It wasn’t the only way in which Albert’s official status appeared greater than Philip’s. Queen Victoria’s husband was formally titled ‘HRH Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Duke of Saxony’ for seventeen years until he was awarded the formal title of ‘The Prince Consort’ by Queen Victoria in 1857. He is the only husband of a British Queen to have held it. The Duke of Edinburgh is a prince of the United Kingdom but he is not Prince Consort. Yet Clarence House has announced it is likely that when Prince Charles becomes sovereign, his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, will have the title ‘HRH the Princess Consort’. It may seem a small point to some, this matter of titles, but to a proud man such as Philip it did appear to diminish him in some way. There are no specific duties for the consort that have been laid down by Parliament or established by custom, nor is any power conferred by the title. As Prince Philip himself said: ‘Constitutionally I don’t exist.’

Philip says he read several biographies of Prince Albert to see what he could learn from his experience. He also admits his interest in science, and in originating the Prince Philip Designers Prize, was inspired by what his predecessor did in setting up the Great Exhibition. He considers Albert an original thinker and says: ‘All original thinkers have a certain quality you can probably recognise.’

There are parallels to be drawn between Prince Albert and Prince Philip. They were both of German ancestry and by all accounts both were very good looking as young men. Queen Victoria wrote: ‘Albert is extremely handsome . . . his eyes are large and blue and he has a beautiful nose and very sweet mouth with fine teeth.’ In both cases, it seems to have been love at first sight when their future wives first set eyes upon them.

Each also had an influential, empire-building uncle working to support them: in Albert’s case, it was King Leopold of the Belgians, and in Philip’s, Lord Louis Mountbatten. When Albert married in 1840, Queen Victoria was already on the throne and took precedence over him. In Albert’s own words: ‘I am very happy and contented; but the difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, not the master in the house.’ It was a situation very similar to that in which Philip found himself when his family had to move from Clarence House to Buckingham Palace after the accession.