The Queen and Prince Philip's 70 years together

With 70 years of married life there will be no shortage of happy memories to reflect on, from jubilees and jamborees to grand State occasions and intimate family gatherings.

As their great love story reaches a new milestone today it is tempting to wonder if this simple but delightfully unstuffy portrait of the Queen and Prince Philip catches them as they see each other.

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No end of photographs of monarch and consort have been issued over the decades, but have we ever seen one quite so revealing as this? Philip all mischief and affection with a quizzical arch to the eyebrow. And the Queen? She responds with laughter and a smile of utter devotion.

Who knows what passed between the couple as the photographer artfully arranged them in front of a platinum textured background in recognition of their special anniversary? But it is safe to say that the atmosphere was all down to the special chemistry between husband and wife that is undimmed as they enter their eighth decade of marriage.

Photo / Getty Images

According to friends, they are as happy in each’s company today as they have been at any time in the past 70 years.

Indeed there is no better example of this marital consistency than a glimpse at the photos that marked their engagement in July 1947, now skilfully coloured by the Mail for the first time. There is certainly something striking about the way the handsome Lt Philip Mountbatten leans into the young Princess Elizabeth and the way she gazes back at him. Incredibly, they had already known each other some eight years by then.

Their first meeting at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, Devon, was before the outbreak of World War II.

He was 18, she a girl of 13. Remarkably, the 80th anniversary of that first encounter is less than two years away and who’s to say that won’t be another anniversary to celebrate? Theirs has always been a unique partnership. In earlier days it was ‘my husband and I’, in more recent times the Queen talks of Philip as her ‘strength and stay’.

This article was first published on dailymail.co.uk and is republished here with permission.