The announcement followed a meeting at Buckingham Palace that touched off alarms about the health of Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, who is 95.
LONDON — Prince Philip, the 95-year-old husband of Queen Elizabeth II, will step back from his royal duties and stop carrying out public engagements this autumn, Buckingham Palace said in a statement on Thursday, although the role of the queen will be unchanged.
The announcement came after members of the royal staff were summoned to a meeting on Thursday in London, a development that touched off alarms about the health of the queen and her husband. A dozen television news crews headed to Buckingham Palace in the early morning, and the website of one tabloid reported, in an article that was quickly taken down, that the prince had died.
The response was a reflection of increasing concern about the health of the queen and of Prince Philip, who is also known as the Duke of Edinburgh. The prince was ill during the holiday period, while the queen, who is 91, was not seen in public for nearly a month after missing church services on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day because of what Buckingham Palace described as a persistent cold.
But both performed royal duties on Wednesday: The queen met Prime Minister Theresa May, and the prince cut a ribbon to open a new stand of seats at a cricket ground. “His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh has decided that he will no longer carry out public engagements from the autumn of this year, ” the palace statement said. “In taking this decision, the duke has the full support of the queen.”
Prince Philip will attend previously scheduled engagements until August, the palace said, but will then retreat from public view, although he may attend events from time to time. The statement gave no reason for the decision. “Her Majesty will continue to carry out a full program of official engagements with the support of members of the royal family, ” the palace said.
Brusque, avuncular, and with a reputation for plain — in fact overly plain — speaking, Prince Philip has for seven decades been the formidable presence by the side of Elizabeth as she has made the endless round of dinners, ceremonies and other engagements expected of a British monarch.
Yet this essentially diplomatic role as royal consort — their marriage is the longest of any royal couple in British history — did not come naturally to Prince Philip, as he has himself admitted. When interviewed by the Independent in 1992, he reflected with characteristic bluntness on his various honorary functions, including roles on a committee on coinage and at the wildlife charity WWF.
“It was not my ambition to be president of the Mint Advisory Committee. I didn’ t want to be president of WWF. I was asked to do it, ” he said, adding: “I’ d much rather have stayed in the navy, frankly.”
His long-ago naval career may have helped form some of Prince Philip’s saltier language, as well as the politically incorrect opinions that have periodically caused outrage in Britain .
In 1986, while on an official visit to China, he told a group of British exchange students living in the city of Xian that if they stayed much longer “you’ ll all be slitty-eyed.” Twelve years later, he said to a Briton who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea, “You managed not to get eaten, then?”
In Cardiff, Wales, in 1999, he said to a group of children from the British Deaf Association, who were standing near to a Caribbean steel band, “If you’ re near that music it’s no wonder you’ re deaf.” And the list goes on.
But of late, Prince Philip’s pure stamina as he approaches 100 has blunted the criticism, erasing much of the memory of earlier embarrassments. Mrs. May, the head of the Conservative Party, offered Prince Philip “our deepest gratitude and good wishes, ” and the leaders of Britain’s other main political parties expressed similar sentiments.
For a generation of Britons, his name is (sometimes unconsciously) synonymous with hiking and other outdoors activities through a program for teenagers that carries his name, the Duke of Edinburgh ’s Award .
The nephew of King Constantine I of Greece, Prince Philip was born in 1921 on dining room table of a villa on the Greek island of Corfu, but he came to symbolize many of the values of an era in which Britons prided themselves on their lack of visible emotion, or “stiff upper lip.” That style has been blamed for making him a distant figure in the lives of his children, particularly Prince Charles, the heir to the throne.
Not only has he been portrayed as an irascible, remote and dysfunctional father, there was also speculation about his marriage to the queen. When asked by the Independent about rumors of infidelity, he produced the following reply: “Have you ever stopped to think that for the last 40 years, I have never moved anywhere without a policeman accompanying me? So how the hell could I get away with anything like that?”
But his longevity has solidified affection in Britain for a foreign-born pillar of the British establishment. As he steps down from his royal duties, Prince Philip seems to represent a link to a fast-fading past in which phones sat on desks, computers had yet to be invented, and Britain ruled large parts of the world.
The news about his retreat from public life capped a bizarre morning in which journalists from around the world had gathered outside Buckingham Palace watching for any sign that something was amiss. When a group of horses trotted in front of the palace, a scrum of photographers furiously clicked their cameras. It was a false alarm.
The speculation was touched off by a report in The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, that all members of the queen’s staff had been ordered to a meeting in London, and that employees from royal residences across the country would be in attendance.
The Daily Mail described the meeting as “highly unusual, ” and Buckingham Palace’s silence on the matter early in the morning allowed speculation to flourish. A palace official, speaking on condition of anonymity in exchange for providing information about the meeting, said such gatherings happen every now and then.
The Sun, Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid, erroneously published an unfinished obituary of Prince Philip online on Thursday morning, with a headline that read, “Prince Philip dead at 95, how did the Duke of Edinburgh die, etc etc.
