Prince Philip dies: Facts and figures about Duke of Edinburgh's extraordinary life
He was Britain's longest-serving consort and the first royal to be interviewed on TV - a look at Philip's extraordinary life.
Friday 9 April 2021 15:20, UK
Sky News looks at key facts about the life of the Duke of Edinburgh.
• He was born Prince of Greece and Denmark at his family's villa Mon Repos on the island of Corfu on 10 June 1921.
• At 18 months old, Philip and his family were forced into exile after a military coup. Philip was evacuated in a makeshift cot made from an orange box.
• The Duke was the youngest child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg. He had four sisters.
• His grandfather was a prince of Denmark, who became king of Greece. The duke was also related to kings of Prussia and emperors of Russia.
• The family originally moved to Paris and Philip went to several European schools.
• He later attended Gordonstoun, in Moray, Scotland, where he was head boy. He was also captain of the school's hockey and cricket teams.
• When he was 16, his sister Princess Cecilie, her husband, their two young sons and her mother-in-law were killed in a plane crash in Belgium. Cecille was eight months pregnant at the time.
• Like the Queen, the duke was a great-great-grandchild of Queen Victoria.
• He spoke French well, having lived in France as a child.
• After leaving school, the duke took the civil service examination and was accepted into the Royal Navy. He won the best all-round cadet of his term and best cadet prizes at Dartmouth College.
• The duke saw active service in the Royal Navy throughout World War II.
• At the age of 21, Prince Philip became one of the youngest officers in the Royal Navy to be made First Lieutenant and second-in-command of a ship, the destroyer escort HMS Wallace.
• He took part in the Allied landings in Sicily.
• He served in the destroyer HMS Whelp in the Pacific, and was in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered in 1945.
• The duke renounced his Greek royal title in 1947 and became a naturalised British subject in order to continue his service in the Royal Navy.
• Philip married Princess Elizabeth on 20 November 1947 at Westminster Abbey. They had known each other for many years.
• On the day of his wedding, he was made Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich by King George VI.
• The Queen made her husband a prince in 1957.
• The duke was the first member of the Royal Family to be interviewed on television: in May 1961 by Richard Dimbleby.
• He became Britain's longest-serving consort in 2009.
• The duke was a qualified pilot, flying 5,986 hours in 59 types of aircraft.
• He broke the news to his wife while they were on a holiday in Kenya that her father, King George VI, had died.
• He was a keen cricketer, twice serving as president of the Marylebone Cricket Club.
• The duke took up playing polo while stationed in Malta from 1949 to 1951. He went on to become one of the best polo players in Britain.
• When arthritis and age forced him to quit polo he took up carriage driving, a sport he continued to take part in into his 90s.
• He founded the Duke of Edinburgh Awards in 1956. The scheme has been a huge international success. Millions of young people from more than 140 countries have taken part.
• Prince Philip accompanied the Queen on all her Commonwealth tours and state visits, as well as on public engagements in all parts of the UK.
• The duke carried out more than 19,500 official engagements, excluding those accompanying the Queen.
• He enjoyed painting in oils and was an enthusiastic birdwatcher.
• He was the first president of the World Wildlife Fund UK and international president of the WWF (now World Wide Fund for Nature), and then president emeritus.
• He played a key role in the rebuilding of Windsor Castle after the great fire of 1992, serving as chairman of the Restoration Committee.
• The duke was patron or president of more than 800 organisations. His longest-standing association was with the London Federation of Boys' Clubs, now London Youth, of which he became patron in 1947.
• Prince Philip was a Freeman of the cities of Acapulco; Belfast; Bridgetown; Barbados; Cardiff; Dar es Salaam; Tanzania; Edinburgh; Glasgow; Guadalajara; London; Los Angeles; Melbourne; and Nairobi.
• He had four children and eight grandchildren.
• The islanders of Tanna, one of the islands in Vanuatu in the southwest Pacific, worship the duke as a god. Vanuatu was formerly the Anglo-French Condominium of the New Hebrides, which Prince Philip visited in 1971.
• The duke founded a bag-piping trophy for the Pakistani Army after seeing a display of military bands while visiting the country with the Queen in 1961.
• Among unusual official presents received by Prince Philip were two pygmy hippopotamuses given by President Tubman of Liberia following his state visit to England in 1961.
• In 1976 he was immortalised as a waxwork at Madame Tussaud's Museum, London.
• In January 2015, then-Australian prime minister Tony Abbott awarded Prince Philip a knighthood on the country's national day. But the move sparked a backlash and contributed to destabilising Mr Abbott's leadership.
• Other accolades received by Philip included a Knight of the Order of the Elephant in Denmark, a Royal Chief of the Order of Logohu in Papua New Guinea, and a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
• Prince Philip retired from public duty in August 2017 at the age of 96 after completing 22,219 solo engagements.