They married in 1947, aged twenty-one and twenty-six. Elizabeth and Philip met as cousins in the 1930s. The Queen's childhood was loving and secure, the Duke's was turbulent his grandfather assassinated, his father arrested, his family exiled, his parents separated when he was only ten. Philip and Elizabeth were both royal by birth, both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria, but, in temperament and upbringing, they were two very different people. It is also the portrait of a remarkable marriage that endured for more than seventy years. Who was he? What was he really like? What is the truth about those 'gaffes' and the rumours of affairs? This is the final portrait of an unexpected and often much-misunderstood figure. Philip - elusive, complex, controversial, challenging, often humorous, sometimes irascible - is the man Elizabeth II once described as her 'constant strength and guide'. It is an extraordinary story, told with unique insight and authority by an author who knew the prince for more than forty years. This is the story of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh - the longest-serving consort to the longest-reigning sovereign in British history.
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