HELLO! Special Collectors' Edition - HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

The Duke of Edinburgh was an extraordinary man, a tireless public servant who helped shape the lives of millions of people. He had many outstanding achievements. A loving father, grandfather and greatgrandfather, he was also a war hero, an environmentalist and, with the many groundbreaking projects he launched over the years, a tireless champion of young people. But, of course, his greatest legacy – and the one history books will remember him best by – is as the man who for more than 73 years was the Queen’s rock, or as she so famously put it, “her strength and stay”. As numerous commentators have said since his passing a mere two months shy of turning 100, he was, as the longest-serving consort in British history, the joint author in making…

His Coronation vow was to be the Queen’s “liege man of life and limb”, and few can doubt Philip stayed utterly true to his word. Theirs was a great and enduring romance. In November 2017 the couple celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary, making their union the longest of any monarch and consort in British history. The Queen remarked in her Christmas message at the end of that landmark year: “I don’t know that anyone had invented the term ‘platinum’ for a 70th wedding anniversary when I was born. You weren’t expected to be around that long.” However, Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh will also be remembered as a superlative royal team. When the Queen acceded to the throne in 1952 there was no textbook for male consorts.…

With a firm and steady gaze, nine-year-old Prince Philip proudly poses in the uniform of an evzone – a Greek elite soldier – raising his right hand in salute. Despite his tender years, his commanding demeanour and stoic disposition are already clear to see. This strength of character not only helped him endure the many tribulations and tragedies that beset his childhood, but it also enabled him to become a staunch source of support to those he loved in adulthood. Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark’s pedigree was profoundly royal, and yet the way in which he entered the world was rather humble. On 10 June 1921 he was born on a kitchen table in Mon Repos, a villa set among groves of olive and cypress trees on the island…

Winston Churchill described their wedding as “a splash of colour on the hard road we have to travel”. And from that bleak November day in 1947, when bomb-scarred Britain finally had a national event to cheer, until their final days together, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh remained inseparable. Royal biographers usually trace this epic love story back to the summer of 1939, just weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War, when the royal family visited the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. An outbreak of mumps among the cadets was confirmed just as the VIP party arrived so, to safeguard the health of the 13-year-old heiress presumptive and her younger sister Margaret, the girls were taken to the Commodore’s House. The 18 - year-old Philip Mountbatten – a…

The newlyweds’ honeymoon at Broadlands, near the New Forest, and Birkhall, on the Balmoral estate, was a blissful time. “It is so lovely and peaceful,” wrote Princess Elizabeth to her mother. As for her new husband: “Cherish Lilibet?” Philip wrote to the Queen. “I wonder if that word is enough to express what is in me.” For 21-year-old Elizabeth, the future surely looked rosy. Married to the man of her dreams, she looked forward to setting up her marital home. With her father aged 52 and her mother a youthful 47, she must have assumed it would be years before she would accede to the throne. Philip, meanwhile, was eager to resume his naval duties. Although he accepted a desk job at the Admiralty, followed by a staff course at…

In the early hours of 6 February 1952, the course of Prince Philip’s life changed forever. Princess Elizabeth’s beloved father, George VI, died in his sleep from a coronary thrombosis – a fatal blood clot to the heart. It was left to the Duke to gently break the news to his wife. At the time of the King’s death, the couple were on safari, staying overnight at Treetops, a game-viewing lodge in Kenya’s Aberdare National Park, on the first leg of their Commonwealth tour. Due to their remote location, the sombre message did not reach the royal party until hours later, by which time they had returned to nearby Sagana, a fishing lodge given to them by the Kenyan people as a wedding present. It was here, beside a trout…