Skip to main content

The death of Prince Philip

Despite having the same human failings as every other human, Prince Philip, in the documentaries on the BBC after his death, has been shown to be one of the great men - and I use that word intentionally for good and ill - of the past 100 years, in Western civilisation - a civilisation whose values, again, flawed for being human, nevertheless will be missed within a decade from now. Tall, handsome, physically expert at every sport he tried, superb and brave in war on the high seas, intelligent, interested in science, an early adopter of new technologies, and an environmentalist, who stood by his wife for 70 years as monarch and never complained, and was known for an irreverent sense of humour, with a Christian mother who harboured Jews from Nazis, and a profligate father, Philip Mountbatten was the all-rounder - a flawed but ideal sort of 'James Bond' man's man - strong, stoic, and able to serve a greater common good. He was no rebel, but he was non-traditional in many ways. We know his slips of the tongue (if such they were) and of course he represented the idea of empire and commonwealth. He was the ultimate Establishment figure. But, in that capacity, he was truly great at his 'job'. Younger people may choose to mock or hate on him, but the fact is, such people (men and women) defeated the Nazis. He was the bedrock of British society and its functioning success through crisis after crisis - he met 18 US presidents as the consort to her Majesty - and he remained the same - you knew who he was, he knew who he was, and he never apologised. He may be an old-fashioned kind of man, but boy, is he an impressive model for one way of achieving excellence and living a good life. He will be so missed, it is heart-breaking.

Comments

Janet Vickers said…
Thanks for this Todd. I only knew this man as the Queen's Consort and how smart he dressed. All I know of the Royals is the probability of tremendous stress from being in a public view. The other side of this is how much the human condition, the lives of anonymous people can make us lash out because we don't have an available narrative of the achievements we have that make the world better but never gets recorded publicly, so it's easy assume our labours don't count.
Mon Apr 12, 07:16:00 am 2021
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that
Post a Comment
Read more

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?
1 comment
Read more

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".
1 comment
Read more