His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (Con)]

It is a very great honour to pay tribute to His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. I see as his most profound impact on the globe internationally the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme. I want to share the spirit of the award, which is encapsulated by Shakespeare in “All’s Well That Ends Well”, in the words spoken by the King of France to the brave and pioneering Helena:

“Youth, beauty, wisdom, courage, all

That happiness and prime can happy call:

Thou this to hazard needs must intimate

Skill infinite.”

These are the qualities that every single entrant to the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme is challenged to meet. Today we forget how extraordinary his outline of the scheme, which was difficult to get off the ground, was, because it incorporated everyone through his far sight: the handicapped and all sorts and conditions of young people. It is his true memorial because it is alive and kicking, is going and will never stop. I felt that each individual counted. That was the great sterling mission of the scheme, which has been passed down and is reflected very widely in, for example, the Prince’s Trust, through His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, and through Princess Anne’s work with Save the Children.

These are the qualities that he also demanded of his volunteers. As chair of the Friends of the Award scheme, I had to discover those qualities very fast indeed one morning on receiving a call from him. He had just visited a complicated area of Birmingham, and he was very unhappy indeed with the quality of life that he found and the opportunities for young people. So at breakfast time came this instruction; it was not a request, it was actually an order: “Emma, you’ve got to find me £3 million very fast indeed. We’re going to do something for those young people in Birmingham. I cannot leave it like this. I was there yesterday.” So £3 million within a few weeks was the order of the day, and then an enormous scheme was founded in Birmingham, which I believe has been absolutely wonderful.

I quoted Shakespeare. The Duke was himself a Shakespeare scholar. He read books about him. He visited Stratford-upon-Avon to see the Shakespeare Centre five times. His first visit was in June 1957, and his last was in 2011, but I mark out the special visit in 1964 for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth—the quatercentenary of Shakespeare’s birth. He went by himself because Her Majesty had recently given birth to His Royal Highness the Earl of Wessex, Prince Edward. That was a very important moment. Twenty-five years later, with the formation of the special projects committee, where HRH Prince Edward was in the chair—I was the vice-chair—and at the instigation of Myra, Lady Butter, the international award scheme benefited tremendously, and Prince Edward is now fully involved and incredibly successful. All over the world where one visits, one now hears about the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme and Prince Edward.

I think that the Duke’s love of Africa never wavered. I first saw him as a small element of his train in 1964 when we visited Malawi to give it independence. Of course the Duke was representing Her Majesty the Queen. I happened to sit fairly opposite him and watched what was happening. Dr Banda, who subsequently became life president of Malawi, was a great speaker. Indeed, he spoke for a very long time indeed, in the burning sun, with one person from every member of the UN at an enormous table in a vast field in the middle of Malawi. After three and half hours, opposite me I saw a movement. Prince Philip and his ADC very quietly, very politely, got up and walked away across the field. Dr Banda went on for another three hours, and the rest of us broiled under the sun.

Perhaps the final words could be his own. I am sure that he would have said, like the dying Duke of York in “Henry V”:

“Dear my Lord,

Commend my service to my sovereign.”

And we might say, like Horatio over the body of Prince Hamlet:

“Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,

And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”