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Their love's undimmed. But gossip about Philip and women still hurts: As the Queen reaches a historic milestone, Duke remains her closest ally and most fearless critic

By Richard Kay and Geoffrey Levy for the Daily Mail

Published: 17:07 EST, 6 September 2015 | Updated: 20:18 EST, 6 September 2015

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This week, the Queen becomes Britain’s longest serving monarch — beating the record set by Victoria.

To mark this historic moment, the Mail has commissioned a definitive portrait of this extraordinary woman and her family. In today’s instalment, a fascinating insight into her marriage...

Enduring love: The Queen and Prince Philip

And so a great love story reaches a new milestone. Only death will end it. The Queen and Prince Philip have always fitted each other so well — he sharp, decisive and bold, she cautious and slower about making up her mind, but mutually admiring and, most of all, in love.

Hers was the reign, but he has been the grand vizier, the strong — at times rasping — voice at her shoulder. Some close observers have always felt the edge which he brought into palace life has had much to do with him having to give up a promising career in the Royal Navy in order to support her as a young Queen.

More than 63 record years since she ascended the throne, what is clearer than ever is that the brash confidence Philip exuded when she first met him, that same apparent certainty about everything, has made her feel — to use the word of one senior courtier — ‘safe’.

Hardly necessary any more, you may think, except that, however long the Queen reigns, she can never escape the echoes of the childhood shock of learning, at the age of ten, that her new destiny was to be Queen.

Even now at 94, Philip, still a charismatic and engaging figure, is the crucial ally to whom she automatically turns for advice.

‘The Queen admires him for many things, but mainly I think for the way he has managed to remain himself — the same man she married,’ says the courtier.

And yet Philip’s greatest fear about marrying the then Princess Elizabeth was that, while for her future ‘nothing was going to change . . . (but) everything was going to change’ for him.

Philip has described her as having ‘tolerance in abundance’ — a general observation that cynics would say is bound to encompass the endless gossip about his private life, and allegations of other women.

The mere talk, although utterly denied by Philip, has always hurt the Queen.

It is over family matters in particular that she has always relied on him — he doesn’t see state papers — even though in this unique family it is her Sovereign decision that counts.

It was his hand, not hers, that penned those sensible and sympathetic letters to Princess Diana at the height of the crisis in her marriage to Charles, asking her to recognise that there were faults on both sides while reassuring her of how fond he and the Queen were of her.

The Duke with his friend Lady Brabourne at this year's Windsor House show. Her father founded the Angus Steakhouse restaurant chain

In one, which he signed ‘Fondest, Pa’, he told her: ‘I cannot imagine anyone in their right mind leaving you for Camilla.’

It was Philip who made the implacable decision to have nothing more to do with the Duchess of York after her toe-sucking extra-marital shenanigans were publicly exposed to the huge embarrassment of the Royal Family. When she walked into a room, he would walk out.

With regard to Fergie, the Queen displayed a wifely — queenly? — independence. She has continued to have some contact with her for the sake of Prince Andrew, who refused to cast out the wayward wife who was once described as ‘a breath of fresh air’ in the Royal Family.

One thing is clear: Philip has never seen himself as being more than the Queen’s support.

‘What she always gets from him is the unvarnished truth — he’s probably the only person on earth who treats her as a normal human being,’ says an aide.

More than once over the years he has been heard calling her ‘a bloody fool’.

The Queen has always adored Philip, say courtiers. They are pictured above on their wedding day in 1947

For example, there was a car ride on the Sandringham estate when Philip was driving with the Queen next to him and an aide in the back. According to a senior courtier, Philip was in one of his grumpy moods and was driving rather fast.

The aide was worried by the speed but couldn’t think of a tactful way of complaining. It was plain from the Queen’s troubled looks that she was thinking the same thing, and eventually she asked Philip to slow down.

He snapped: ‘One more peep out of you and you can walk the rest of the way!’ And he continued driving at the same speed.

Later, the aide felt bold enough to ask the Queen why she wasn’t more insistent with Philip. She replied: ‘You heard what he said, and he meant it. He would have made me walk.’

Somehow, this is so much more than a skin-deep anecdote about their marriage. ‘She’s always adored him — she never looked at anyone else,’ says her cousin and friend from childhood, Margaret Rhodes. ‘She was smitten from the start.’

That well-known ‘start’ was when the Princess was 13 and on a visit with her father to Dartmouth Naval College, where Philip was the handsome young cadet deputed to show them round.

Several years later, when she had grown up and his uncle Earl Mountbatten was energetically brokering Philip as a husband for her, wagging fingers warned that he was too rakish and carried too much baggage to marry a future Queen of these islands.

The then Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) insisted on referring to Philip in private conversations as ‘the Hun’, an ungracious dig so soon after the war at his German family links — three of his four sisters had married German aristocrats who became leading figures in the Nazi party.

Sir Alan Lascelles, George VI’s private secretary, summed up the view of Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten taken by some of the Royal Family and many courtiers when he wrote: ‘They felt he was rough, uneducated and would probably not be faithful.’

He was certainly rough, in the sense that he wasn’t a ‘refined’ royal. But Philip was a naval officer who had fought a good war and been mentioned in dispatches.

He was also penniless, the son of a gambling reprobate who’d spent the final years of his louche life in the fleshpots of Monte Carlo.

As for being faithful, the fact is that over the entirety of her record reign he has never been free from talk of other women.

One thing is clear: Philip has never seen himself as being more than the Queen’s support. Above, together in 2007, 60 years after their wedding

For her part, the Queen has always accepted that she married a man who ‘takes a lot of amusing’, and long ago resigned herself to the fact that women have found — and, indeed, still find — her husband irresistible.

This remains the one area of their marriage which, privately, upsets her. Not because of what Philip may, or may not, have done but because of the constant gossip which has always attached itself to his activities.

Women have certainly played a major role in Philip’s life.

In recent times, there has been willowy Penny Eastwood, still glamorous at 62, whose father founded the Angus Steakhouse restaurant chain.

Philip met her when she married Lord Mountbatten’s grandson Norton Knatchbull (now Lord Brabourne), from whom she is now separated.

My sole job is never to let the Queen down

In later years, when advancing age made Philip give up playing polo and switch to something less physically arduous, he and Penny became regular carriage-driving companions.

In fact, the Queen is known to like Penny and she is the first name on the list of any palace party. One figure close to the Queen says: ‘She shrugs her shoulders and says: “Philip likes to have her around.” ’

Penny’s mother-in-law, Countess Mountbatten, believes Philip has never been unfaithful to the Queen and that Penny is simply ‘a special friend’.

Another old friend, Sacha, Duchess of Abercorn, has a somewhat different take.

She told writer Gyles Brandreth: ‘She (the Queen) gives him a lot of leeway. Her father told her: “Remember, he’s a sailor. They come in on the tide.” ’

Only once, early in her reign when they had been married for little over seven years, has the Queen been moved to act publicly to stem marital rumours.

Philip had embarked on a world tour aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia with his old naval chum and equerry Mike Parker.

The boat steamed first to Australia, where Philip opened the Olympic Games in Melbourne. But as the weeks went by and he and the Queen were still apart, the trip began to look increasingly like a junket.

Newspapers in the U.S. were the first to speculate about a rift in the royal marriage. Questions were asked in the House of Commons amid lurid reports of women being smuggled aboard the royal yacht.

As for his own specific role, Philip says: ‘My job first, second and last is never to let the Queen down.’ They are photographed together in 2002 as she marked her 50 years as monarch

Faced with a clamour for answers, the Queen issued an official denial that there was a rift in the marriage and flew out to meet her husband, who, by then, was in Portugal. They had been apart for 124 days.

In a carefully choreographed reunion, she used the occasion pointedly to promote him from mere Duke of Edinburgh to Prince of the realm.

Meanwhile, Parker’s long-suffering wife chose the moment to file for divorce on the grounds of her husband’s adultery. She blamed Philip for leading him astray.

Philip has remarked that ‘the secret of a happy marriage is to have different interests’.

Certainly, the difference in their roles is apparent at parties, where the Queen will chat earnestly while whatever group of people Philip is with is usually shaking with laughter.

What has always been clear — right from the early days — is what a good ‘team’ they make.

On their Golden Wedding in 1997, at a lunch hosted by the then Prime Minister Tony Blair in Whitehall, the Queen spoke in a way that few had heard her talk before.

Paying an affectionate tribute to Philip, she said: ‘He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments, but he has, quite simply, been my strength and stay all these years. And I, his whole family, and this and many other countries, owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim or we shall ever know.’

For his part, Philip has always had a practical approach to the monarchy. In 1969, when the Queen had been on the throne for a mere 17 years and he was on a visit to Canada, he declared: ‘It is a complete misconception to imagine that the monarchy exists in the interests of the monarch. It doesn’t. It exists in the interests of the people.’

Intriguingly he added: ‘If at any time, any nation decides that the system is unacceptable, then it is up to them to change it.’

‘The Duke is always very upbeat; the Queen less so,’ says a close aide. ‘He keeps her cheerful.’ Above, the couple in a portrait to mark their diamond wedding anniversary

As for his own specific role, he says: ‘My job first, second and last is never to let the Queen down.’

As in every family, however, things have not remained the same. These days, Philip has taken a step back from family issues, telling friends: ‘I’ve done all I can. It’s up to them now.’

This is why Fergie has been able to make a modest comeback to the royal fireside in recent times. One thing which has not changed, though, are Philip’s incognito trips in his dark green London taxi, which he bought so he could move about the capital unnoticed.

His chirpy manner, her cautious approach, have never changed.

‘The Duke is always very upbeat; the Queen less so,’ says a close aide. ‘He keeps her cheerful.’

He is also still a romantic. As newlyweds in 1947, they went to see the musical Oklahoma! in the West End, and the then Princess Elizabeth emerged humming the tunes, especially the song People Will Say We’re In Love.

More than half a century later, at a party given at Bellamy’s restaurant in Mayfair by the Queen Mother’s old lady-in-waiting Lady (Prue) Penn to mark both her own and the Queen’s 80th birthdays, she engaged the crooner Kenny Lynch.

At Lady Penn’s request, Lynch’s repertoire covered songs from Oklahoma! including People Will Say We’re In Love.

Then, as he began singing another of the Queen’s favourite songs, The Way You Look Tonight, the restaurant went quiet. And there was Philip, giving him the thumbs up.

The Queen isn’t having a party to mark Wednesday’s landmark of becoming the UK longest-serving monarch.

But you can be sure there will be one on the monarch’s 90th birthday next April. Having passed their 68th wedding anniversary (on November 20), Philip will make sure of that.