Agencies
London, April 09:
Buckingham Palace officials say Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, has died. He was 99.
Philip spent a month in hospital earlier this year before being released on March 16 to return to Windsor Castle.
Philip, also known as the Duke of Edinburgh, married Elizabeth in 1947 and was the longest-serving consort in British history. He retired from public engagements in 2017 after carrying out more than 20,000 of them. Philip was a member of the Greek royal family and was born on the Greek island of Corfu in 1921. He was an avid sportsman who loved country pursuits. He had four children, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Buckingham Palace officials say Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, has died. He was 99.
Philip spent a month in hospital earlier this year before being released on March 16 to return to Windsor Castle.
Philip, also known as the Duke of Edinburgh, married Elizabeth in 1947 and was the longest-serving consort in British history. He retired from public engagements in 2017 after carrying out more than 20,000 of them. Philip was a member of the Greek royal family and was born on the Greek island of Corfu in 1921. He was an avid sportsman who loved country pursuits. He had four children, eight grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.
Philip was admitted to King Edward VII Hospital in February this year after feeling unwell.
Philip, also known as the Duke of Edinburgh, retired from public duties in 2017. He had been staying at Windsor Castle, west of London, with Queen Elizabeth II during England’s coronavirus lockdown.
Philip was born on June 10, 1921 as Prince of Greece and Denmark, amid the upheaval that led to a military coup that overthrew his uncle, King Constantine of Greece, a few months later.
His parents were Princess Alice of Battenberg, a great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and Prince Andrew of Greece.
England’s King George V sent a Royal Navy cruiser to evacuate Philip’s family, and the infant prince was whisked to safety in a cot made from an orange box. The young Philip went to school in Germany and Britain and rarely saw his parents when he was growing up.
In 1939, Philip joined the British military as a cadet at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. He served in the Royal Navy throughout World War II, winning mention in dispatches for service aboard the battleship HMS Valiant at Cape Matapan, on Greece’s Peloponnesian peninsula.
It was there he was asked to escort then-Princess Elizabeth and her sister on a visit to the facility.
Philip rose to the rank of commander, but his career ended when his wife became Queen Elizabeth II after the death of her father, King George VI, in 1952.
Philip had married the future queen at Westminster Abbey in 1947 when she was 21 and he was 26. He renounced his Greek title and King George VI made him the Duke of Edinburgh. At Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953, Philip swore to be his wife’s “liege man of life and limb”, and he settled into a life supporting the queen.
