These early years in St Cloud were happy ones, but as time went by Philip’s family began a gradual dispersal. His mother became deeply obsessed with religion and eventually had to be committed to a sanatorium in 1930, while his father Andrea, for lack of anything better to do, became a socialite eventually settling in Monte Carlo. Philip’s sisters gravitated towards their German relations, where they each found husbands.

When Philip was eight, George Milford Haven entered him as a boarder for Cheam School in Surrey, one of England’s oldest preparatory schools, where David Milford Haven was a pupil. From that time onwards it was George and his wife who acted in loco parentis. George was a Cheam old boy himself and regularly attended sports days and prize-givings. George had recently left the navy to enter the world of business and became a director of several public companies. His interest in gadgets of all kinds and his inventiveness are traits that he passed on to Philip. As a young officer in the navy, George invented an automatic tea-maker to rouse him in the mornings and he air-conditioned his quarters with a system of fans. Years later, Philip went one better with the invention of a boot remover and cleaner which was commercially marketed.

Cousin Alexandra had been sent to Heathfield School near Ascot at the same time as Philip entered Cheam and they kept up a correspondence with each other. Alexandra tells of some of the high-spirited adventures Philip shared with his cousin David. On one occasion the boys cycled to a scout camp from Lynden Manor in Bray to Dover, a journey of some 120 miles. They arrived extremely saddle sore, but elated. Anxious to avoid having to ride home, they stowed away in the hold of a barge in Dover Harbour that was bound for London docks. They spent two nights sleeping on sacks of grain and lived off some rock cakes they had bought with them.

At Cheam, Philip excelled at sports. He won the school diving competition, came equal first in the high jump, won the under-12 hurdles and became a promising cricketer. Although he showed a keen interest in history, he did not shine academically at all. He did win the Form III French prize, but as his cousin Alexandra told him, so he should have, ‘after all the years he had lived in Paris’. In common with similar schools of the day, life for the boys was tough, with cold baths, bad food, hard beds and the cane for punishment. Philip believed his regime to be character forming, and in due course sent his son Prince Charles to Cheam, where he had an unhappy time.