Philip: The Final Portrait

Following the death of The Duke of Edinburgh, HRH Prince Philip, Mobius is proud to announce the publication of Philip: The Final Portrait by writer and broadcaster Gyles Brandreth. The book will be published in hardback on August 17, 2021 and available in ebook and audiobook on April 27, 2021.

Philip: The Final Portrait is the story of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh – the longest-serving consort to the longest-reigning sovereign in British history. Building upon Gyles Brandreth’s acclaimed 2004 book Philip and Elizabeth, Portrait of a Marriage, this extraordinary account is fully revised, presenting new information about the last twenty years alongside previously unpublished royal correspondence. Written with unique insight and authority by an author who knew the prince for more than forty years, it is testament to an enduring friendship.

Prince Philip never commented on the Netflix series The Crown, but this personal and revelatory book tells his side of the story: truly, it is the final portrait.

Prince Philip has been at the heart of British public life since the news broke of a royal romance, when Princess Elizabeth fell in love at first sight with a tall, handsome naval officer. It is the story of this love affair which became a marriage lasting over seventy years that is at the heart of this book. Philip – elusive, complex, controversial, challenging, often humorous, sometimes irascible – is the man Elizabeth II once described as her “constant strength and guide”. Who was he? What was he really like? What is the truth about those “gaffes” and the rumours of affairs? How did it feel to kneel before Elizabeth at her Coronation when he was no longer his wife’s equal but her subject, or relinquish the career he gave up to become “the world’s most experienced plaque unveiler”? Where did his drive to modernize the monarchy come from? This is the final portrait of an unexpected and often much-misunderstood figure.

Philip and Elizabeth were both royal by birth, both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria, but, in temperament and upbringing, they were two very different people. The Queen’s childhood was loving and secure, the Duke’s was turbulent: his grandfather assassinated, his father arrested, his family exiled, his parents separated when he was only ten. Elizabeth and Philip met as cousins in the 1930s. They married in 1947, aged twenty-one and twenty-six.

Philip: The Final Portrait tells the story of two contrasting lives, assesses the Duke of Edinburgh’s character and achievements, and explores the nature of his relationships with his wife, his children and their families – and with the press and public and those at court who were suspicious of him in the early days. Prince Philip was always a man to speak his mind, and this book is a lasting testament to this towering figure, who was ultimately a force for good at the heart of the Establishment since the Second World War until his death in April 2021. It is a powerful, revealing and, ultimately, moving account of a long life and a remarkable royal partnership.