Edward had wanted to go one better than his brothers and make the Marines his full-time career – perhaps to prove that, in effect, he was better than them. Whatever the reason, Edward had his mind set on the Marines from the age of ten, so it was a huge surprise when he decided to quit. The Queen’s initial shock quickly turned to icy-cold regal displeasure, while the Queen Mother couldn’t understand it as she felt Edward’s decision smacked of dereliction of duty. Given his well-earned reputation for irascibility, it was perhaps inevitable that many would surmise that Philip had been outraged by Edward’s decision and that harsh words had been exchanged between the two; even that Edward had been reduced to tears by his father’s anger. It was a potent image and it grew in the telling and retelling.

The truth was quite the opposite. Philip was in fact the most supportive of all the royal family. More worldly than his wife, he could analyse the problem in a rational, objective way, while the Queen saw it only in terms of family duty and royal reputation, which by her logic were one and the same. Adam Wise, Prince Edward’s private secretary at the time, recalled: ‘The first person he went to when he’d really had enough of the Marines was Prince Philip and he was extremely understanding about the whole thing. He was very reasonable and gave very sensible advice.’ He added: ‘Prince Philip did not get on his high horse at all and did not get cross about the fact that his son was rejecting the Royal Marines of which he was Captain General.’

The counsel Philip gave was straightforward and practical. As he informed the Marines’ Commandant General Sir Michael Wilkins in a private and confidential letter, which later appeared on the front page of the Sun, the family had made every effort to make Edward change his mind, ‘but we all made clear that the final decision was his and his alone’.

Philip, infuriated by trivialities, was showing himself to be clearheaded at a time of major crisis. In a significant public gesture, father and son were photographed walking together side by side to church at Sandringham the following Sunday. He understood his son’s decision, which he considered a brave one, and supported him fully. Edward had explained to him he felt he was never going to be able to fit in as neatly as he had hoped: ‘I was always going to have a policeman there. I could never go out with the rest of the lads into the town as everyone knew who I was. I didn’t see the way really it was going to work.’