His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

Lord Wakeham Excerpts

Monday 12th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wakeham (Con)]

My Lords, this is the first time I have been in this Chamber for over a year, but I could not miss the opportunity of coming here today to express my sympathies to Her Majesty the Queen and the rest of the Royal Family on their very sad loss. It is an enormous loss to them but also a great loss to ourselves.

Like many others, I was fortunate to have many discussions and meetings with Prince Philip over the years, but I had been forewarned of both his valuable judgments and common sense by my late father-in-law, who was one of the young chaplains to the Queen and had to preach his first sermon to the Queen and Prince Philip when he was in his early 30s—and he told me about the lunchtime discussions afterwards.

The Duke’s interest in technology has been mentioned by many speakers. He came to Brunel University, where I was chancellor, on many occasions. On one occasion, they rang in the morning to say that he was ill in bed and could not come—and I assumed, therefore, that the visit was over. But the telephone call did not end without them settling the date when he was coming, which was 14 days later. There were no meetings I ever had when I did not prepare myself before he came with all the technical things that they were doing at the university. Whether he thought I knew anything about it or not, he was too polite to let me know.

When I became the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, he said to me that he thought I had got a “significant job”—nothing more than that. His method of questioning was very much to the point, but I always thought that he got the best out of people by the way he did the questioning. He enabled them to say what they were doing in as clear and concise a way as they possibly could, which was a very valuable way of doing it.

I remember one occasion when he came to the Garrick; he brought the Queen to see all the wonderful pictures there. As he came in, he saw me in the line-up and looked at me and said, “What the hell are you doing here?” He was a wonderful man, and the memories that I have from my small acquaintanceship with him will always stay with me. I end by saying that the life of service and dedication that he lived is a wonderful inspiration to all of us, and of course we will all remember it for many years to come.