King Charles awards Duke of Edinburgh with Scotland’s highest royal honour

The Duke of Edinburgh has been awarded to the Order of the Thistle by King Charles.

Only the king can bestow the Order of the Thistle, Scotland’s highest honour. King Charles previously gave his wife Queen Camilla the honour last year. Prince Edward’s appointment comes as he celebrates his 60th birthday today (March 10).

The three other new recipients of the order are anthropologist Professor Dame Sue Black, distinguished lawyer Baroness Helena Kennedy and Scotland’s first black professor Sir Geoff Palmer.

It comes a year after the king appointed Prince Edward the Duke of Edinburgh on his 59th birthday. The duke spoke to Alan Titchmarsh on ITV’s Love Your Weekend about how it’s been taking over from his “extraordinary” dad, Prince Philip, who passed away in 2021 at 99 years old.

The Duke of Edinburgh has shared how he felt a big “weight of expectation” when he got his title from his dad.

“It was a huge privilege, but also quite a lot of weight of expectation as well,” Edward said.

He talked about the big shoes he had to fill with the title, saying, “I mean, there’s an awful lot of legacy that came with that title and everything that my father had done, especially when you’re not inheriting it – this is a choice.”

After a year as the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Edward said he sometimes doesn’t know where to sit because he’s still not used to seeing his title on a place card.

Edward mentioned how odd it feels to have a new title: “It’s just the weirdest and strangest feeling.”

He still gets confused at events, saying, “You walk into a room and, particularly still today, there are name places on a card and I still look around going: ‘Yes, but where am I sitting?’

In the chat, Edward also said his dad was great with people and always encouraging, even if it didn’t always seem that way.

“He was always, always encouraging everybody,” he remembered. “You sort of needed to get to know him.”

“People always talked about my father’s sense of humour, and that’s what he was just doing,” he added.

“He was just an extraordinary man. He was the Prince Albert of our age. He had an extraordinary mind. He loved design, he loved innovation, he was brilliant with all sorts of people.”

The Duke said his father was much more comfortable talking about the organisations he supported and “refused to talk about himself”.

“Never ever ask him to blow his own trumpet, he would never do that,” Edward continued. “You needed to get him to talk about the organisations he supported, and then what he’d done in relation to those, and that’s the way you got around it.”

“And for heaven’s sake don’t say: ‘What do you feel? ‘ Because he would never have shared anything like that.”

Edward also said his wife Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, is his “rock”, adding: “I’m incredibly lucky that I found Sophie and that she found me.”

He and Sophie, 59, have been married since 1999 having met at a promotion shoot for the Prince Edward Summer Challenge two years earlier.

Asked about what he does to switch off and relax, the Duke said he enjoys “Getting outside in the countryside.”

“The garden, dogs,” he continued: “The garden is the most brilliant place to do all sorts of things. Also, it can be a great place to get away and go think and get your head around certain things.”

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