“He was very polite, very interested - I was just in awe,” says Jane. “We asked him if he would mind signing our copies, which he very graciously did. It was only a ten or 15-minute meeting but it was a huge honour to meet this really special man.”
Naval expert Dr Richard Porter, honorary curator at the Britannia Museum, agrees it was a privilege to have met the Duke.
“He was very pleasant, quite quiet and I remember he just had this air of peace about him,” says Richard, talking about the time Prince Philip came to Dartmouth to open the Britannia Museum in 1999. “I took him past a portrait we have of Lord Mountbatten and he immediately exclaimed: ‘Ah, Uncle Dickie!’”.