His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow my noble friend Lord Cormack in paying tribute to His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh. My noble friend and I share the same interests and, I suspect, may cover similar ground. Like him, I feel that it is a great privilege to be able to take part in this debate and pay tribute to the Duke of Edinburgh.

As a Minister, I was occasionally lucky enough to meet His Royal Highness at the odd reception. I remember, on the two occasions that we managed to have a conversation, that I left each time thinking, “Well, that’s a Daily Mail headline”. I was discreet enough not to say anything to any journalist, but not discreet enough not to turn each of those conversations into a finely honed dinner party anecdote.

It will not surprise your Lordships to learn that I will speak about the Duke of Edinburgh’s contribution to the arts. As has already been mentioned by many noble Lords, he was an enthusiastic and innovative patron of the arts. I too met him at a reception for the “Cutty Sark” and at the National Maritime Museum when he opened the Ofer wing. As noble Lords know, he was an enormous supporter of that museum. I remember, when I first visited in my capacity as a Minister, being shown their visitors’ book recording his first visit in 1947. He was the trustee there from 1948 to 2000, and thereafter a patron.

I am indebted to my friend Robert Hardman’s excellent book Our Queen for a much more comprehensive insight into the Duke’s artistic passion. Forgive me if I briefly read out something that sounds a bit like a shopping list; it is no reflection on Mr Hardman’s prose. According to him, the Duke assembled more than 2,000 works of art while he was married to Her Majesty, and 13,000 books, which occupied, floor to ceiling, two rooms of Buckingham Palace. As has been said many times during this debate, he was an accomplished artist himself and supported others. He not only commissioned the artist Edward Seago to paint the Queen, but later secretly bought the preliminary sketch for that painting from Christie’s and hung both in his study.

However, he was not a conventional collector. For example, he was an assiduous patron of young contemporary Scottish artists, and transformed the walls of Holyroodhouse with modern Scottish contemporary art. He supported Australian artists and was one of the first to purchase aboriginal art. He purchased works by Sidney Nolan, Barbara Hepworth and Mary Fedden, and the craft of Lucie Rie. All were acquired by the Duke, as well as a collection of political cartoons, which no doubt feature many Members of your Lordships’ House. He was a patron and supporter of the world of design. He designed and commissioned a bracelet for the Queen on her coronation in 1952 but, perhaps as a wider shared legacy, he established the Prince Philip Designers Prize in 1959, under the auspices of the V&A, and chaired the Royal Mint Advisory Committee.

In the same year, 1959, he became the president of BAFTA. I know that many of your Lordships would have been glued to the BAFTA awards last night. It is important that he was the first patron of two merged organisations to represent the film industry, and even more important that he secured the royalties from the documentary film that he commissioned, “Royal Family”, to be donated to BAFTA, which enabled it to move to its present headquarters, where it is now established.

It has been a feature of the coverage of His Royal Highness that he has been seen very quickly as a modernising prince and a modernising consort. His engagement, love, passion and support for the arts epitomise that beautifully. I shall come back to my noble friend Lord Cormack by agreeing with him. As I was on my way here, I was thinking that the obvious comparison with the Duke of Edinburgh is Prince Albert and that we will remember his achievements and still be talking about them in 200 years’ time—not personally, of course.