He overcame family tragedy and personal difficulty to become a war hero - and also won the heart of the future Queen. Dynamic, driven, and prone to explosions of both ardour and anger, he was never cut out by temperament for a secondary role, but somehow Prince Philip transformed himself. Now, as the longest-serving royal consort in British history approaches 90, the final part of our exclusive extract from Philip Eade’s new book, Young Prince Philip: His Turbulent Early Life, tells how he wooed the young Elizabeth - and the nation, too.
After the war was over, Prince Philip remained in the Far East with his destroyer Whelp to collect and bring home prisoners of war, arriving back in Portsmouth on 17 January, 1946. A series of unexciting home postings had left him restless and disillusioned after the buzz of action. In a letter to Queen Elizabeth, he admitted he was “still not accustomed to the idea of peace, rather fed up with everything and feeling that there was not much to look forward to and rather grudgingly accepting the idea of going on in the peacetime navy.”
