Although it was the first time he had attended the birth of one of his children, Philip would later declare: ‘People want their first child very much when they marry. They want the second child almost as much. If a third comes along they accept it as natural, but they haven’t gone out of their way to get it. When the fourth child comes along, in most cases it is unintentional.’ He was clearly not going to get too sentimental.

His wife took a keener view of the process. As a young girl, she had declared that, when she grew up, she wanted to marry a farmer, live in the country and have lots of animals. Above all, she wanted four children – two boys and two girls. She had married a sailor, not a farmer, but her other wishes had been fulfilled. So why not a second daughter to go with the two sons she now had? So convinced was she that she was going to have a daughter that she had not bothered to think of boys’ names during her pregnancy – only girls’ names had been discussed.

This was one matter, though, over which even a sovereign had no say and, much to the Queen’s surprise, if not that of her doctors, who throughout had taken the more pragmatic medical view, the baby was a boy. Philip telephoned the news to the Queen Mother at Clarence House, then interrupted Prince Charles doing his prep at Gordonstoun and finally spoke to Princess Anne at school at Benenden in Kent.

Sir John Weir called him ‘a bonny baby’, while Dr Vernon Hall said he was ‘a very serious looking boy’. He added: ‘Everything went well – no problems.’

By comparison with his siblings, he was a small child, weighing only 5lb 7oz, and was finally named Edward Anthony Richard Louis after his godfathers Lord Snowdon, Richard, Duke of Gloucester and Prince Louis of Hesse, prefixed by the old royal name of his great-great-grandfather, Edward VII. His parents had taken a long time in the selection and his names were not officially announced until twenty-four hours short of the forty-two-day deadline which, if it is exceeded, can result in a fine (though not in this case, for the sovereign, as the embodiment of the law, is above the law). He was christened wearing the robe of Honiton lace that had been made in 1841 for Queen Victoria’s eldest child, Victoria, who married the German emperor and whose son, Kaiser Wilhelm II, led his nation into war with Britain.