It is hard to grasp the sheer span of Prince Philip's lifetime. I read that he had done 22,000 engagements, and then heard somewhere else that he had done 300 a year. My first thought was that it must be more than that—how could it otherwise be 22,000? I actually had to calculate and multiply it through by 70 years to understand, gosh, that that's actually about right. It is amazing what he did. In 1921, when he was born, we were the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Lloyd George was Prime Minister. Only some women had then been able to vote. And in that year, Prince Philip's father, Andrew, was one of the generals who failed to succeed at the battle of Sakarya, outside Ankara. And six other generals there had a trial and were immediately executed, whereas, because Prince Philip's father was a prince, he was granted a separate trial. But, to forestall his fate being the same, this country, under Lloyd George, broke off diplomatic relations with Greece and we only restored them after Prince Andrew and his family, including the infant Philip, were able to leave what had previously been the governor's house in Corfu, as Andrew R.T. Davies said, on a British warship. How the fates of history are entwined. 

I recall meeting the Duke of Edinburgh only once. I think it was at the Diamond Jubilee celebrations for the Queen at Parliament. In the royal gallery, he came past and spoke to me, and found I was the MP, then, for Rochester. He said I must have an awful lot of having to talk about Charles Dickens, but he was reading a new biography of him by Claire Tomalin, and he spoke about it. He said it was more sensitive than any other in understanding Dickens's difficulties in characterising female characters compared to male, and also the sensitivity and understanding of how the very difficult childhood experiences he'd had had moulded him as a man and what he had to do to get through those. I thought about that in what people have said about Prince Philip in recent days. Firstly, just to think how extraordinary it was, actually, to have a genuine and real conversation with so so many people he met; how easy it is to be uncontroversial or anodyne in those conversations and to go through them in form rather than substance, and to actually touch so many people's lives by finding something special to say to different people and to engage his own character, I feel, is extraordinary.

Nowadays, we would refer to some of Prince Philip's experiences as adverse childhood experiences, and his grandchildren, Prince William and Harry, have done an awful lot for mental health, and now we are much more willing and supportive for people to talk about their experiences, and the stiff upper lip of previous generations isn't what it was. But I hope that still we will allow choice, and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, what he did to get through his challenges and what he faced to become the person he did and what he did for our country, is extraordinary, and he did it in a different way than many do perhaps now. And I hope we will support and allow the choice and understanding for all, whatever choices they make. Our thoughts today are with the Queen and with her family, and with the whole nation. May he rest in peace. God save the Queen.