FEBRUARY 24, 2021 – My wife and I have been watching The Crown on Netflix. I’m surprised. I’ve never been interested in British Royalty—they’re British and they’re royalty. Besides, I’ve always thought the current members were off kilter; not up to the job. Now I’m learning that apparently the Queen lacks a normal range of human emotions linked to tear ducts and facial expression. Thanks to The Crown, however, I’ve become an admirer of Prince Philip.
For many episodes, he wasn’t a particularly sympathetic bloke. Self-absorbed and immature, he was emblematic of all that’s wrong with British royalty. Then came Apollo 11—the American mission that landed two guys on the moon. Philip, himself an accomplished pilot, was fascinated by the effort and followed every minute of coverage. Being a space/aviation nerd myself, I could relate.
In 1962 the Queen appoints Robin Woods as dean of St. George’s Chapel, where the Queen worships when at Windsor. Philip’s in rebellion against faith, or rather, against his chain-smoking, schizophrenic mother, Princess Alice, who’d become a Greek Orthodox nun and later, a nettlesome personage at Buckingham Palace following her rescue from the coup in Athens. When in 1969 Dean Woods approaches Philip for permission to use a vacant building on Windsor grounds as a retreat center, Philip accedes but demeans. He blasts Woods and a group of clergy “in retreat” discussing their mid-life crises. In the midst of Apollo 11, Philips belittles the group for “contemplating their navels,” and points upward—not at heaven but toward the moon, where “men of action are doing things that really matter.”
For me, this was a turning point regarding Philip, whose main accomplishment in life seemed to be . . . uh . . . I couldn’t cite one. In his outburst he reveals that at least he has an imagination.
When the astronauts come to London on a whirlwind good-will tour, arrangements are made for a perfunctory visit at Buckingham Palace. Philip lobbies for a private audience. When allotted 15 minutes, he bargains for 30.
The Duke of Edinburgh (Philip’s formal title) prepares philosophical questions for his heroes, designed to elicit intense, metaphysical exposition on the experience of going to . . . the moon.
In the event, he’s sorely disappointed. The astronauts turn out to be . . . astronauts, not philosophers. “Yeah, the scenery was amazing,” they say, but they were primarily concerned with checklists and engineering protocols. A high point for Armstrong was sleeping after the moonwalk.
Philip ditches the rest of his questions and entertains the astronauts’ penetrating inquiries: “How many rooms are in the palace? How many people are on staff?”
Despite Philip’s disillusionment in the moment, the encounter is life-changing. Shortly thereafter he returns to the clergymen whom he’d disparaged unsparingly. Philip confesses: walking on the face of the moon might’ve been an extraordinary engineering feat, but it hadn’t produced a breakthrough in understanding the human condition. Over the desolate horizon of the moon was . . . . desolation.
In that revelation Philip found faith and his mission in life: the retreat center.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
