A few personal memories of the late #dukeofedinburgh - starting with his last ever official engagement with the Rifles last year.....
It was so impressive that at 99 - and having had a hip replacement two years previously - he waked down the stairs at the Equerries Entrance at Windsor Castle unaided.....
On the forecourt at Buckingham Palace, senior royal officials were in tears as he officially retired in 2017 - months after I revealed palace officials had called a secret meeting about the issue exclusively in the Mail.....
.....there was a palpable sense of shock that Philip would no longer be at his wife’s wife in public.....
.....Here #PrincePhilip accompanies the Queen on an engagement in June 2017 as they re-enact Queen Victoria’s historic first rail trip.....
.....always enquiring, always looking round.....
.....and always at his wife’s side.....
......at the Tower of London.....
......in Berlin in 2015.....
....and at the Queen’s 90th birthday celebrations....
.....looking at the car step as if to say ‘take that!’
.....gosh, that’s a memory! .....
....and finally at the Order of the Garter in 2015.....
There are too many memories to tweet.
But one video I have stumbled across tonight has made me think. That from now on, the Queen will need these people around her more than ever #PrincePhilip#DukeofEdinburgh#RIP
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The US would never have been asked to pay for #HarryandMeghan’s security. It’s not their responsibility. But this tweet shows what invidious position the couple are are now in, having decided to leave the UK and move to America.
To clarify, when members of the royal family are invited to visit a foreign state on an official working trip, then security is provided by the host nation (at cost to themselves) - just as it is provided by the UK when a foreign dignitary visits.
It’s Harry and Meghan’s decision to base themselves in the US as private citizens permanently that is problematic for the British government. Should the hard-pressed Met Police be forced to protect them at the cost of millions of pounds a year?