BIOGRAPHY: Young Prince Philip: His Turbulent Early LifeBy Philip Eade Harper Press, 347pp. £25

'DONTOPEDALOGY" IS Prince Philip's own word for the special know-how on which he based his world-wide reputation for diplomatic gaffes, "the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it". Most notoriously, he once told British students in China that if they stayed there too long they would become "slitty-eyed". "His breezy irreverence," according to Philip Eade, a former barrister and London Daily Telegraphobituarist, "was evident even at formal dinners at Buckingham Palace, when he was apt to examine a menu written in elaborate French and remark cheerily to the guests: 'Ah, good. Fish and chips again'."

At the time of Queen Elizabeth II’s recent historic visit to Ireland, however, Prince Philip’s demeanour in his role of consort was impeccable. Just before his 90th birthday, his upright posture and deferential yet dignified manner as he ceremoniously walked slowly behind her and stood to one side in quiet attentiveness during official receptions won popular praise, while probably disappointing only those of the international media who had been hoping for comic “Phil the Greek” breaches of protocol. There was really only one moment when Philip appeared to be disinhibited. That was in Cork’s English Market, when he laughed uproariously with a fishmonger. Alas, the joke was not shared with those watching on TV.

Eade’s biography, which is generally respectful and friendly, explains how severely Philip was conditioned to survive six decades of royal marriage with poise and usually apparent patience. Born in Greece in 1921 of regal ancestry, but exiled as an infant with his parents, the young Philip could be described as an elite nomad. As a boy, he had no family home, for his father, a brother of the king of Greece, went off on his own, philandering on the French Riviera, while his mother, born Princess Alice of Battenberg, spent a lot of time in sanatoriums recovering from nervous breakdowns. Philip spent most of his youth in boarding schools in England, Germany and Scotland, ending up at Dartmouth Naval College.

His first aristocratic guardian, his uncle George, the 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven, sent him to Cheam, England’s oldest prep school. It is noted for its illustrious old boys and, when Philip was there, for the vigorous dominance of its owner/

headmaster, Harold Taylor. “For all his bonhomie,” Eade writes, “Taylor was also a staunch disciplinarian, declaring sloth, dirtiness and untruth to be deadly sins, and resorting to corporal punishment . . . using a cane for daytime offences and a sawn-off cricket bat for those caught pillow-fighting after lights out.” Although Philip did not like being beaten, he wrote in a preface to a history of the school: “Children may be indulged at home, but school is expected to be a Spartan and disciplined experience in the process of developing (pupils) into self-controlled, considerate and independent adults.”

Philip was subjected to further Spartan austerity at Salem School, in Germany, where Kurt Hahn, a German Jew, had achieved fame as an educational innovator. When he fled from Germany to Scotland in 1933, he established a celebrated public school along the same lines, Gordonstoun. Philip followed him, and found the regime so invigorating that he sent his son Prince Charles there, much to the relatively sensitive boy’s dismay. Finally, Philip’s second guardian, whose inherited German name had been Anglicised by royal decree to Lord Louis Mountbatten, as England’s royal dynasty had become the House of Windsor, sent Philip to the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. He was awarded prizes as the best cadet of his term.

Eade recounts the story of Philip’s British naturalisation, his brilliant wartime career in the Royal Navy (he commanded his own destroyer as a 21-year-old lst lieutenant) and the way his apollonian handsomeness caught the eye and eventually the heart of Princess Elizabeth. The discreet author allots little space to rumours of fun and games in Soho’s scandalous Thursday Club, in which the Queen’s consort, in his mid-30s, consorted with people the Queen called his “funny friends”. After all, this entertaining book is really about how Philip prepared to live happily ever after.

Patrick Skene Catling has written novels and books for children