Gyles Brandreth, who was a friend of the couple’s, said the late Duke of Edinburgh ‘died before the Queen could be called’ on April 9, 2021.
New information is emerging about Queen Elizabeth on the day her husband of over 73 years, Prince Philip, died on April 9, 2021.
Royal biographer Gyles Brandreth claimed that the late Duke of Edinburgh died before the late Queen could reach his bedside, he wrote in his book Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait. Though the Queen was reported to have made it to her husband’s bedside when he died that morning, “In fact, I don’t believe she was,” Brandreth wrote.
He continued that “The Duke of Edinburgh had been in a hospital bed, set up in his dressing room at Windsor Castle. That morning, he went to the bathroom, helped by a nurse.”
When he came back, Prince Philip said he felt a little faint and wanted help getting back into bed, Brandreth wrote. “The nurse called the Duke’s valet and the Queen’s page, Paul Whybrew, for help — and he died before the Queen could be called. The Queen wasn’t yet up. And she wasn’t called until after a doctor had come and pronounced the Duke dead.”
The Daily Mirror described Brandreth as a close friend of the late Queen’s who “knew Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth for decades,” reportedly first meeting Queen Elizabeth in 1968 — when he was just 20 years old. Through their shared work at the National Playing Fields Association, Brandreth also knew Prince Philip well.
Though he knew Prince Philip for decades, Brandreth told The Times that one could typically only get so close to a member of the royal family: “The Duke showed me great friendliness over 40 years, but royalty offer you friendliness, not friendship, and you have to remember the difference,” he said.
Prince Philip’s funeral was held on April 17, 2021, at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, with only about 30 loved ones in attendance due to the pandemic. The funeral, much smaller than previous royal burials, was attended by Queen Elizabeth, their four children, eight grandchildren and other close family members and friends. The hour-long ceremony was largely planned by Prince Philip himself, down to a customized Land Rover hearse and the music — including the Royal Navy Hymn, a nod to his military roots, PEOPLE reported at the time.
“Ironically, it is probably how he would have liked,” former palace spokeswoman Ailsa Anderson told PEOPLE at the time of the scaled-back size of the funeral. “No fuss, no bother. Right through his life, he never knew what all the fuss was about.”
Per medical guidance at the time, all funeral attendees, including Queen Elizabeth, wore face masks inside St. George’s Chapel. The Queen, just a few days shy of her 94th birthday, sat alone in the pews because of social distancing — a heart-wrenching scene for those who watched the service on television.
“In some ways, I’m glad we didn’t see that moment,” her daughter Princess Anne later said in an interview with CBC. “And when you see the photograph, it’s much worse somehow.” She added of what the public saw juxtaposed with her experience in person, “And you saw more of that than we did, [since we were] accompanying the coffin.”
Queen Elizabeth (then Princess Elizabeth) and Prince Philip first met in 1934 at the wedding of Princess Marina of Greece and Denmark to Prince George, Duke of Kent, PEOPLE reported. They crossed paths again when Elizabeth was 13 in 1939, when she joined her parents and her sister, Princess Margaret, on a visit to Dartmouth naval college. After a year-long courtship, the couple married on Nov. 20, 1947 at Westminster Abbey.
“With her bridal dress and tiara on her wedding day, she was a knockout,” one of Elizabeth’s bridesmaids, Lady Pamela Hicks, previously told PEOPLE. “And, of course, Philip was every girl’s dream Viking prince.”
For their 50th wedding anniversary in 1997, Queen Elizabeth made a rare public tribute to her husband, saying of Prince Philip that “He is someone who doesn’t take easily to compliments, but he has quite simply been my strength and stay all these years,” she said. “And I…owe him a debt greater than he would ever claim.”
The couple celebrated 73 years of marriage in November 2020 before Philip’s death five months later. Of the Queen, royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith told PEOPLE that, as a teenager, “She fell in love, and she never looked at anyone else.”
After his death at age 99, a former senior aide at the palace told PEOPLE of the Queen that “Her family will step up and be by her side, but she will carry on. She understands that she has a job to do, and [Philip] would have wanted her to crack on.”
Seventeen months after her beloved’s death, Queen Elizabeth died on Sept. 8, 2022 at age 96, and is buried next to her husband at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, part of St. George’s Chapel, in Windsor Castle.
