41 gun salute at the Tower of London pays tribute to the late Prince Philip
You read it correctly. Queen Elizabeth ll’s husband walked behind her and did little else all the years (more than 70) he was married to her. You would have thought Philip would have done something more than supporting charities but that was his life.
Philip, for his part, always seemed a bit mystified about what he was actually supposed to do as the husband of Elizabeth II.
“There was no precedent. If I asked somebody, ‘What do you expect me to do?,’ they all looked blank. They had no idea,” he told the BBC when he turned 90.
Somehow, he managed. When he retired from public life, he told the interviewer, it was high time. “It’s better to get out before you reach the sell-by date.”
His chief contribution in the end was simply to have been there for the queen: a man of keen rationality and wide reading who in some ways intimidated her, who was not legally answerable to anyone and who was available as a voice of reason and dissent when all around had a habit of agreeing with her.
Interestingly, taxpayers in the United Kingdom are paying more money than ever for the Royal Family. The latest Sovereign Grant accounts show that the monarchy cost £69.4 million in 2020. As the British Royal Family continue to receive worldwide media attention, tourism associated with the Royals continues to grow. Income from ticket admissions to the Royal Estate exceeded 48 million British pounds in 2018/19, in addition to over 21 million British pounds in retail sales.
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