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Book tells story of reporter “dazzled” by Prince Philip

Olga Franklin

The life story of a former daily reporter who admitted going “dizzy” while interviewing Prince Philip before his engagement to the future Queen is set to be published as a book.

Olga Franklin, left, worked at Newcastle’s The Chronicle in the 1940s and met the future Duke of Edinburgh in the lounge of a local hotel after being sent to track him down by her news editor.

In a series of letters to her sister Beryl Jaffa, she described being “dazzled” by the “shockingly beautiful” Prince and also branded the people of the North East as “semi barbaric.”

The letters, written between 1932 and 1965, have now been edited by her nephew Richard Jaffa for publication as a book later this month, entitled A Letter from Oggi.

The Chronicle reports that Birmingham-born Olga initially worked at a newspaper in Oxford before moving to the North East to gain more experience as a reporter.

Describing her encounter with Prince Philip, she wrote: “I get dizzy looking at him. His beauty is so dazzling.

“This Prince Philip is stunning, with hair like gold coin only paler, a sort of ash-gold, eyes of deep blue almost violet in the electric light of the Jesmond Hotel lounge, tall, fine-featured, really a shockingly beautiful figure in naval uniform.

“It takes what feels like minutes getting my breath back. I manage to stutter out my set speech: ‘I’m from the Evening Chronicle’.”

The interview was initially delayed because the Prince explained that he was barred from talking without permission from the Admiralty.

Olga’s time in the North East is the focus of two chapters in the book and her observations about local people were not flattering, writing that: “Half the people are semi-barbaric and the other half dangerously narrow and presbyterian”.

She was made redundant in the seventies, before turning freelance, and she spent her last months close to family in Birmingham, where she died of a brain tumour in 1985.

A Letter from Oggi: The Letters of Olga Franklin will be published on 30 April by Book Guild.

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