Northern Ireland peer Viscount Brookeborough, a former Lord Lieutenant, who holds office in the Royal Household, said Prince Philip was “incredibly sharp and obviously highly intelligent”. “He was a leader in his own life and one has to remember that possibly if he’d stayed in the Navy, he might have become head of the Navy or whatever,” he said. “Whenever you were with him, you always felt his presence, you always knew he was in the room, but he had that magical ability that he didn’t stifle people or paralyse the room by being there, because he was so friendly to everybody. “It marks an end of an era for all of us.”