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Looked at from the outside, the Duke of Edinburgh was a kind of living model of the British establishment – ever-present at all those State ceremonial occasions, Trooping the Colour, openings of Parliament.
Lean, imperious, with an eagle’s stare and a hawk nose, dressed in the bearskin and scarlet of colonel of the Grenadier Guards, or the gold and dark navy of Lord High Admiral; and caught when in mufti, perhaps carriage-driving, in tweeds and bowler, even a top hat.
Standing more or less to attention at the Queen’s side across nine decades, rigid with duty, terse with words, with the grimace of a man unlikely to suffer fools gladly, Prince Philip looked the part of the insider’s insider.