Celebrating Prince Philip’s 100th birthday

The Duke of Edinburgh - Prince Philip - passed away peacefully at Windsor Castle on April 9, 2021.

A statement from Buckingham Palace read: "It is with deep sorrow that Her Majesty The Queen has announced the death of her beloved husband, His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

"His Royal Highness passed away peacefully this morning at Windsor Castle."

As Britain entered a 30-day period of mourning, flags on landmark buildings were lowered to half-mast.

The devastating news came after Prince Philip’s health had been deteriorating for some time.

The Prince announced he was stepping down from royal engagements in May 2017 and made a final official public appearance as a serving Royal later that year, during a Royal Marines parade on the forecourt of Buckingham Palace.

Prince Philip's life in pictures

Prince Philip's early years

Described by the Queen as her rock, Prince Philip was born in Corfu, Greece, June 10, 1921, with the official title Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark.

In 1922, Philip's uncle, the King of Greece, was forced to abdicate following the Greco-Turkish war. Philip's father was accused of treason and the family were exiled from Greece, reportedly smuggled out of the country in a cot made from a fruit box. They went to live in Paris for the next decade which was very tough time for them all.

This difficult period caused his mother, Princess Alice to suffer a nervous breakdown, and she was sent to a sanatorium in Switzerland as a result. With his four older sisters married off to German aristocrats and his father living in the South of France, Philip found himself alone at the age of 10. This is when the Mountbattens stepped in to care for Philip.

During his childhood years he was educated at The Elms, an American school in Paris, Cheam School in the United Kingdom, and then Schule Schloss Salem in Germany in 1933 for two terms before going to Gordonstoun in Scotland, after which he joined the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth in 1939.

It was during a royal tour of the Royal Naval College that same year in 1939 when the young dashing officer first met a young Princess Elizabeth, who was in fact his third cousin as the two share a great-great grandmother in Queen Victoria.

The then 13-year-old Elizabeth was said to be smitten with 18-year-old Philip and according to her governess, vowed to one day marry him.

Service to his country

After leaving Dartmouth, Philip went on to serve in the Second World War as a first lieutenant in the Royal Navy.

In 1943 he helped save scores of lives when his ship, HMS Wallace, was under attack from a Luftwaffe bomber off the coast of Sicily.

He conjured up a plan to throw overboard a wooden raft with smoke floats that would create the illusion of debris ablaze on the water. As he hoped, the German plane was fooled into attacking the raft while the ship, HMS Wallace, sailed to safety under cover of darkness.

During the war years he kept in contact by letter with Princess Elizabeth and also visited Windsor where she was living, watching her play Aladdin in a Royal pantomime one Christmas.

In one letter, the Prince wrote to Elizabeth: “To have been spared in the war and seen victory, to have been given the chance to rest and to re-adjust myself, to have fallen in love completely and unreservedly, makes all one’s personal and even the world’s troubles seem small and petty."

When the war ended just two years later, on November 20, 1947, the two married at Westminster Abbey and on this day, Phillip became the Duke of Edinburgh.

Ever since, he was a faithful consort to the Queen, supporting her through thick and thin along with their children Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.

However, at times his renowned bluntness and his cheeky sense of humour caused headlines such as the time he yelled "yak, yak, yak; come on get a move on,” to the Queen from the deck of Britannia in Belize in 1994 as she chatted to her hosts on the quayside.

But on a serious note, a lifetime’s service saw him support numerous charities. He also launched the Duke of Edinburgh Award in his name to celebrate young people encouraging them to focus on athletics, education, the environment and achievement.

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