Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

"The food prices are going up – everyone thinks it’s to do with not enough food but it's really that demand is too great, [there are] too many people. It’s embarrassing and no one knows how to handle it because nobody wants their family life to be interfered with by Government... overpopulation is to blame for many of the problems afflicting millions of people around the world... It seemed to me that most religions attributed the world to some special creation and I said, ‘Well, look, if you believe God created the world, you ought to take an interest in its wellbeing... People don’t realise it is the species that matter – not the individual – from the conservation point of view. You’ve got to be fairly hard-hearted about it. Conservation is not a romantic business. It’s a very practical business, trying to ensure as many different species of wildlife can exist, and which means in some cases controlling some so the others can have a better chance."

"Can you tell the difference between them?"

"Well, you'll never fly in it, you're too fat to be an astronaut."

"Are you all one family?"

"Oh, what, a strip club?"

"Constitutionally I don't exist."

"There is nothing like it for morale to be reminded that the years are passing—ever more quickly—and that bits are dropping off the ancient frame. But it is nice to be remembered at all."

"Is it made with Liffey water?"

"Q: "What do you see as the biggest problem in conservation?"

"Have you run over anybody?"

"Just take the thing! Just take the fucking picture!"

"Philip was the unsettling definition of a full-on alpha male: devastatingly handsome, vigorously self-assured, impatient with fools — and not just fools. When he leaned from his considerable height and bore down on a recalcitrant fact or factotum, it could be a shriveling experience for whoever had got it wrong."

"Then we go back to the Duke of Edinburgh; I recall an amazingly ridiculous campaign against him because, on a visit to India, he was invited to go tiger-shooting (such an invitation is a great honour there) and after a few days of the newspapers back home yelling and screaming and jumping up and down, he had to pretend that he had a whitlow on his trigger-finger and so couldn't shoot anything, not even a tabloid journalist."

"My father, for I suppose the last 70 years, has given the most remarkable devoted service to the queen, to my family, to the country and also to the whole of the Commonwealth."