Princess Anne walked out of school with six O‑levels, two A‑levels, skipped university entirely, went straight to the stables — and still ended up an Admiral with more honorary military titles than the rest of the Windsors combined.
She went from governess‑taught lessons at home to five years boarding at Benenden, completing every exam on offer and leaving at eighteen with the full set of qualifications to prove she’d done it properly.
She didn’t take the university route — while her elder brother went to Cambridge and the youngest later followed, she stepped straight into royal duties and devoted everything else to competitive riding.
She surged fast: individual gold at the 1971 European Eventing Championships, BBC Sports Personality of the Year the same year, two silvers in 1975, and in 1976 she rode for Britain at the Montreal Olympics, becoming the first royal ever to compete at the Games.
She’s now an Admiral in the Royal Navy, holds honorary rank across the air force and the army, and serves as colonel‑in‑chief or colonel to more regiments than any other royal — even her brother the King.
She never needed a degree — her record lives in the Court Circular, with more than twenty thousand official engagements to her name and still rising at seventy‑six.
A lady to be admired, absolutely.
It seems to me that most of the royal women have shown themselves, each in their own way, to be formidable and capable.
An absolutely incredible lady — still one of the hardest‑working royals there is.
Quite honestly, I believe Princess Anne had every quality to follow the Queen — steady, disciplined, and relentlessly hard‑working — even if the succession laws made a different choice.
Prince Philip famously summed up Princess Anne’s lifelong devotion to horses with that dry line: “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she isn’t interested.”
Princess Anne does not take a personal salary from the royal purse for her work as a senior royal.
She’s the one who channels her mother most — dedicated to duty, hard‑working, no‑nonsense, straight‑talking, and a great example to us all.
Politicians would do well to practise that same dedication to duty and honesty — and if more of them carried themselves like Princess Anne, our country could look very different, with honesty as the place to start.
Patron of Scottish Rugby for decades, turning up in rain, snow, and everything in between — she never misses, never falters, never phones it in — and it makes the laws of succession feel absurd when someone with her discipline, steadiness, and her mother’s spirit isn’t the one who becomes Queen.
In an era when royal women didn’t go to university, Princess Anne asked to go to boarding school instead of staying home‑schooled because she wanted a taste of normal life. They didn’t become admirals either.
Prince Philip used to say that Princess Anne was “the best son he ever had,” a line that perfectly captures her toughness, her work ethic, and the no‑nonsense streak he recognised in her from childhood.
With her astonishing work ethic and complete lack of airs and graces, she’s exactly the one I would have liked to see succeed her mother — and had it been possible, I truly believe the Queen might have stepped down much sooner to let her take the throne.
It just proves we don’t all need a university degree to be successful — just the determination to chase your passion and the grit to keep going.
Admirably the most discreet and smart royal personality — an achiever who never looks for praise.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 