His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh has passed at the age of 99, peacefully in his home. The Duke of Edinburgh was born at the villa 'Mon Repos', the summer retreat of the Greek royal family, on the island of Corfu, on 10th June 1921. He is the youngest child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Princess Alice (of Battenberg). His grandfather was a Prince of Denmark who became King of Greece. The Duke is also related to Kings of Prussia and Emperors of Russia.
The Duke of Edinburgh and The Queen are both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria. The Duke is a direct descendant of Princess Alice, the third child of Queen Victoria. The Queen is a direct descendant of Queen Victoria's eldest son, Prince Albert Edward (later King Edward VII). As well as the title Duke of Edinburgh His Royal Highness has the titles Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich. All three titles were conferred by King George VI in 1947. The Queen created her husband a Prince of the United Kingdom in 1957. As husband of the Sovereign, The Duke of Edinburgh was not crowned or anointed at the Coronation ceremony in 1953.The Duke loved to fly and learned to fly all types of aircraft. He gained his RAF wings in 1953, his helicopter wings in 1956 and his private pilot's licence in 1959. Prince Philip achieved 5,986 hours in 59 types of aircraft. The Duke's final flight was on 11th August 1997 from Carlisle to Islay, following which he has stopped flying.
Prince Philip has accompanied The Queen on all 251 of her official overseas visits. The first of these was the Coronation tour of the Commonwealth from November 1953 to May 1954, when they visited countries in the Caribbean, Australasia, Ceylon, Africa and Europe, traveling a distance of 43,618 miles.The Duke of Edinburgh played a key role in the restoration of Windsor Castle after the great fire of 1992. He served as Chairman of the general Restoration Committee, one of the two committees supervising the rebuilding of the damaged rooms. He was the first member of the Royal Family to be interviewed on television, in May 1961. The Duke has also presented television programs, including in May 1957 a program on the BBC about his four and a half month tour of the Commonwealth. Prince Philip lived for seven years in France as a boy, and spoke the language well. The islanders of Tanna, one of the islands in Vanuatu in the South West Pacific, worship the Duke of Edinburgh as a god. Vanuatu was formerly the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides, which Prince Philip visited in 1971.
Mother and son, two of the finest alpinists of their eras, gone too soon, a quarter of a century apart.