Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921–2021) –  Hw

the life of prince philip duke of edinburgh prince philip duke of edinburgh is the husband of queen elizabeth ii of the united kingdom and the commonwealth realms he has been by her side for over seven decades let’s take a look at his fascinating life philip was born june 10th 1921 the youngest of five children and only son of prince andrew of greece and denmark and princess alice of battenberg he was the product of several illustrious royal bloodlines his paternal grandfather was king george the first of greece

a danish prince and son of king christian the ninth of denmark at 17 george was elected king of the hellenis by the greek national assembly which had deposed the unpopular king otto george’s wife olga constantinova was a member of the russian royal family the romanovs prince philip’s mother was a daughter of german prince louis of mattenberg and a great granddaughter of queen victoria philip was born on the greek island of corfu on june 10 1921 at birth he was in the line of succession for the thrones of both greece and

denmark following the assassination of king george the first in 1913 phillip’s uncle had become king constantine the first when philip was just one year old his uncle was forced to abdicate following the disastrous greco-turkish war the new military government arrested philip’s father prince andrew and other members of the family the commander of the army and five senior politicians were executed and it was fear that andrew would be next instead he was banished from greece for life the british navy evacuated the family and baby prince

philip was carried in a fruit basket they moved to paris where they relent a house by a wealthy ant because he left so early philip never learned to speak greek instead he learned english french and german philip had four older sisters margarita theodora cecili and sophie he was particularly close to sicily at school in paris his headmaster described him as a know-it-all smarty person but always remarkably polite at seven he was sent to the uk to attend school there he lived with his grandmother victoria mountbatten and uncle george

mountbatten 2nd marquis of milford haven while he was away from home his mother suffered a mental breakdown she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and placed in an asylum philip had very little contact with her for the remainder of his childhood his sisters married german princes and moved to germany and his father moved to monte carlo at 12 he moved back to germany to attend school but when the jewish headmaster fled during the rise of nazism and founded a second school in scotland philip followed him there when philip

was 16 his favorite sister cecily along with her husband and two young sons died in a plane crash sicily was pregnant at the time philip devastated returned to germany to attend the funeral the following year his guardian george mountbatten died of cancer in his teenage years philip was known as a bit of a charmer and was linked to several ladies notably a canadian debutant osla binning at 18 philip attended the royal naval college dartmouth king george vi and his family toured the college in 1939 and philip’s uncle captain louis mountbatten

requested that philip escort princesses elizabeth and margaret during the tour he was their third cousin through queen victoria and their second cousin through king christian the 9th of denmark the 13 year old elizabeth was smitten with the dashing 18 year old cadet and the two began to exchange letters philip graduated from dartmouth at the top of his class he served in the british navy during world war ii while two of his brothers-in-law fought for the nazis he was stationed in the mediterranean and was awarded

the greek war cross of valor at 21 he became the youngest first lieutenant in the royal navy during the invasion of sicily he saved his ship from a night bomber attack he devised a plan to launch a raft with smoke floats that distracted the bombers allowing his ship to slip away unnoticed he then saw action in the pacific theater and was present in tokyo bay when the instrument of japanese surrender was signed he continued his correspondence with princess elizabeth all this time she was also busy helping the war effort as a truck

driver and mechanic in the auxiliary territorial service after the war philip returned to the uk to serve as a military instructor and he began to see more of princess elizabeth her parents were not enthusiastic about the match philip was a prince without a country and had ties to german nazis many in the british government and public didn’t feel that he was good enough for the future queen but elizabeth was determined that philip was the man for her in the summer of 1946 philip asked the king for his daughter’s hand

in marriage king george agreed but requested that the announcement be delayed until elizabeth’s 21st birthday the following april in the meantime philip renounced his greek and danish royal titles and changed his surname to mountbatten after his mother’s british family officially converted from greek orthodoxy to church of england and became a british citizen philip and elizabeth were married in westminster abbey on the morning of november 20th 1947.

the ceremony was broadcast on bbc radio to 200 million people around the world the glamorous wedding was a shining moment for the british people who were still experiencing rationing after the long war upon their wedding philip was made duke of edinburgh it was not seen as appropriate for his sisters all of whom had ties to the nazis to attend the wedding following their honeymoon the newlyweds took up residence at clarence house the traditional home to the heir of the throne since king william iv was air and regent a few days before their first anniversary

elizabeth gave birth to their first child charles the following year philip was stationed in malta and the couple enjoyed some of the happiest years of their lives elizabeth was free from the pressures of the royal family and able to live a simpler life as the wife of a naval officer attending beach parties and dances in 1950 they welcomed their second child anne in 1951 king george’s health began to decline and his daughter and heir was required to return home to play a larger role in royal life philip had to end his active military

career at this point elizabeth and phillip embarked on a tour of the commonwealth they were in kenya when philip had to break the sad news to his wife that her father had died and she was now queen they returned immediately to the uk elizabeth’s ascension brought up the question of the name of the royal house previous queens regnant had taken their husband’s names and philip’s uncle louis mountbatten made toasts to the new mountbatten dynasty but prime minister winston churchill advised the queen to keep the name windsor philip

privately complained i am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children as consort to the queen philip supported his wife in her new duties accompanying her to ceremonies such as the state opening of parliament state dinners and tours abroad philip was made chairman of the coronation commission which planned elizabeth’s fabulous coronation in 1952 he pushed to have it televised which spurred thousands to buy their first tvs to preserve his own identity philip took up polo carriage driving and

flying as personal hobbies in 1956 he traveled around the world aboard the royal yacht britannia during which he opened the summer olympic games in melbourne australia and visited antarctica that year rumors were about that the queen and philip were drifting apart and even infidelity on philip’s part was suspected the queen strongly denied this and granted her husband the title of prince of the united kingdom in 1960 a decade after the birth of princess anne the couple welcomed their third child andrew and a fourth edward in 1964.

phillip served as patron to some 800 organizations primarily focused on his interests in environment industry sport and education including the world wildlife fund international equestrian federation and the british heart foundation as a father and grandfather he was loving the rather stiff and demanding he had high expectations for his children he pressured his son charles into proposing to diana spencer after the family had broken up his relationship to camilla parker-bowles when charles and diana’s marriage began

to break up philip and elizabeth met with them and attempted to get them to reconcile but without success philip expressed his disappointment in both of them when diana was killed in a car crash philip and elizabeth kept their grandsons at balmoral with them for five days so that they could grieve in privacy william and harry didn’t want to walk in a funeral behind their mother’s coffin and in front of a crowd of thousands philip encouraged them to do so saying if i walk will you walk with me though they agreed harry has since

shared that this experience is one of the most traumatic of his life mohammed fayed whose son dodi fayed was diana’s lover and was also killed in the crash accused prince philip of ordering diana’s death though official investigations found no evidence of conspiracy prince philip was known for being down to earth but also for bluntly speaking his mind he was often labeled tactless and out of touch as time and society moved on his comments and jokes frequently caused offense as being politically incorrect and even racist he

himself said that he is perceived as a cantankerous old sod in 2008 it was reported that philip was suffering from prostate cancer in 2011 when he turned 90 he announced that he would slow down in his duties stating that he had done his bit he officially retired in 2017 shortly before he and elizabeth celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary though he was still seen at the queen’s side at important family events such as the weddings of their grandsons william and harry prince philip was a constant presence at the queen’s side

and a strong figure as head of the family in 2012 the queen praised her husband in her diamond jubilee speech describing him as her constant strength and guide their marriage holds the record for the longest of any monarch in english history prince philip would have celebrated his 100th birthday on the 10th of june 2021 he died on the 9th of april 2021 at the age of 99.

if you enjoyed this video please like subscribe comment your thoughts and check out my other royal history videos if you really want to help please consider supporting me on patreon a link is in the description thank you for watching you

QQ4 Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The friendship began on a live television program in November of 1986 in the 11 seconds after Bob Dylan called Keith Richards music derivative on camera. Keith Richard’s response to that assessment, one sentence said without anger, without performance, with the specific directness of a man who has nothing to prove and knows it made Bob Dylan laugh.

Then made Bob Dylan go quiet. then made Bob Dylan say two words that people who know Bob Dylan say he almost never said to anyone. This is the story of those 11 seconds and the 40 years that followed them. The program was a live music interview special broadcast on an American network on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The format was simple.

Two musicians, a host, an hour of conversation about music and the state of it. The producers had assembled the pairing of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards with the specific calculation of television producers who understand that two people with equally strong and potentially incompatible views about what music is and what it should do will produce better television than two people who agree about everything.

The calculation was correct, though not in the way the producers had anticipated. Bob Dylan was 45 years old in November of 1986. Bob Dylan had released Empire Burlesque the previous year and had been on the road for most of the intervening period as part of the True Confessions tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Bob Dylan was in November of 1986 in one of the most prolific and restless phases of a career that had consisted almost entirely of prolific and restless phases. A career that had moved through folk, rock, country, gospel, and back again, that had been declared finished at least six times by the music press, and at each time continued with the serene indifference of a river to the opinions of people standing on its banks.

Bob Dylan had been redefining what music could be. Since 1962, Bob Dylan had invented and reinvented himself so many times that reinvention had become his defining characteristic, not in the superficial sense of a performer changing costumes, but in the deeper sense of a musician who had never allowed his work to settle into a form that could be anticipated or categorized from the outside.

Bob Dylan understood influence and originality and the relationship between them better than almost anyone alive in 1986. Bob Dylan had spent 24 years thinking carefully and specifically about where music came from and where music was going and what it meant that those two things were always in constant conversation with each other.

Keith Richards was 42 years old in November of 1986. Keith Richards had been playing guitar professionally since 1962. Keith Richards had built a career on a foundation of American blues and rhythm and blues. A foundation that Keith Richards had studied with the systematic devotion of someone who understood that the tradition he was building on was not incidental to the music he was making, but essential to it.

that you could not understand what Keith Richards did without understanding where Keith Richards had come from and what Keith Richards had been listening to since he was a teenager in Dartford with American Import Records and a secondhand guitar and no teacher except the recordings themselves. Keith Richards had never pretended otherwise. Keith Richards had in fact spent considerable energy across his career making the lineage explicit, naming the artists, citing the recordings, insisting on the acknowledgement of influence that the mainstream music

industry had a long history of suppressing or ignoring or crediting to the wrong people. If anything, Keith Richards was more transparent about his sources than most musicians of his generation. Keith Richards had always said openly that the Rolling Stones came directly from the blues, that Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and the specific tradition of the Mississippi Delta were not background influences, but foundational ones.

The music Keith Richards made was in direct and sustained conversation with that tradition, something Keith Richards considered not a limitation, but a responsibility and a form of respect. The interview had been running for 8 minutes when the host asked Bob Dylan about the current state of rock and roll.

Bob Dylan answered with the density and the indirection that characterized Bob Dylan’s responses to direct questions, turning the question over, approaching it from an unexpected angle, finding his way to what he actually thought through a series of observations that moved like a river rather than a road. Bob Dylan was not a straightforward interview subject.

Bob Dylan had been asked about rock and roll in hundreds of interviews across 24 years and had developed the habit of treating the question as an invitation to think out loud rather than a request for a prepared position. The producer Gerald Sherman said afterward that in the first 8 minutes of the interview, he had been slightly anxious, not because anything was going wrong, but because nothing was going anywhere in particular yet.

The interview had the feeling of two conversations happening simultaneously. Bob Dylan’s internal one and the external one visible to the cameras. And Gerald Sherman was not certain in those first eight minutes that the two conversations would converge into something. Bob Dylan talked about influence. Bob Dylan talked about originality.

Bob Dylan talked about the difference between music that absorbed a tradition and transformed it and music that absorbed a tradition and reproduced it. And then Bob Dylan made his assessment. And then Bob Dylan said with the precision of a man making a musical assessment rather than a personal judgment that the Rolling Stones work, and Bob Dylan was specific, naming Keith Richards as the guitarist whose approach he was discussing was derivative in a way that Bob Dylan found limiting.

Bob Dylan said it without hostility. Bob Dylan said it as a technical observation about the relationship between source material and the work that came from it. Bob Dylan said that Keith Richards played the blues the way the blues had already been played, rather than using the blues as a starting point for something that had not yet been played.

Keith Richards had been listening to this with the specific attention Keith Richards gave to things being said about music by people who knew music. Keith Richards did not interrupt. Keith Richards did not shift in his chair or display any of the visible signals of a person preparing a defensive response. Keith Richards listened to Bob Dylan’s complete observation all the way to its conclusion without interrupting and without displaying any visible signal of preparing a response.

Then Keith Richards said one sentence. The sentence was not a rebuttal. The sentence did not defend Keith Richards music or argue for its originality or challenge Bob Dylan’s characterization of what the blues meant in the context of rock and roll. The sentence was something else entirely, something that required a specific kind of confidence to say.

The confidence of a person who has spent long enough thinking about the same things as the person they are talking to that they can locate the exact point where their thinking diverges and say something useful about that point rather than simply defending their own position. The sentence acknowledged everything Bob Dylan had said, the assessment, the distinction Bob Dylan was drawing, the specific musical concern underlying the observation, and then turned it 90°.

Keith Richards took Bob Dylan’s own framework, the one Bob Dylan had used to analyze Keith Richards relationship to the blues tradition, and applied it back to Bob Dylan’s work with the same precision Bob Dylan had used to apply it to Keith Richards. Spare aimed. The sentence asked Bob Dylan something about Bob Dylan’s own music, about the relationship between Bob Dylan’s sources and Bob Dylan’s output that Bob Dylan had not been asked on television before.

The sentence did not attack. The sentence illuminated. Bob Dylan laughed. The laugh was not the polite laugh of someone responding to a joke. The laugh was the involuntary laugh of someone who has been genuinely surprised. The specific kind of surprise that a person of exceptional intelligence experiences when someone else’s intelligence exceeds their expectations.

Bob Dylan laughed for 4 seconds. Then Bob Dylan stopped laughing. Then Bob Dylan was quiet for 3 seconds in the way that Bob Dylan was quiet when Bob Dylan was thinking rather than performing thought. Then Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” The producer in the booth, a man named Gerald Sherman, who had been working in television for 14 years, said afterward that in 14 years of live television production, he had never heard Bob Dylan say those two words in a public forum.

Gerald Sherman said he had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions and had observed Bob Dylan in numerous other contexts and that you’re right was not a phrase that Bob Dylan deployed easily or often because Bob Dylan had spent 24 years being right about music in ways that other people eventually caught up with. And the experience of being right ahead of everyone else does not generally produce a man who says you’re right readily when someone else makes a point.

The host of the program, a journalist named Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said afterward that the 11 seconds between Bob Dylan’s assessment and Bob Dylan saying, “You’re right,” were the most extraordinary 11 seconds of television she had been present for. Patricia Wells said that what she witnessed in those 11 seconds was not a debate or a confrontation or a celebrity exchange of competing opinions.

Patricia Wells said what she witnessed was one musician recognizing another musician as an equal, which was in the specific context of Bob Dylan in 1986, not something that happened in public very often. The interview continued for another 42 minutes after those 11 seconds. The conversation between Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in the remaining 42 minutes was described by everyone who watched it as fundamentally different from the first 8 minutes.

The host, Patricia Wells, who had been conducting music interviews for 12 years and understood the difference between the performance of conversation and actual conversation, said that at approximately the 9-minute mark, something shifted in the studio. That the formal interview, architecture dissolved, and what replaced it was something less structured and more genuine.

Bob Dylan and Keith Richards talked about influence and originality and the blues and what it meant to build on a tradition without being consumed by it. They talked about specific recordings and specific musicians with the specificity of two people who had spent their entire adult lives thinking about these things and rarely found another person who had thought about them with equivalent care.

They talked about where music came from and where music was going and whether those two questions were actually one question or two. Patricia Wells said afterward that she had asked approximately four questions in the remaining 42 minutes because Bob Dylan and Keith Richards did not require questions. They required only a room and a camera and the shared understanding that what they were saying together was worth recording carefully.

She said it was the best interview she had ever conducted and that she had conducted the smallest part of it. After the program, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards were in the corridor outside the studio when the host Patricia Wells passed them. Patricia Wells said she did not stop because she did not want to interrupt.

She observed them for approximately 30 seconds from a distance. She said they were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for years rather than people who had met for the first time 2 hours earlier. She said that something had shifted between them during the broadcast that the broadcast had made permanent rather than temporary.

She continued down the corridor and did not look back. She said in her account of that evening that she had decided in that moment not to interrupt the conversation because some conversations are more valuable than any question a journalist might ask and that the conversation she had observed for 30 seconds in the corridor outside the studio was one of them.

She had been a music journalist for 12 years. She recognized the difference. Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have maintained their friendship across four decades. They have appeared together at various events, most significantly at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, where people who were present described them as inseparable for most of the evening, occupying the same corner of the backstage area and talking with the concentrated attention of people who only have a limited amount of time together and intend to use it

well. Bob Dylan has spoken about Keith Richards in interviews with the specific thoughtful care that Bob Dylan reserves for musicians whose work Bob Dylan considers genuinely important rather than merely culturally prominent. Keith Richards has spoken about Bob Dylan in similar terms with the specific respect of someone who recognizes in another person a commitment to music that goes deeper than career.

Neither Bob Dylan nor Keith Richards has made a public statement specifically about how the friendship began or about the November 1986 interview. Bob Dylan has not mentioned the 11 seconds. Keith Richards has not mentioned the sentence. The interview exists in the archive. The 11 seconds are there. The laugh is there. The two words are there.

What is also there for anyone who watches the interview from its beginning and pays attention to the shift that happens at the 9-minute mark is the specific moment when two people who thought they were appearing on a television program discovered they were actually talking to each other. What Keith Richards said in that one sentence has never been officially reported.

The people who were in the studio that evening, Gerald Sherman, Patricia Wells, the floor crew, the two camera operators, the makeup artist who was watching from the side of the set, have described the sentence in consistent terms. They have described its effect. They have described Bob Dylan’s laugh and Bob Dylan’s silence and Bob Dylan’s two words.

They have not repeated the sentence itself in the specific understanding that the sentence was said between two musicians on a television program and that its power resided in the specific context of that exchange and would not survive removal from it intact. What can be said is this. Keith Richards said something to Bob Dylan about Bob Dylan’s music that used Bob Dylan’s own observation about Keith Richards as its starting point and arrived somewhere that Bob Dylan had not anticipated.

Keith Richards turned Bob Dylan’s assessment 90° and showed Bob Dylan something about the music they had both spent their lives making that Bob Dylan recognized immediately as true. And Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” Two words said by Bob Dylan in public on live television in 1986 to Keith Richards in response to a single sentence Keith Richards had said about music.

Two words that Gerald Sherman, who had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions, said he had never heard Bob Dylan say in a public forum. Two words that Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said were the most significant two words she had heard in those 12 years. Not because of their content, but because of who said them and what it cost to say them and what it meant that Keith Richards had produced them in 11 seconds from a conversation that began with Bob Dylan calling Keith Richards’s music derivative. And Keith Richards and

Bob Dylan have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The sentence did its work in 11 seconds on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The work has been ongoing ever since. If this story moved you, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever said something to someone that turned a potential disagreement into an unexpected and lasting connection? Tell us about it in the comments below.

Share this with someone who needs to be reminded that the right sentence said at the right moment can completely change the entire direction of a relationship. Ring the notification bell for more untold stories about the extraordinary human beings behind music’s greatest legends.