Of all of Boris Johnson’s recent offences, the worst is to have permitted partying in Number 10 on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral. To the New Hebrides islanders who have worshipped Philip as a god since the Seventies, this blunder would have been not just a crime, but sacrilege.
Anna Della Subin devotes a whole chapter of Accidental Gods to Philip’s “tropical godhood”, concluding that it mattered most at home, where it brightened the fading aura of the monarchy. Her book is a whimsical panorama of men who like Philip were “unwittingly turned divine” — women are largely excluded, because, with the resonant exception of Queen Victoria, they did not attract such veneration.
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