Prince Philip's 'Brutal Behaviour Moved Queen to Tears'

The Duke of Edinburgh's "brutal" behaviour towards the Queen over her refusal to accept his surname of Mountbatten moved her to tears, a new biography has revealed.

Acclaimed biographer Sally Bedell Smith has even noted that the ten-year delay between the births of the Princess Royal and the Duke of York was the result of "Philip's anger over the Queen's rejection of his family name", according to the Telegraph.

Bedell Smith's book "Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch" also reveals Prince Philip's anger over the Queen's decision to accept the advice of the then prime minister Winston Churchill by keeping the family name Windsor.

"I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his children. I'm nothing but a bloody amoeba," the Duke reportedly complained when the Queen ascended the throne in 1952. The Duke had, in fact, wanted the Royal family to be known as the House of Mountbatten, the biography reveals.

According to Bedell Smith, Earl Mountbatten, the Duke's uncle and mentor, too believed that the "delay" in the couple having any more children after the Princess Royal was a result of the Duke's discontent over the question of the family name.

The Queen told premier Harold Macmillan when she was heavily pregnant with the Duke of York that she needed to "revisit" the issue of the family name, which "had been irritating the Duke since...1952".

"The Queen only wishes (properly enough) to do something to please her husband - with whom she is desperately in love," Bedell Smith has quoted Macmillan as saying in a diary entry. "What upsets me ... is the Prince's almost brutal attitude to the Queen over all this. I shall never forget what she said to me that Sunday night at Sandringham."

A compromise was reached in which any descendants not entitled to the designation of "royal highness" would be called Mountbatten-Windsor, according to the biography which is due for release in January 2012.