He’d give his shoes an extra polish and check himself out in the mirror.’ And,
despite the differences in their personalities and background, he had been extremely
fond of Philip – ‘saying farewell to him affected me much more than I expected,’ he
wrote.
For a hyperactive and intelligent man such as Philip, the role of royal consort was not
an easy one. As Prince Albert had complained in January 1854:
A very considerable section of the nation had never given itself the trouble to consider what really is the
position of the husband of the Queen Regnant. When I first came over here, I was met by this want of
knowledge and unwillingness to give a thought to the position of this luckless personage. Peel cut down my
income, Wellington refused me my rank, the Royal family cried out against the Foreign interloper, the Whigs
in office were only inclined to concede me just as much space as I could stand upon. 6
One hundred years later Philip had found himself very much in the same position; his
anguished exclamation – ‘I’m nothing but a bloody amoeba’ – expressed much the same
feelings as his predecessor. He had had to create his own ‘space to stand upon’.
He has no constitutional role other than as a Privy Counsellor. He sees no state
papers. He has apparently never wanted, nor has he been given, the title of ‘Prince
Consort’ which Victoria bestowed upon Albert. ‘He never wanted to get involved with
the business of state,’ an aide said. ‘He was always going to hoe his own furrow.’ He
saw his most important role, according to Parker, as ‘looking after the Queen in first
place, second and third’. He had to do this without subsuming his entire personality into
the role of consort, something which, as a natural leader, he would have found
impossible. The strong sense of duty and service inculcated at Gordonstoun and in the
Royal Navy carried him along. Philip being the man he was, the prospect of inventing a
role for himself did not daunt him. ‘He saw it as a challenge,’ an aide said. ‘He always
supported the Queen 100 per cent and he took over the things the King had done like
running the estates.’ ‘The fifties was a very fertile time for him,’ a colleague said. ‘He
started to set out his own agenda and by ‘56 he was really sorting things out.’ He also