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took on the headship of various organizations concerned with the areas which
particularly interested him – science and technology (as Patron of the Industrial Society
and President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science), young people
and sport (President of the National Playing Fields Association and Patron of the
Outward Bound Trust, President of the Central Council of Physical Education, the
Amateur Athletics Board and the Commonwealth Games Federation, and of the Royal
Yachting Association), all of which he undertook in the 1950s. In response to an idea of
his old headmaster, Kurt Hahn, he set up the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme
designed to stretch the mental and physical capacities of youngsters. Besides all this
there were endless visits of inspection; ‘in the early days he had very dreary
engagements, gas works, that sort of thing,’ an employee said.
In some situations (increasingly so where the media was concerned) his sharp
intelligence and restless, often abrasive, personality made things more difficult for him
than they would have been for a less driven man. This is the conclusion one of his
authorized biographers, Tim Heald, came to at the end of a period of close observation
of his subject:
Still he puzzles me. Real humility sits uneasily alongside apparent arrogance; energy and optimism co-exist
with sudden douches of cold water; real kindnesses are mingled with inexplicable snubs; certainty and
uncertainty, sensitivity and insensitivity, walk hand in hand. He is gregarious, he is a loner; he loves
argument, he cannot bear to lose one. On the one hand he will make a detour of thousands of miles to console
the victims of a hurricane; on the other, he once got into such a bate with an equerry who failed to take
shotgun lessons that he stopped the car and ordered him out. These apparent inconsistencies certainly make
him intriguing; but they also make him exasperating. He is energetic, mercurial, quixotic, and ultimately
impossible to pin down – partly on purpose… 7
Given the ducal temperament, it is open to doubt whether he would have had an
ultimately successful career in the Navy. Despite his intelligence and ability (he has a
sharper brain than either his uncle Mountbatten or his son the Prince of Wales), his
dislike of being ordered about by pompous officials would certainly have brought him
into collision with superior gold braid on his way to the top. He has a naturally
rebellious temperament; even his sense of duty gives way under the stress of irritation
with officialdom. On one occasion, when he was flying his aircraft to Australia, a
refuelling stop was planned in one of the Gulf States. When the Foreign Office liaison
officer discovered that the Duke intended merely to stop, refuel and fly on, he pointed
out to the Palace that several local rulers important to Britain’s interests in the area
would be deeply offended if the Queen’s husband did not meet them as he passed
through. Philip was forced to conform, but he never forgave the official concerned and
when, at the end of the official’s career in the diplomatic service, Elizabeth wanted to
honour him personally, her husband objected. ‘X is the biggest shit even the Foreign
Office has ever produced,’ he exploded (the man in question got his honour none the
less). Exasperation, his biographer concluded, is a keynote in his character. Never one to
suffer fools gladly and with a bullshit detector finely tuned, he would pounce on the