News of the death of Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh at the age of 99 has sparked a flurry of memories and tributes to the royal consort. But perhaps one aspect of his life that has not garnered as much attention as it might is his writing.
While so much of what he has said – including some unforgettable gaffes – has been readily recounted, many will be unaware that he actually wrote or co-wrote numerous books. The Daily Telegraph puts the number at 14, although the Mail also reported that he was in the middle of penning another, on the topic of the German hunting lodge his sister Sophie lived in.
The Telegraph suggested that there is little better way to get to know what the Duke was really like than to check out those 14 books, which cover an array of topics from helicopters to religion and, the paper suggests, consists of “unpretentious, witty writing” that “reveals his intellect”.
Of course, there were niche titles like Competition Carriage Driving, but the Duke was also noted for his deep convictions on the environment and the future of human society.
His works on the environment and conservation included Birds From Britannia; Wildlife Crisis; Down to Earth: Collected Writings and Speeches on Man and the Natural World; and Survival or Extinction: A Christian Attitude to the Environment. Men, Machines and Sacred Cows is also on the list, expressing his views on big questions of science, technology and, of course, horses.
Prince Philip also wrote the foreword for several books, including the conservationist tome the Doomsday Book of Animals, as well as another foreword to a 2005 book titled A Question of Survival For The Indians of Brazil, which raised concerns about how such people had provided goods for westerners but had received little more than disease and poverty in return.
Some might argue these books can tell us much more about Philip the man than the various biographies that have been written about him down the years.
The Duke was also a collector of some interesting books as well, with the i revealing that this included plenty on UFOs and aliens. This was apparently sparked by an alleged incident on his uncle Louis Mountbatten’s estate in Hampshire, when a craft of unknown origin was said to have touched down.
Among these was a book titled The Halt Perspective, over an incident in December 1980 when UFOs were encountered at Rendlesham in Suffolk by US Airforce personnel. The Duke spent much of summer 2019 reading it.
Whether Prince Philip has read any of the stranger claims that he himself, along with the rest of the royals, is an alien reptile from another world by the likes of David Icke is not known, but what we can be sure of is that his death will spark a flurry of further books about the man himself.
While his own contribution to literature is over, the late duke will at least have provided his own written insights to tell us something about both himself and how he saw the world and its issues.
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