Prince Philip - The Bachelor Years - Duke Of Edinburgh - British Documentary

Decidedly old school and occasionally inappropriate. Yes he is brusque and he can be abrupt and yes he sometimes says some things which are totally out of order. A stark contrast to the modern younger royal family. But before he joined the House of Windsor, Philip's life was an epic tale of war. Several people were executed and Prince Philip's father looked very likely to suffer the same fate. Illness and tragedy. Philip's mother was clearly falling into a state of mental decline. Abandonment. His father was living with a mistress in Monte Carlo. And heroism. Prince Philip probably saved hundreds of lives on his ship by his very very swift action. It's a life that dashes from the war-torn Mediterranean. A royal family running for their lives pretty much as dramatic as you can get. To the streets of Paris and the school halls of Nazi Germany. Well he would have been exposed to all of the doctrine that was being pumped out by the Nazis at that time. How did this royal survivor come through such extraordinary times? Having such a troubled childhood, it's given the backbone to him to put up with anything. And could Philip's experiences before joining the House of Windsor explain his later life of service and devotion? There was nothing of a home life for him. There are some people who have difficult home lives who it drives to work harder and to succeed. After 50 years of experience I find it is a great temptation to give advice. Turkey in 1922. The Greek army is invading its old enemy in a brutal war. One of the army's leading figures is the Greek prince Andrea who has recently become father to baby Philip. Prince Philip's father was a major general in the Greek army who were invading part of Turkey, Anatolia. But there was a huge military setback and and the Greek forces had to flee to the coast. Following the army's humiliating retreat from Turkey, the pro-monarchy Greek government is overthrown and its leaders are held responsible for the disaster. In the aftermath of this coup, several of the people were court-martialed and executed including a former prime minister, a former foreign minister, several of the top generals. And when the execution was carried out they all stood incredibly bravely and stared at the firing squad. Prince Philip's father looked very likely to suffer the same fate. This is a really precarious time for his family's feet. Philip's father's life is only spared by the court when his cousin the British king George V intervenes. Somewhat surreptitiously I think George V was very instrumental in organising the escape from Greece of his cousins including Philip, a babe in arms, who was taken onto this ship because there was no cot, no crib for him, and so the sailors engineered a cot for him out of old fruit crates. It is a dramatic start in life for Prince Philip. Born Philip Possello in Corfu just 18 months earlier in June 1921. He was born on the dining room table in fact of a beautiful villa in Corfu called Mon Repos. And he was born on the dining room table because the surgeon thought that was the best place for Alice to give birth. And by all accounts he was a very much wanted and loved young son. Philip's mother Alice is a princess of the German house of Battenberg with illustrious British ancestral roots. Prince Philip's mother was Princess Alice of Battenberg and she was born in 1885 in the presence of her great-grandmother Queen Victoria in Windsor Castle. Philip is the great-great-grandson of Queen Victoria. His parents have royal lineage right back through to the British royal family but also to the Greek and Danish thrones. He was very very well connected and by the time he was born his relations were on practically every throne throughout Europe. Philip's father Prince Andrea of Greece is the brother of the Greek king and a full-time soldier. The wars between Greece and Turkey have actually been going on for many many years and the royal family and Prince Andrea were very much placed into senior positions in the military. But the military coup following the latest defeat forces the Greek royal family into exile. Philip's family including his four older sisters have to flee their homeland. This really was as pretty much as dramatic as you can get and of course this is now you know a royal family really running for their lives. They were able to smuggle some jewelry in their clothes and some money but very little. It's quite a dramatic start to his life. He has no recollection of the family fleeing in 1922 but it had enormous consequences and led to him being a bit of a wandering boy. Despite their royal connections when the family flees Corfu with baby Philip they have no home to go to. From a position of royalty they are now existence for Prince Philip. They settled in the home of one of his aunts and uncles at Saint-Cloud in Paris. They basically gave the exiled family a house in which to live and if they needed it they would help them financially. Their life in Paris was fairly stable but of course they were dependent on charity basically and I don't think anybody really likes that very much and the other point is of course that as members of the royal family they felt themselves dispossessed and in a sense pointless. They didn't have anything that they could really do. But Philip's life in Paris is happy and stable surrounded by his loving family. I think these early years of Philip's life were perhaps the happiest of his childhood because it was relatively settled for those years in Paris and his father Andrea endured him. His sisters recalled how there'd be gales of laughter when Philip and his father were larking around. He was able to be educated, his relatives paid for him to have a good education, he was multilingual, he speaks as a result fluent French as well as German. But when Philip is eight years old his happy family life in Paris begins to break down. Philip's mother Alice was clearly very fragile in her emotional psychological health and there's every sense that the kind of trauma of the events in Greece and their hasty departure really did put her under psychological strain. No one really knows whether she suffered from polar disorder or whether she was in fact paranoid schizophrenic. Alice felt she communicated with the spiritual world. She took to lying on the floor for great periods of time waiting for the spirits to to tell her what she should be doing. Philip's father Prince Andrea has his own struggles with life in exile. I think that Andrea is perhaps unfulfilled because he's had life as a Greek royal and then he's a major general in the army and then suddenly he's an exile. I think a middle-aged prince without a role that's difficult. Alice's growing mental instability had a profound effect on her marriage which maybe had never been that strong but certainly in view of her eccentricities and her her mental breakdown Andrea spent less and less time with the family. Alice's family takes the decision that she needs urgent help. One Easter holidays the family had gone to stay with some and Alice's mother organized for psychiatric doctors to come and basically snatch her away that the children were taken out for the day and she was sort of bundled into it. The result his father then seemed to somewhat abandon the family bearing in mind his sisters were older now and it was just that Philip was quite young. Philip loses first his mother and then his father all before his ninth birthday. Philip's father ended up living this rather lavish sort of playboy lifestyle in many ways with a mistress moving to Monte Carlo so quite a different kind of life than the one he'd had in Greece. Philip would see little of either his mother or his father for the rest of his childhood. Prince Philip as a boy seemed to take all this in his stride he was a very cheerful mischievous practical joker and it didn't seem as though he was especially affected by it. I talked to Prince Philip and he said and I think this is very significant really my mother was ill my father was away so I had to get on with it and that really is what he's done all his life. Child psychologists would say that he built himself a sort of shell around himself where he could sort of function as this outwardly cheerful person but he didn't want to have people ask him about how he was feeling and that would tend to bring out sort of irritation and anger from him. With his parents unable to take care of him Philip's family now has to decide where the nine-year-old boy should go. Decisions that will shape the rest of his life. It's Paris in the summer of 1930 and aged just nine Philip is coping with distress and upheaval. His mother Princess Alice is committed to an asylum in Switzerland and his father Prince Andrea is in Monte Carlo with his mistress. You have to think that these formative years for Philip must have had a profound effect on his character and I think indeed they did. He must have been confused I imagine and probably hurting he must have felt abandoned by his parents. The family decides that young Philip will live with Alice's brother in England. George the Marquess of Milford Haven or Georgie as he is known is Philip's uncle. He is a Royal Navy commander and happily married to Nada a former Russian aristocrat with two children of their own. They had this beautiful house in England in Berkshire and basically Philip went to live with them and he absolutely adored George his uncle. Philip is warmly welcomed into the home a home though that is probably unlike any other he would expect. They were very sort of broad-minded they had what was reputed to be the largest collection of pornography then existing. They sent their son age of 17 he was sent to a brothel in Paris to round off his education. They were sort of quite out there but their marriage was very strong. Though there was infidelities that took place in that relationship what he witnessed as a boy was the two people that enjoyed love and were warm to him. Philip's whole family though play a role in his upbringing. I think he was much loved by the uncle's aunts by his grandmother and had bedrooms in several homes but there would always be lots of planning on where would he go in the school holidays so he must have felt a lot of his childhood in the 1930s like he was a parcel of being moved from place to place in the holidays from country to country. Some of those holidays are spent in southern Germany with his four older sisters who have all married German aristocrats and it's Philip's second eldest sister Theodora who suggests a plan that would see Philip's life uprooted once again. When Prince Philip was living with the Milford Havens some of his sisters were a little bit worried about their sort of bohemian ways and Theodora his second eldest sister was married and his family had started a school called Saarlem. Saarlem was a very different kind of school and he was packed off there in his early teenage years which he didn't really want to do. Philip arrives in Germany in the summer of 1933 with Hitler and his Nazi party now firmly in control. 1933 of course is one of the most cataclysmic years in world history because it's the year that Hitler comes to power in Germany. It seems a strange decision that that should be the year that Philip is sent for two or three terms to boarding school at Saarlem in Germany. The rise of Nazism was the backdrop for Philip's time spent at this school and indeed a branch of Hitler youth was established there. For him it was a rather bizarre and retrospectively interesting time. He saw an awful lot of Nazis saluting which always struck him as mildly hilarious. It reminded him of boys asking permission to go to the lavatory. At 12 Philip is possibly too young to comprehend the events around him but all four of his sisters and their German aristocrat husbands have allied themselves with the Nazi party. It's astonishing thing that six years before Britain is at total war with Germany there's somebody who's later to marry the princess Elizabeth should have been at school in Nazi Germany. With rising political tensions in Germany after one school year at Saarlem. He would say and has said in in his adult life home where where's home I don't know where home is he had many homes um they were they were very welcoming they looked after him but he was essentially homeless. This sense of Philip as really without a home without a rudder without a sense of himself without a clear identity I think that really marks Philip out in his early years. But Philip finds a spiritual home when it's agreed that he should go to Gordonstoun near the Highlands of Scotland. It's a progressive newly established school run by Kurt Hahn a German academic and friend of Philip's sister. Gordonstoun has always been described as a very sort of Spartan place very sort of outward bound but actually it very much appealed to Prince Philip. He developed his leadership skills there he was already quite independent but he became I think more so when he was there he did extremely well at the school. The school's ethos pushes the boys to be competitive practical and self-reliant and it pushes them hard. Gordonstoun was tough it was exacting it was very physical it wasn't just an experience for the mind it was also one for the body it was about feeling things cold showers waking up early being pushed to the physical limit and I think there Philip would have found sort of distraction perhaps from his emotional pain. Gordonstoun was was a very very unusual school in its time it wasn't your typical British boarding school it was no Eaton or Winchester but but it very much was part of moulding Philip in the outdoorsy direct person that he became. Philip embraces the Gordonstoun regime but the trauma that has marked his young life is set to return. It was while Philip was at Gordonstoun there was a family tragedy which profoundly affected him as it did the whole of the family. One of his sisters Cecile was coming with her husband and children over to the UK for a wedding. He was called into his headmaster study to be told that his sister and her husband and her mother-in-law and her two boys had been killed in this plane crash. Prince Philip on hearing the news didn't break down his sorrow was was that of a man but I think in Prince Philip's case it was a sort of indication of how everything else in his life had hardened him in a way. Philip is 16 at the time of Cecile's death he travels to the funerals at the height of Nazi Germany. Prince Philip it must have been awful for him to have to know that he'd lost not only his sister but his brother-in-law and his his little nephews. The funeral was a sad affair obviously but a very strange affair really for him the streets were sort of festooned with swastikas and he was sort of part of a procession walking behind his. And within a year of losing his sister and her family Philip suffers another unexpected bereavement. Shortly after Cecile's death his favorite uncle George Milford Haven died of bone cancer. That's a double tragedy really for Philip and you know he had to move on again. Life was just a one awful event after another really but but he seemed to come through them all and he sort of managed to remain a sort of outwardly cheerful young person. Philip develops an effective coping strategy to deal with the When he finished at Gordonstoun Philip was a very confident and competent young man certainly on the outside. We'll never I think ever truly know what went and goes on inside Philip's head and his heart because he'd had to with such a difficult upbringing have a very iron heart but inside he's always been quite sensitive. The void in Philip's life left by the death of his uncle is soon filled by George's younger brother Lord Louis Mountbatten who will become highly influential in the course of Philip's life. Lord Louis Mountbatten the younger brother really did take a lead in his life and he was a great mentor. Mountbatten was a real doer he was somebody who had great ambition, great talent, great networking. One of the first bits of advice Philip takes from his uncle Dickie as Mountbatten is known is to follow him into the Royal Navy. After leaving Gordonstoun in 1939 of course the outbreak of war Philip enrols in the Royal Navy College at Dartmouth and it is a royal visit to the college that summer that would change the course of Prince Philip begins his training at Dartmouth's Royal Naval College in May 1939, four months before the outbreak of World War II. I think aged 18 he's already a very very self-sufficient man. These difficulties which have befallen him have toughened him up. He has the advantage of being devastatingly good-looking. He's very very blonde in those early pictures and already he's become a bit of a magnet for young women. The young cadet's charms are on full display when the royal family visits the academy in July. His uncle Dickie Mountbatten arranges for Philip to entertain the princesses Elizabeth and Margaret. They played a few games, they went on the croquet lawn, they went out to the tennis courts and Philip jumped over She wrote to Philip to thank him for looking after her and Margaret and then Philip wrote back, it was his cousin, she was a good contact to have, she was eventually going to be Queen of England, so Philip isn't a fool. So they started sending letters to each other. But Elizabeth is only 13 years old, too young for any serious romantic interest. Besides Philip has other things on his mind. Less than six weeks after that fateful meeting, Britain declares war on Germany. We tried again and again to prevent this war and for the sake of peace we put up with a lot of things happening which ought not to have happened. Philip of course could have joined the Greek navy, he was he was still a prince of Greece and one of the heirs to the Greek throne and I think increasingly in the late 1930s Philip felt that he was English, he felt he was British, so it was the Royal Navy that he was going to be in at the beginning of the Second World War. In early 1940 Philip is sent to sea, at first to the Indian Ocean to escort convoys of soldiers, but the young midshipman is eager to be in the thick of the action and by the following year he gets his wish. He's transferred to a battleship in the Mediterranean to join the fight against the Italian navy. There was one particular battle, the battle of Matapan, which really saw the end of the Italian involvement, the Italians took such a pasting and Prince Philip was in charge of the searchlights during a night engagement. Two or three Italian ships were destroyed in quick succession with Prince Philip directing the searchlight so effectively that these Italian ships were well illuminated and promptly destroyed. Nineteen-year-old Philip's skill with the searchlight earns him an official commendation and he is honoured with the Philip is proving to be a first-rate seaman and by the age of 21 he has been promoted to first lieutenant, second-in-command of his ship HMS Wallace. In July 1943 his leadership abilities are put to the test when the Wallace is targeted by German bombers. As soon as the sort of first round had finished and they went away, you know, Prince Philip knew that they would be back to finish them off and he had to come up with something pretty quickly. And he prepared a raft with other officers and they lit burning torches, flares at the end of the raft with smoke coming out and they set the raft off and sailed very, very quickly, completely dark in the other direction. When the German planes returned, thankfully, instead of bombing Wallace, they bombed this decoy. Prince Philip probably saved hundreds of lives. As he rises through the naval ranks, Philip's also growing closer to Princess Elizabeth. He did find time frequently to write to Elizabeth and there was an occasion or two during the war when he had leave that he would go and stay at Windsor Castle. Philip spends Christmas of 1943 with the royal family. It's soon clear the 17-year-old princess is falling for the 22-year-old naval officer. She was excited by him. He was very different from the very proper prim aristocrats that her mother would want her to be associated with. He was a bit of a rebel and she felt a bit of a catch. She fell desperately in love with him. She thought he was marvellous. He was a war hero, he was good-looking, he was kind, he was just everything she'd ever wanted. But Philip isn't so sure Elizabeth is right for him. After all, marrying the future queen would mean committing to a lifetime of public duty. But whispers about Philip and Elizabeth are beginning to spread, helped by his uncle Mountbatten. By the time Philip returns from his war service in early 1946, he seems to have made up his mind. I think if you're sick in mind the Greek throne, if you've only got about £600 in the bank, if you haven't got a settled home of your own, the chance of marrying the very attractive, intelligent, bright, sparky heir to the most prestigious monarchy in the world, I don't think that's a terrible opportunity. I think he only started to fall in love with Elizabeth about 1946. When the king started to warm to him and he was invited to more and more family events, he began to see the advantages of what was in front of him, but also the genuine affection would then develop with Elizabeth. Winning Elizabeth's heart proves relatively easy, but winning over her parents and their courtiers is a different matter. When everyone realised that Prince Philip was a serious prospect for Prince Elizabeth, there really was panic in the British establishment. He was not at all the type they expected, and there's a lot of distrust of him in the royal household, in the royal family, in the government. Philip is seen as an outsider, someone who didn't go to the right schools, doesn't have any money, and is far too outspoken to be a true British gentleman. Philip was from a foreign royal family. He had been brought up in sort of military ways. He was really penniless in terms of his upbringing. He'd lived this kind of nomadic childhood. He had a very unstable, dysfunctional family, and certainly some courtiers thought that he really wasn't appropriate for a royal princess. But of course, Philip is as royal as they are, but I suppose the views were expressed that he might not be the right person. Nobody approved of him at all, but Elizabeth, for the first time in her life, she really, really stuck her heels in. This was the man she wanted, and no other would do. To become a more suitable candidate for the princess's hand, Philip makes some dramatic changes. With the help and guidance of Dickey Mountbatten, his uncle, he decided, or it was decided for him perhaps, that he should take on British nationality. So he gave up his right to Greek throne. He gave up his Greek nationality. He was no longer Philip of Greece, and he became British, and he became Philip Mountbatten. And he also had to give up the religion he'd been baptized into. He was no longer Greek Orthodox. He now had to be Anglican. So they really do everything to change Philip into the English man they wish he was. I think those quite significant sacrifices was the beginning of a whole series of sacrifices that would then mark out Philip in relation to Elizabeth. He was always going to have to try to conform, to be acceptable. By the summer of 1947, Philip and Elizabeth have finally won the king and queen's blessing. In these, the first special studies of the pair since the news of their engagement, it's easy to see the radiant happiness of the princess, as she and her very good-looking husband-to-be pose for the cameras in the palace. Philip marries Elizabeth on November the 20th, 1947 at Westminster Abbey. The wedding day of Philip and Elizabeth couldn't have been grander, couldn't have been more spectacular. People got very, very involved with it, and very excited by it, and the crowds were absolutely huge. Everything about the wedding is reinventing Philip. He's a great war hero. He's practically British, and now he's the marvellous future consort of the marvellous future queen. But for all the joy of the wedding day, there's a bitter pill for Philip to swallow. His mother is the only member of his immediate family by his side. His father, Prince Andrea, had died during the war after not seeing his son for many years, and his sisters are not invited. It was deemed that his sisters who'd married Germans should not come over. It was too soon after the war, and so that was a source of great disappointment for him. But life as the new Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh is good for Philip and Elizabeth. You have to remember that he had been essentially homeless. He had not had a family life since he was eight years old, and so to cherish someone and love someone as much as he did... Both quickly, with the birth of Prince Charles in 1948, and Princess Anne two years later. Philip put behind him a lot of the difficulties of his childhood, and I think he himself was liberated by forming a happy family. For the first time since his early childhood, Philip has a home of his own, Clarence House in London. And despite taking on some royal duties alongside his wife, he remains on active duty in the Navy. One of the happiest times in a young couple's life was when Prince Philip was posted to Malta. He was out there for quite some time, several months, and Elizabeth went out and stayed with him on two occasions, quite protracted stays. And this was a very almost normal existence for her, and she absolutely loved it. They had wonderful times that they would go to dances, they would drive often without bodyguards. I think they were very, very happy times for Philip and Elizabeth between 1947 and 1952. I really think that Philip and Elizabeth imagine that their life post-marriage is going to be their life for the next 20 years or so. That they'll live in Clarence House, she will do royal duties, he will support her, they will have their children, but it isn't going to be the big job. It's not queen and consort. I think both she and Philip imagine that'll be a job they're doing when they are in their 40s going into their 50s. There's no way, I think, that they have any idea how close it is around the corner. But in 1951, King George VI becomes ill with what is later revealed to be lung cancer. It falls to Elizabeth and Philip to take on more royal duties in his place, including a tour of the Commonwealth nations in early 1952. They were going to be away for several months, so they set off for Kenya, hoping that when they came back the king would be OK, but it was not to be. Just days after their departure on February 6th, King George dies in his sleep. A royal aide breaks the news to Philip. Philip, he just looked absolutely ashen-faced because I think he realised that his entire life at that moment was going to change. I think he went into shock and he put a newspaper over his head and just absorbed this terrible news. Then he went to tell his wife. Philip has to break the news to his wife that her beloved father is gone and also that everything has changed overnight. She is now the queen, he is now the consort, and the life they had before is over. Philip is facing the to guide him in his new role. As the new queen and the Duke of Edinburgh land in England from Kenya, following the death of George VI, they have to confront the reality of their new lives. Their entire life changed when they arrived on the tarmac at London airport. Elizabeth came down the steps first and Philip hung back and then, of course, the realisation that the rest of his life he was going to be two steps behind his wife must have really hit him. The first step Philip must take is to sacrifice his day job. As consort, Philip has to give up his naval career, which is quite difficult. It's something he fought for for so long and he's not allowed to keep his job. He was about to be promoted to commander, he was going to be in charge of a big ship, so all of that had to be shoved. It was very difficult for Philip to accept this role of second in command when he'd used to being in command. Philip, though, is bucking the trend. In post-war Britain, most men had the expectation of being master of their own households. For Prince Philip, that expectation is turned on its head. Philip becomes consort in the midst of the 1950s, at a time when patriarchy and hierarchy absolutely rules. Women are at home as housewives and here is Philip effectively being thrown into position of, you know, the country's ultimate house husband. Philip now has to work out what he is going to do. There is no job description with the role of consort to a queen. Albert was the last, nearly 100 years earlier, to Victoria. He has to find a role for himself, he has to find an identity as consort. It's not prescribed. The queen, of course, received government business in those royal boxes, which he was never privy to. The queen was having audiences with her first prime minister, Winston Churchill. He was excluded from them. What was to be his purpose? It was the beginning of a very, very difficult period in his life. Philip sees himself as a modernising force, but is frustrated by resistance from powerful figures within the palace. Philip finds his role of consort as being squashed by his mother-in-law, because Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, wants to stay in Buckingham Palace, have a role of influence over her daughter. And what you start to see happening during the early reign of Queen Elizabeth is that there really becomes this battle between Prince Philip, who has ideas about changing the royal family, and Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. The courtiers were brutal to him. They looked down their noses at him. They didn't give him any attention. The courtiers weren't really interested in him. They didn't really have a lot of time for this upstart, this usurper, as they used to regard him. Philip, of course, is a man who's come fresh from conflict. The navy is in his blood. He needs adrenaline. He needs a purpose. He needs to be doing things. But Philip turns an early setback into a personal mission. As newlyweds, Princess Elizabeth and Philip were living happily in Clarence House, where Philip had overseen the wholesale modernization. Philip really throws himself into creating Clarence House as a home for this young family. And that, I think, really reflects the fact he never had a home before. So they had all the mod cons, and Philip loved mod cons. And they had washing machines, dishwashers. They had all the latest gadgetry, which Philip loved. But as monarch, Elizabeth is expected to move into Buckingham Palace, which is a personal blow for Philip. No one liked living in Buckingham Palace. Buckingham Palace is really a big office, and no one ever seems to like living in there. And they were no exception. It lacked the intimacy they'd been used to. And his wife was no longer his wife. She was now really married to the country. She was surrounded by advisors, by courtiers, people who wanted him out of the way. Philip, though, launches himself into revolutionizing how things are done at the palace. He was a proud, successful man without a real role. This was a real dilemma for him. But he threw himself into modernizing things at Buckingham Palace. And by goodness, things really did need to be modernized there. He went around Buckingham Palace literally room by room, looking at what needed to be modernized, how communication around the palace could be improved. So he began to question the way things were being done. Of course, that didn't go down at all well, where things were done year after year, decade after decade, because that's the way tradition would have it. Now, he wanted to shake all that up. And so he made himself incredibly unpopular with an awful lot of the grey men, if you like, at the palace. Undaunted by the forces opposing him, Philip persists with his determination for a greater role. He wanted to do more and he wanted to have an influence. And the Queen knew that. And she put him, for example, in charge of the Coronation Commission to oversee the arrangements for the coronation. And here we see, for the first time, Philip being something of a maverick, perhaps because of his status as being an outsider, having a different kind of perspective. Philip feels that requests to televise it should be admitted. And there are traditionists who disagree with it. They think it could undermine the majesty of royalty. Philip sees the advantages of harnessing the new medium of television. He, for example, knew that the coronation was going to be a critical event, saw the opportunity of making the coronation this global event like none other, letting the cameras into the Abbey for the first time. And against the reservations of the government and Winston Churchill, Philip really pushed that through. Philip is always battling to have his ideas taken seriously, always having to fight, because lots of people will say to Elizabeth, was that Philip's idea? Well, no, because they really exclude him and ignore him. For almost two days and nights, the crowds have been assembling in sunshine and rain for the moment when the young Queen, radiant in her exquisite gown, left the palace for Westminster The coronation takes place on June the 2nd, 1953, with television cameras capturing every moment. More than 20 million people in Britain tuned in to watch the ceremony. And eight years after the war, another victory. Philip's sisters are allowed to attend, and so does his mother, Princess Alice, who is now living as a nun in Athens.