The very model of dutifulness:
Barbara Kay on Prince Philip

Nov. 14, 2007

While the sun set on the British empire years ago, a significant anniversary on Nov. 20 reminds us that it is also beginning to set on two lingering quintessential qualities associated with Britain’s glory years as the world’s most confident nation: namely, Dutifulness and Eccentricity. We find both symbiotically entwined in the dutiful subjects and eccentric author of Gyles Brandreth’s 2004 biography, Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Royal Marriage.

Queen Elizabeth II will be the first British monarch to celebrate 60 years of marriage this Saturday. Doubtless the last as well: Enduring marriages were in previous generations a commonplace, but today’s grim odds are reflected (and then some) in the tawdry connubial history of three of the Queen’s four children.

Apart from their common aristocratic lineage — Philip is a great-great-grandchild of Queen Victoria on the maternal side, and the son of a Greek prince — our royal protagonists came from radically different backgrounds.

Elizabeth, as everyone knows, was reared in a stable and loving home, her destiny unfurling in a shining ribbon from birth. Philip’s trajectory was lonely and unpredictable. Though deracinated, shunted around Europe and virtually orphaned by political upheaval, exile, mental instability (mother) and aimless drifting (father), Philip never brooded over life’s disappointments or obstacles: “It’s simply what happened. The family broke up . . . I just had to get on with it. You do. One does.”

Here is Duty writ large, the great uniting principle between Philip and Elizabeth. A mutual commitment to the national interest and one’s quotidian chores (20,000 official appearances and counting for Philip alone) is doubtless the secret of their steadfast, amiable and mutually supportive partnership.

This is certainly the view taken by Gyles Brandreth, an old and trusted friend of Prince Philip, and the latest in a long line of aristophile voyeurs to peek backstage at the Palace. Philip and Elizabeth is as lively and instructive a read as you’ll get on such well-trodden turf, with some candid but rather naughty observations by Brandreth’s innumerable upper-echelon connections

("She wouldn’t do oral sex, she just wouldn’t,” says romance novelist Barbara Cartland of Diana, explaining Charles’ unhappy marriage; and “The Queen enjoys sex, as I do,” says Lord Longford. “People who ride tend to.")

Ironically enough, it is Gyles Brandreth’s life that would make the more compelling biography. The vanishing phenomenon of protocol-bound marriages is interesting, but for entertainment value, duty isn’t a patch on the equally rapidly superannuating eccentricity of a Gyles Brandreth, who:

• Achieved a world record for the longest uninterrupted after-dinner speech — 18 hours — unfazed by the fact that his urine-extraction apparatus, “a sort of huge plastic sausage that went down your leg and could hold pints and pints” unmoored and “snaked out the bottom of my trouser leg across the stage";
• Was president of the Oxford Union, directed the Oxford Union Dramatic Society and himself acted in Shakespearean plays;
• Has written 250 books, amongst them: The Joy of Lex: How to Have Fun with 860,341,500 Words (a former European Monopoly champ, Brandreth is president of the Association of British Scrabble Players); Brief Encounters: Meetings with Remarkable People (Johnny Rotten told him to “eff off, eff-face"); The Bedside Book of Great Sexual Disasters; and Knit-ability: Fun Knits for All the Family;
• In Zippertydoodah, a show Brandreth wrote and starred in, condensed 100 musicals into 100 minutes;
• With Michele, wife of 35 years and mother of their three children, founded the Teddy Bear Museum;
• Was himself a Conservative MP from 1992 to 1997 and a whip in John Major’s government, but enjoyed wider recognition for his 1,000 “silly jumpers” (sweaters);
• Was the political patron of Lesbians for a Conservative Victory (Michele told “popinjay” Gyles, “you are probably a lesbian’s idea of a real man");
• Will not accept honours — doesn’t believe in them — and ascribes his protean accomplishments to the fact that “I’m not into introspection. Just get on with life. Busy busy busy.”

From Philip to Gyles, the common thread to high achievement through both duty and eccentricity seems to be a rejection of solipsism and navel-gazing. Food for thought in our grievance-collecting culture. Anyway, take a good look before the sun goes down on these uniquely British virtues. The world will be a less edifying and a far duller place without them.

bkay@videotron.ca