The Duke of Edinburgh is finally to retire in the autumn, after more than 70 years of public service, just after his 96th birthday. Philip – a former first lieutenant in the Navy – is one of the last prominent figures in British life to have served in the second world war; he’s also possibly the only one worshipped as a living god, as far as I know.
Yet this man at the very heart of the British Establishment has come to be known as a sort of arch-reactionary, an English colonel figure who goes around insulting foreigners – either to our amusement or utter horror.
He was once, in the distance of time, the royal family’s most progressive reformer; the newcomer from impoverished Greek-German nobility (though his first language is French). His mother was a deaf and schizophrenic Orthodox nun, as well as a heroic Righteous Among The Nations; Prince Charles’s own Orthodox Christian sympathies have long been a source of great interest, and many suspect that to be his true faith.
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