The Duke In His Own Words – HT

 

 

Through all their years together, the Queen and Prince Philillip would always look forward  to returning to Windsor, to the castle they called home. As the world reflects on the extraordinary life of the Duke of Edinburgh, we remember him in the place which meant more to him than anywhere.  For you, is this place home?  Yeah, for most of the time. Yes.

 I mean, don’t forget, no one has lived here for goodness knows how long until we decided that we would use this. And so, we’ve lived here as in a home very much more so than everybody since perhaps Queen Victoria. Well, in fact, since  filming for more than a year at Windsor, we had the unique  opportunity to see the Duke in his own domain on his rounds of the great park.

 Morning.  Through the castle’s ancient rituals,  rationally, lunatic. Morning.  Even as a royal retailer.  Any good?  Absolutely.  Yes. organic. Surely  the Duke would be the perfect guide to a world he knew better than anyone.  Through it all, he brought a quick wit to royal occasions.

 Well, I’m glad you noticed  and was always ready to speak his mind.  But the morselium’s a morselium. There’s all you can say about it.  Windsor would also reveal his creative side. The idea was that the bottom would be the fire and then show the castle in a sense reemerging in the sunlight  and it would bring back  memories too.

 We used to have Christmas here. It was very popular with all the the young.  With his unrelenting drive and energy, the Duke will be  remembered not just for what he achieved but for the way he did it. Fair the same way. So you’re a bit of a royal rebel.  I’m not a rebel. No, I wouldn’t call that.

 Innovator perhaps. Windsor Castle has stood here for nearly a thousand years. the ancestral seat of the monarchy  and a thriving estate. It’s a home and workplace  for hundreds of people. But no one in modern times has had more impact on Windsor than this man. To most of the world, he was known as Prince Philillip, the Duke of Edinburgh.

But here,  he had another more ancient title, Ranger of Windsor Great Park. And for the first time, he’s taking a film crew with him on his rounds. I’m all right. In a way, it’s easier for  Royal Sol.  The Queen put the Duke in charge of all of this in 1952 when she came to the throne.  This is going to work, is it? Before then, he’d been a rising star in the Royal Navy.

 At Windsor, he had to adapt quickly to a very different role.  Where do you learn all about I mean, because to be to be ranger, you’ve got to know fair bit about forestry and farming and and  well, you pick it up as you go along. In fact, I did. You didn’t you didn’t go on any sort of crash course in  No, I think it it sounds crazy, but I think um 13 years in the Navy um teaches you quite a lot about administration and coping with curious things.

This is where the headkeeper lives. But this is up here is where George IV kept his menagerie. He had giraffes and various animals that he was given and they all were all accommodated up here and I think that went with it.  Never thought about bringing the giraffes back, sir.  No.  The Duke might not have shared the exotic tastes of his predecessors, but he would revive and transform much of the estate.

 I can’t see any of the deer. They’re  on the left. They’re down there. When he first arrived here with the queen, the priority was still growing crops for a ration book nation.  This used to be arable all all through here. During the war, it was all plowed up, but it’s lousy. I mean, most of it’s clay. It’s almost impossible to.

 And then we had cattle on it and it was all fenced in. And uh um we came to the conclusion that it was it was a very messy business and it and it wasn’t profitable. And so we decided to put it back to a deer park. The last lot of deer were taken out of here during the war and sent up to Belmor Moral. So that but they’ve always been de here.

 So at least we brought back their descendants. So that all this is now open park which I think is a very much better arrangement than it was before.  I mean looking at this surely it was the right thing to bring back the deer park. I mean it is the most  I’m glad you agree.  Just  before we go to we got the copper horse here.

 I just wonder if you could sort of be briefly explain to us, sir, about what what’s going on.  There’s the sun and there’s copper horse. What do you mean?  Well, you want you want you want to tell us about tell us about the copper horse? I  don’t know anything about the copper horse except it’s George the third.  And why it’s called the copper horse? I haven’t a clue.

 The statue of George III may command the Windsor landscape, but it was another royal ranger who really inspired the Duke. Prince Albert, husband and consort to Queen Victoria.  This is a Prince Consort’s farm and was designed by him and is a dairy farm. We got about 200 Jersey cattle in here.  Prince Albert  revolutionized farming at Windsor.

 And his groundbreaking dairy was nothing less than a work of art. As Albert’s great great grandson, the Duke was keenly aware of his legacy. Do  you feel personally given that Prince Albert and Queen Victoria were descendants of yours as well as the queen?  No, not descendants of theirs.  Sorry, they’re ancestors of yours.

Does that does that give you does that make you feel a a particular attachment to the place  given that the council did so much for this place as you?  Well, that’s that’s in a sense almost a burden because they tried to live up to to to live up to his abilities which is which is pretty difficult.  But one thing he did share with his royal ancestor was an eye for detail.

The great thing about these is they live a long time. They’re quite small. They’re very efficient. I mean, they’re not as productive as the normal freezers, but I think they’re more thrifty in a way.  In Albert’s day, all the food for the castle would have been produced on the estate. Times have changed.  The difficulty is that we’re either here by ourselves or we got 100 people living in the place.

 You know, if you’ve got a greenhouse, you need to have a sort of constant production. It’s much more expensive uh growing our own stuff and getting it from Tesco or whatever it is.  But the Duke realized that there were lessons to be learned from the supermarkets. He opened a shop of his own. You can find shop.  You want to do that?  Yeah, I think I think that would be good.

 We’ll try and get there, you know, as we can.  Yeah, we’ll do we’ll get  I mean, years ago, oh, must been about 30 years ago, I suggested that we ought to have a a plucking and packing facility somewhere in one of these buildings uh for the game that is that comes off here and also from the other properties. And I thought that we’d be able to develop a market for oven ready feeasants, parties, grouse, duck, whatever.

 So we converted the potting sheds here in into the into a farm shop. This is quite funny. This pub here is now called the British Raj, I think, isn’t it? And it’s still got Lord Nelson. There’s a British Raj. It used to be called the Lord Nelson. It’s now called the British Raj. Lovely idea. You can see there’s quite a lot of people using it.

 The Duke’s Farm  Shop sells produce from across the Windsor estate. Great park venison,  grass-fed beef, even ice cream from the dairy.  Look what’s happened. It’s full now. Morning. Is he going to stop? All right. Most of this stuff comes either from the crown estate or from local producers.

Any good are they?  Beautiful. Absolutely  excellent.  Organic. Surely.  Yes, they are.  Would be very tensive.  All the butchering is done in the back there or or right here in front of everybody. And the majority of this is comes from off the estate, but a lot of it comes from other local producers.

 And then there’s quite a lot of stuff over there which comes from the um Dutchy originals. I think we’re going to sort of clog up the system if we stay here much longer. Do you think morning?  Morning. And then we also produce um apple juice. at Sandum and that gets sold here as well as there as well as goes to I think to um Waitro I think they take it as well.

The the art I’ve discovered is you can get lots of customers but if you don’t get the pricing right you lose money. If you’ll get the pricing right without hurting anybody’s feelings, then um you make a certain amount of money.   Like the farm shop, the castle must get its pricing right, too.

 It’s tourism which pays the bills and maintains the treasures of the royal collection. And when the queen and the Duke moved in here, they wanted the public to feel more at home, too.  52 was fairly soon after the war, and nothing much had been done to the castle, as you can imagine, on a major scale.

 So, the first things that we did were to redecorate most of the public rooms. What tended to happen because the people who put them on display were in a sense curators, they tended to put all the hobbines in one room and all the whatever it was, you know, Gainesburgh’s another all. And I said, well, I didn’t think that suited a house.

 You didn’t normally in a house, you wouldn’t have a kind of gallery display. I mean, at one stage, the the the state bed chamber or something, I forget what it was called. I mean had what about 30 or 40 can of letters all all like a stamp collection you anyway so we dispersed them and made it a completely different collection  less of a museum and more of a  well that was the intention yeah  while visitors fill Windsor every day the castle remains a family home too and the Duke was always adding personal touches  some uh friends had some of these

parakeets or or budgery. So, we thought we’d we got some of those and then I thought it’d be rather fun to have some doves floating about. Trouble is, they get nicked by uh sparrow hawks and things, but on the whole they seem that breeding seems to keep up.  He even designed a new water feature for the garden.

 The east terrace I thought was originally it was rather elaborate and uh confusing and um there used to be a bronze sort of figure of the chap strangling a snake or something in the middle of the thing. So I took it away and and designed that thing and found it which I think well I think it nicer anyway   as well as a new fountain.

 The Duke felt the layout of the garden needed attention, too.  The original beds were rather sort of complicated, and they didn’t seem to fit very well. And so I got a an artist friend of mine and together we made a a model of this of the whole of this and and tried various arrangements on it and eventually um settled on this sort of cartwheel thing with these are all rose beds which makes it in a sense relatively easy to manage and they’re sort of different colors but they sort of match each And then the orangey which was unused.

We made a swimming pool in it. We used to have Christmas here. It was very popular with all the the young. Still gets used.  You ever use it yourself?  Yes, I use it. Yeah. Long after the children had grown up and had children of their own, they would always return to Windsor for Easter, a tradition the Queen and Prince Philip maintained  throughout their life together.

 In our early years, the whole of the year was dominated by school holidays. So in practice, what we did was we came here for the Easter holidays and we still do. And in in many ways it works quite well because our children knowing the routine tend to come back for those holiday part of the holidays and the grandchildren get brought with them and so it forms a nice  kind of annual structure.

For the Duke, Windsor was full of memories and some of the most precious are stored safely away in the very heart of the castle, the round tower. Tell us a little about what what goes on in the rant because it’s obviously it’s the most prominent bit and yet it’s the most protected bit. It’s the sort of the center of the cast.

 Well, no, because it’s only it’s it’s it’s it’s a working establishment. It’s got the photographic collection. It’s got the archives. I mean, the accumulation of material is phenomenal.  So much of the Duke’s life is remembered here. The queens, too. Photographs of a growing family. The Duke’s royal tours around the world.

Memories of wartime Windsor when a  young Prince Philip dropped in on leave from the Navy while Princess Elizabeth starred in The Christmas Pantomime. But this family home with its treasured contents came dangerously close to disaster one cold November day in 1992. The Duke keeps  a momento. salvaged from the ashes.

 I thought it was rather fun, a reminder of the because it finished it stopped here at the at the at the end of this room, the fire. If you look carefully, you can see that the gilding there is slightly brighter than it is down there. That’s new and that’s old. And it and it came to about here. The winds of  fire raged day and night, devouring one great room after another.

The blaze  had swept through the public part of the castle, but there would be no  public money for repairs.  In spite of this being a state property, and this part of it is not inhabited by us anyway. It’s all public. It’s all open to the public. The House of Commons decided they weren’t going to spend any money on its restoration.

 So, we rather stuck with it. In a way, it was a blessing because from then onwards, we didn’t have to contend with a pay master and having to satisfy anybody else.  There would still be battles ahead. The Duke tried to preempt them. I was pretty sure that there would be a lot of um establishments that would would be expected to um take an interest in it and I thought that it was better to get them in on the decision side rather than let them criticize the decisions afterwards.

 Hence the restoration committee which included anybody I thought that might be involved or might be able to voice criticism and say well let’s get them on the on the side. There was certainly no shortage of opinions. Some even proposed that the damaged part of the castle should remain a ruin.  By great good luck, I think it was Country Life sponsored a kind of public competition for redesigning the place.

Designs were so awful that everybody was quite convinced that the best thing to do was to restore it to where it had been before. frightful designs they come in the early one where they were going to leave I think the roof over  Yeah. and grow mushrooms in it or something. Yeah.  Tell me about some of the work.

 I don’t know. I You go look at it. I I don’t know what they were. They were universally ghastly question.  There was  one unexpected benefit. The fire revealed long lost parts of the castle.  This um was cut off here. And all this was was found in a sense as a result of the fire because this was the the the kitchen entrance here until they built this bit on.

 But of course about a third of the roof in the kitchen was was damaged or destroyed.  During the repair work, much of the original great kitchen was revealed and restored to its medieval glory. And these this was part nobody knew this was here. These slots um were for a port colorist to come out.  Did you want to go into the chapel?  Yes, we’d love to.

 A new private chapel now commemorates  the blaze. When um I got back after the fire and looking at all this destruction, it struck me that you could just fit a chapel into here because before that the chapel was also a passageway.  And obviously the most striking thing in here, sir, is is your stained glass window.

 I wonder if we  It’s not mine.  Well, I think I’ve seen that your original design for it.  Well, I suggested this sort of general idea. Yeah. Well, the idea was that the bottom would be the fire, show the the firefighters, and then the idea was that the slope would turn into trees and then show the castle in a sense emerging in the sunlight.

 That’s Michael was there, but he lost his arms. literally the only survivor. He looked a little uncomfortable out in the arms.  The restoration not only came in under budget, it also captured the public’s imagination. The castle emerged from the fire more popular than ever. Visitor numbers soon exceeded a million a year with millions more enjoying the park.

It wasn’t  like this in years gone by.  George IV, believe it or not, would not allow anybody into the great park at all. Not even his household. Nobody else was allowed in.  How many people come today into the great park?  God knows. I mean, we saw them all. We saw them all wandering around here.

 And we’re delighted to share it with I mean, the the community shares in it. They they share the golf course and they can take their dogs for a walk and that sort of thing. People come from all over to walk about and it good heavens. I mean, we’re compared to most people, we’re  extremely fortunate to have any open space at all.

 The Duke may not have been as protective  about the park as his predecessors, but as Ranger, he did lay down one or two new rules.  The signs saying speed limit 38 mph. I’ve never seen those  anywhere else.  Well, I’m glad you noticed. Well, it was when when there was I forget it. I suppose it must be in the European Union.

 God, I thought that that sooner or later we’d be going into kilometers. And I thought that that what is the likely speed limit going to be in kilometers and I thought it might be 50 or something like that. So I said, well, let’s put it into miles. And I said, “Hey, guess if we say the equivalent, which is 38, people will actually say 38.

” Because if you just put out 30 or 40, people just take it for granted. I thought 38 might just  I was just a joke, obviously.  What do you think?  No, I don’t think so.   I’m sure you  Well, he noticed it anyway, which is something  the speed limit wasn’t the Duke’s only bright idea for curbing the traffic. This area here used to be very popular for pop concerts and this is uh sort of picnic area and people used to drive all over the place and when you had a pop concert all the the the the uh pushers and everybody drove on so the

great onto the ground. So, one of the things we tried to try to keep people from driving driving onto this ground and I suggested we put up these rails low enough to discourage drivers, but quite easy to step over. So, that’s why they’re here. The interesting thing is the other day they wanted to replace them with wooden ones.

 I said, “Well, these things have lasted for 30 years. Why do you want to change them? You can’t barely see these anyway, but that’s why they’re here.” And this is And this is where they had the pop concert.  You remember which pop bands came?  No, I don’t.  The pop concerts  are long gone, but the Duke would introduce a different sort of outdoor  entertainment.

On the other side of the great park is Smith’s Lawn. Once an old airfield,  it now stages international polo. It’s a sport the Duke fell in love with during his Navy days.  I was sent out to Mortar when I was still in the Navy and I so I did most of my initial polo and played in Mortar. When I came back the nearest club was Cry.

 I played there and uh but going I found going to and fro with Kyrie once or sometimes twice took an awful lot of time out of weekend when I when you missed missed the children and that’s so eventually I thought it might be an idea to start a a polo club here somewhere and we hit on this place Today, Smith’s Lawn is one of the most prestigious polo grounds in the world, hosting hundreds of matches every year.

 It’s certainly quite popular. And when there’s a polo tournament going on here, and there’s a Windsor Park Equestrian Club going on here, there’s probably a thousand horses on Smith’s lawn.  In time, the younger royal generations would come to enjoy Smith’s lawn, too. looking for Prince Harry.  And polo now has its own place in Windsor’s long equestrian tradition.

[cheering] Windsor horses and the royal family have been part of local life for centuries. 300 years ago, Queen Anne was riding not  far from the castle when she came across a heath near the village of Ascot. Perfect, she thought, for racing horses.  We want the queen.  The royal family have enjoyed racing at Ascot ever since.

 And the local community have always enjoyed the procession through the park pulled by the famous Windsor Grays. For the Queen, the racing would always be a highlight in the calendar. For the Duke, it had a more practical appeal. The racing gives all the guests something to do, you know, because you know what it’s like if you have a weekend or a week, people if they wander about nothing to do, they become a nuisance.

 But that forms the kind of bones on which the whole of the rest of the entertainment takes place.  Royal Ascot has always been about dressing up as well as enjoying racing of the highest caliber. The Duke was happy to play his part, but it was no secret that he preferred an event where anyone could compete.  The Duke was a long-erving president of the Royal Windsor Horse Show and always enjoyed its family atmosphere.

Like his Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme, the show has always given the younger generation a chance to prove  themselves.  It features top international competition, too, and a sport for which the Duke himself became famous. He even wrote the rule book. I was president of the International Equestrian Federation back in the 60s and there was some carriage driving competitions in Europe but there were no international rules.

 So I got involved in writing those and it was just at the time that I was giving up polo and so when I was looking around what else to do I thought I might as well have a go at this driving business as we had horses and and carriages and things in in London. So I found myself competing uh in under a set of rules that for which I’ve been largely responsible and also uh the whole sort of organization of the that’s the sort of that’s the water splash for the driving event.

Uh and so I took it up and and much to my surprise it it it be not only became popular but uh we had international competitions almost at once and I found myself being selected in the for the British team.  Long after his international days were over. The Duke was still competing against drivers half his age.

 Remember at the eighth final obstacle,  it wasn’t easy viewing for some spectators.  The horse show was also a chance for the Duke  to bring his side of the family to Windsor, too. Rather than just being here on our own and just going to the horse show of our own interests, we gradually built up a a habit of inviting guests and usually always included members of my family came from from Germany or whatever.

We’ve sometimes had other guests who also been competing. I mean quite frequently people their daughters or something are riding in shows in the in the horse show and then people come their judges and get involved. say it’s now quite a major kind of social event within the castle which I think everybody enjoys.

 Don’t be so silly.  I know from time to time people have sort of said, “Oh, um Duke will soon be retiring from carriage driving.” No indication.  No, he will be. Yes, but I don’t know when yet.   Do other members of your family keep pressing you to do  No, no, no, no, no, no. I think we  we tend to let each member of the family get on with whatever lunency they feel like indulging in [clears throat] couple of herands.

 There’s a herinary in this field here. They come in large numbers as you can see.  Wouldn’t this be a good point so just for sort of 30 seconds just to to to continue talking about your carriage driving and about the show here outside the car?  Outside the car.  Yes. It’s just that um  he’s getting crampy.  This will all be the new area of the new ship.

 No, on that that side there, the the far end of that doing it that over the top. Anyway,  one of the problems when they try and do the Christmas broadcast here is they have to do it in little sort of 30 seconds slots.  You must get used to it. Well, you don’t really It’s too bloody wrecking.  More than 9 centuries after a castle appeared at Windsor, Heathro Airport was built next door.

At least 1,200 aircraft come and go each day.  If if the wind’s from the east, then all the landing aircraft go over. So, in fact, it’s noisier if it’s if they’re landing. If they’re taking off, they disperse before they get here. The famous story of course is that the when the passengers are shown at Windsor Castle as they go in uh the American tourist was heard to say well why did they build the castle so close to London airport  but planes mean visitors.

It’s places like Windsor with their history and tradition which help draw the world to Britain.  Windsor Castle God by the Quick march.  One of the most popular spectacles here, as it is at Buckingham Palace, is changing the guard. And the Duke would bring another palace  tradition to the castle, too.

Now, from time to time, Windsor’s grandest rooms are transformed. The longest table in Britain takes shape in St. George’s Hall. Guest suites  are made spotless. When world leaders fly in, Windsor is ready to welcome them.  We have coming up um a major state visit, but in general terms um  Well, we’ve had state visits.

 Absolutely. I mean, many and uh  I I initiated that idea. There was absolute hell to pay when I first started it. Oh, yes. They all fainted, dead away. They couldn’t conceive of of transferring the the pattern of state visits in London to Windsor. Do  you remember the first one? How did you How did you persuade them for the first one?  With difficulty.

 What was the main objection to moving?  It wasn’t objection. It was just ye gods, how are we going to organize it?  What are we going to do about the house camarry? Where’s the god of honor going to be? How are we going what pro where’s the procession going to go? Where are we, you know, the sort of gods? What now? What? The palace traditionalists might have needed some persuading.

Not so  the queen. No monarch in history has hosted more state banquetss or inspected more table arrangements.   I think it’s wonderful.  Looks lovely.  So I sit here and he sits there.  Yes.  This you can see  if you can’t see right. No, you can’t see what’s happening on the other side.

Now it’s straight  and also we can read  good light.  You know when people come in it’s quite something isn’t it?  It is. It’s actually nice and hot. Keep the door closed.  For all the grandeur state occasions are about the personal touch. There were state visits here before. I mean Napoleon III  came here, the king of Portugal came here.

 So going that far back, it was used for state visits. But the the the pattern was rather different in those days.  Windsor has since worked its charm on many world leaders. But it wouldn’t have happened without the Duke taking on the old guard. I mean it would be fair to say in a way so you’re a bit of a bit of a royal rebel.

 No, not a rebel. No, I wouldn’t call that  innovator perhaps.  The Duke’s innovations  are everywhere at Windsor. He was one of the first to install solar panels in  the 1960s and the castle is now powered by hydro electricity from the river Tempames. He even hatched a scheme to generate power from his  Windsor cows.

 That great tank there is the remains of an attempt to have a bio gas plant. We thought we’d um try and put all the manure in from from this these two farms and then it went through a a digtor and uh it it comes out as sort of a fertilizer and produces some gas as well. Um unfortunately the digesttor blew up so we had to get rid of it.

It’s quite difficult to to to get it right. But the pioneering Duke drew the line at drilling for oil below the east terrace.  Talking of other ventures, I mean another one that was mentioned a few years ago was the possibility of oil. Is there really oil under Windsor?  Well, yes, it’s true.

 It all seemed to be absolutely dotted and somebody wanted to put a put a an oil rig on the east terrace. Well, not on the east terrace, but the east slopes because there was suspicion there might be some oil down below. But that seems to me nonsense because you don’t have to drill straight down anyway.

 They could have put the thing anyway if they wanted and drilled sideways. But um the idea that we’d have an oil rig actually on the east slope seemed to be so ludicrous it eventually died at death.  A more recent idea which would bear fruit was the new vineyard. The Duke invited one of Britain’s top growers to produce Windsor’s answer to champagne.

16,000 vines were planted in the great park.  But it was planting trees which excited the Duke most of all. And he had very particular views on  how it should be done.  If you don’t have them all the same age, you know, you’re constantly fiddling with it. Never. You get a few trees that are mature in one place and then you get a whole lot of young trees somewhere else.

 And the difficulty is unless you do it all together, you you can’t be sure or at least it it seems that the next generation forget that or don’t bother to see what the interval is so that the next lot they plant are not at regular at the same intervals. So it all looks rather messy.  Uh lot of interference. I yes endlessly bug hunters um or whatever you like to call them.

 They’ve descended on us some time ago and made the most appalling fuss to the extent that it’s been almost impossible to take down dead trees or even to remove dead branches.  One avenue named after Queen Anne would prove particularly controversial. I got a bloody nose by suggesting the replanted Queen Anne’s ride. Uh, all hell broke loose amongst the tree huggers and and all the people who thought we were destroying the the oak trees.

 I mean, can you imagine? There were a few decrepid things and a few that were planted in the wrong place. It, see, you know, crazy not to straighten it out and and as I say, we planted a thousand oaks. What’s wrong with that? Trees would not be the only controversial subject discussed at Windsor. Next to St.  George’s Chapel, the Duke helped to establish St.

 George’s House, a center  dedicated to debating society’s greatest challenges. The plan was to use the prestige and privacy of Windsor to bring together people who might not ordinarily meet. The Duke  imposed just one condition. All conversations at St. George’s House would remain private under what’s known  as Chattam House rules.

 It’s very difficult to persuade people or persuade to allow people to  say what they think if they’re going to be published. Because the trouble is that if you speak in  public, you’re always speaking with with the media in mind, with with critics in mind, with people with other points of view in mind.

 So you you tend to tone it down. The the great advantage of of Chattum House rules is people can speak their minds, which is very important because very often it’s only when people [clears throat] hear what they say that they know what they’re thinking.  Can you give us an example perhaps of a conference or a seminar there that somehow changed the way we think on a particular contemporary matter?  Who’s we?   You mean to say that you think anybody can influence how the media thinks? Well,  you must be joking.

 St. George’s  House has gone on to organize consultations on every pressing topic from climate change to disease.  I mean, it’s a very dynamic body in a in a very ancient setting. How do you think being in inside a castle? I mean, the two seem slightly at odds and yet it seems to work very well behind these old walls.

 Yeah. But the walls don’t dominate the inhabitants. You just live in what you’ve got.  I mean, I I when I come here, I don’t become a medieval, you know, it’s ridiculous. I’m still who I am living in the 20th century. The fact that I’m in this or 21st century, the fact that we live in old walls make a blind bit of difference.

 Towering above St. George’s House is St. George’s Chapel, the spiritual heart of the castle. Built in the days of knights in shining armor, St. George’s has been a place of royal worship for centuries. Many monarchs have been buried beneath these flagstones. And the Duke chose this as his final resting place.

Beside the chapel live a band of retired soldiers who have a unique responsibility.  They’re terrible at you, Peter. Yeah. Smart as a button state.  Known as the military knights of Windsor, their role through the ages has been to pray for the royal family and for the monarch’s most trusty supporters, the knights of the order of the garter.

The Duke himself was part of the order.  The military knights, what do they bring to the the Windsor tapestry?  No, the bit of pageantry. And of course, they live in the lower ward, which means they bring life to that. And they what they’re supposed to do of course is to pray for the the knights of the garter.

Whether they actually do that or not, I’m not so sure. They used to have naval knights, but they behaved so badly that they were eventually closed down.  When was that?  Oh, about the 18th century sometime.  You feel well prayed for by the knights. You feel as a night?  Oh, quite adequately. Yeah. As well as daily public worship, St.

George’s Chapel is the setting for private royal occasions, too. During our filming at Windsor, there was a family funeral here. That of the Queen’s aunt, Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester. the funeral of Princess Alice that brought to mind the way in which it is for all the the full paniply of state here.

 It is it’s also very much a family place and do you feel that makes it more of a spiritual home than anything else that family funerals tend to happen down here?  Yeah,  they don’t happen all that often.  No, no, exactly.  No, it’s it’s it’s part of the the whole ethos of the place. I mean we have christings in the in the chapel for instance as well and we haven’t had well we haven’t had yes we had a wedding not very long ago these are the elements of a family corporate existence if you know what I mean and I think that’s what gives it its attraction and its strength

which is a community and it’s a living organism inhabiting this this ancient establishment you know William the Conqueror built his castle  up here and it’s been occupied virtually ever since.  The whole Windsor community comes together for these royal occasions and everyone both family and staff play a part in the grandest event of the year.

Each June, the Knights of  the Garter gather at Windsor. Their ranks include former politicians, diplomats, admirals, generals, and explorers.  How are you?  All chosen personally by the sovereign. The knights and ladies of the garter are all invited  to a special lunch.  We put the white wine, the red wine in all the tables with the water jugs and the beers.

 We only put the beers on the Duke’s table right here because it’s only the  Duke who’s going to have one. Afterwards, the military  knights begin the procession down the hill to the chapel. And in their velvet robes and plumemed hats, the garter knights and the sovereign join the parade. It was the queen’s father, King George V  6th, who resurrected this medieval tradition.

Now that that was the initiative of of King George V 6 who who um took a very keen interest  in the garter which had slightly lost. Yes, it was an order but it was nothing there was nothing associated with it and so he decided to reinstate the whole business of the garter  procession and the garter service.

King George made Prince  Philip a royal knight of the garter in 1947, just before his marriage to Princess Elizabeth,  and he would take part in more garter ceremonies than any night in history.  It’s a nice piece of of pageantry which I think a lot of people enjoy. It looks I mean it’s in rationally it’s it’s a lunatic but I mean in practice it’s everybody enjoys it.

Wherever the Duke went at Windsor, he was surrounded by tradition and history.  That was that was present to um Queen Victoria by the Maraja or somewhere, but I can’t remember which one it was.  Dog grave. That’s  dogg  grave.  Yes, looks like it. Yeah, that dotted about all over the place.

 Depends where they die, I think.  In one corner of the estate stands Frogmore House and its gardens, a royal retreat since Georgian times.  You come down here very often for these gardens.  Um I drive the the the ponies around here. Yeah. And yes, it’s used quite a lot because when a queen comes down here, it’s brings takes the dogs out here and so because it’s it’s enclosed anyway.

 So the to keep track well hopefully to keep the rabbits out, but it’s not very successful. It’s easy enough to drive a team of horses or ponies rather. It’s not so easy to drive a car run. That’s Queen Victoria’s um Morse Leon. This is the sort of family burial plot. You can see where the Dutch Glouester was buried the other day here.

 Maybe we can stop here.  With what end in view  to talk about?  The morseliums are morelium. all she can say about it.  Not too easy to take a picture of it.  Well, I just think it would be a good way to take a picture of it and you would that be right quickly. The well, it was built in in the Prince Consul’s day and he was put in there.

And then she was added much later. There was one last monument that the Duke did want to visit. He’d chosen the spot himself, overlooking the grounds where the queen had learned to ride as a child. The location, he felt, was perfect. Once again though, he had a few things to say about the trees.  This is a circle of of lines which I want to take down, which everybody trusts they want to keep.

 I can’t understand why. You’d like to get get through the bigger lines.  Well, I’d like to start again, but you know, well, one’s gone and I think it’s too small anyway. They could make it a bit bigger. And you’re never going that one’s never going to catch up with these.  And and tell us about the the the statues there.

 Was was was that a long a long process getting that?  Well, the crown of state decided they wanted to do it. Uh and then of course the question was where they want to put it. I had no difficulty in in deciding where I wanted to put it was here. But it took some time to persuade them.  Why do you always thought of having it here?  Well, it’s a good place, don’t you think?  Yeah.

 Does it have an exact distance from the castle?  No, no, no, no, no, no. It’s just on a hub, but it’s it’s you can see it from down that way and it’s bit higher than D. If you Where else would you put it?    Through the centuries, few have been quite as devoted to Windsor as the Duke or left such a  lasting impression. Thanks to the longest serving ranger in its history, Windsor Castle and its community can look to a future that is solid and secure.

What are you proudest of that you’ve uh you’ve achieved here? I  I think in modern terms the fact that it’s still going. I mean people forget how much any organism needs to be kept going. The fact that it is going still after 50 years that’s not bad going because if you hadn’t done it something worse might have occurred.

Great place for crows is   Windsor and the House of Windsor will never again have anyone quite  like the Duke.  What What are you doing about lunch?  Not that he sees it that way.  We ask again another way. What would you like to be  your lasting legacy?  Would you go through life trying to make a legacy?  No, I I mean I I think to try and create a memorial to yourself while you’re alive is slightly indecent.

 I think I’d rather other people decided what what legacy I’d left. I mean, I’m not trying to create one.  I mean, life’s going to go on after me. If I can make life marginally more  tolerable for people who come afterwards or even with the time, I’d be delighted.  Thank you very much indeed. Heaven.