George VI

• 1. Introduction

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  George VI, known to his family as Bertie, wrote an anguished line in his diary about the day before his brother gave up the crown. He had gone to London to tell his mother, Queen Mary, what had happened. His entry read: "When I told her what had happened, I broke down and sobbed like a child."

  This was not a man who had spent his life preparing to rule. He was a second son who stuttered, and he had grown up in the shadow of a more confident elder brother. Yet the crown was about to land on him anyway.

  How did a sickly, easily frightened boy end up as king? What does a sovereign do when his nation needs to hear his voice and speaking is the thing he dreads most? And what did the throne look like by the time he left it?

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• 2. A Second Son

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  On the 14th of December 1895, at 3:05 am, a baby was born at York Cottage on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk. The date was the 34th anniversary of the death of Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria and great-grandfather of the newborn. The child's father was Prince George, Duke of York, who would later reign as George V.

  The family worried about how the aging Queen would react. The Prince of Wales wrote that she had been "rather distressed". Two days later he wrote again: "I really think it would gratify her if you yourself proposed the name Albert to her." The Duke did so, and Victoria was won over. She wrote that the boy would carry "that dear name which is a byword for all that is great and good."

  He was baptised Albert Frederick Arthur George at St Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham, on the 17th of February 1896. His great-grandmother's relative, the Duchess of Teck, disliked the first name and wrote that she hoped the last "may supplant the less favoured one". At birth he stood fourth in line to the throne.

  The boy was ill often, and one description called him "easily frightened and somewhat prone to tears". His parents, like most aristocratic couples of the time, stayed removed from the daily work of raising their children. He developed a stutter that lasted for many years.

  He was naturally left-handed but was forced to write with his right hand, which was common practice then. He also suffered chronic stomach problems and knock knees. For the knock knees he had to wear painful corrective splints.

  Queen Victoria died on the 22nd of January 1901, and his grandfather became Edward VII. In March, Albert's parents set off on an extensive tour of the British Empire. They left Albert and his siblings with their nannies and with Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, who doted on their grandchildren.

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• 3. Sailor and Airman

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  In 1909, Albert arrived at the Royal Naval College, Osborne, as a naval cadet. In 1911 he came bottom of the class in the final examination. He still moved on to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. Between those two events, Edward VII died in 1910, his father became George V, and Albert found himself second in line to the throne.

  The first six months of 1913 were spent on a training ship in the West Indies and off the east coast of Canada. He was rated a midshipman on the 15th of September 1913. A spell in the Mediterranean followed, but he never overcame his seasickness.

  Three weeks after the First World War began, Albert was medically evacuated from his ship to Aberdeen. There a surgeon named John Marnoch removed his appendix. He recovered in time for the Battle of Jutland, fought on the 31st of May and the 1st of June 1916. Serving as a turret officer aboard Collingwood, he was mentioned in dispatches.

  Jutland was the greatest naval battle of the war, and it was the last combat he saw. A duodenal ulcer kept him largely out of action, and he had an operation for it in November 1917.

  In February 1918, he was appointed Officer in Charge of Boys at the Royal Naval Air Service training establishment at Cranwell. When the Royal Air Force was created, he transferred into it. He commanded Number 4 Squadron of the Boys' Wing at Cranwell until August 1918, then served on the staff of the RAF's Cadet Brigade at St Leonards-on-Sea and later Shorncliffe. He became the first member of the British royal family to be certified as a fully qualified pilot.

  Albert wanted to serve on the Continent before the war ended, and he welcomed a posting to General Trenchard's staff in France. On the 23rd of October 1918, he flew across the Channel to Autigny. For the closing weeks of the war he worked at the headquarters of the RAF's Independent Air Force in Nancy. After that force was disbanded in November, he stayed on the Continent for two months as a staff officer. On the 22nd of November he accompanied King Albert I of Belgium on his triumphal return to Brussels.

  He qualified as an RAF pilot on the 31st of July 1919 and was promoted to squadron leader the next day. That October he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he spent a year studying history, economics and civics. His official mentor was the historian R. V. Laurence.

  On the 4th of June 1920, his father created him Duke of York, Earl of Inverness and Baron Killarney. He began to take on royal duties, standing in for the King on visits to coal mines, factories and railyards. The visits earned him the nickname the "Industrial Prince". He became president of the Industrial Welfare Society. Between 1921 and 1939 he ran annual summer camps that brought together boys from different social backgrounds.

  He was also physically active and enjoyed tennis. In 1926 he played Men's Doubles at Wimbledon with Louis Greig and lost in the first round. In public, though, his stutter and his shyness made him seem less sure of himself than his elder brother Edward. That stutter was about to find a very patient helper.

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• 4. A Wife and a Voice

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  In April 1920, George V ended his son's infatuation with Lady Loughborough, an Australian socialite who was already married. The King persuaded Albert to stop seeing her and dangled the dukedom of York as a reward. Royalty was expected to marry royalty, yet Albert had unusual freedom in choosing a wife.

  That same year he met Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon for the first time since childhood. She was the youngest daughter of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore, and Albert became determined to marry her. Elizabeth turned down his proposals in 1921 and 1922, reportedly because she was reluctant to accept the sacrifices of royal life. Lady Strathmore said that Albert would be "made or marred" by his choice of wife. After a long courtship, Elizabeth agreed.

  The wedding took place at Westminster Abbey on the 26th of April 1923. Marrying someone not of royal birth was seen as a modernising gesture. The newly formed British Broadcasting Company wanted to record and broadcast the service on radio. The Abbey Chapter vetoed the idea, even though the Dean, Herbert Edward Ryle, favoured it.

  From December 1924 to April 1925, the Duke and Duchess toured Kenya, Uganda and the Sudan, travelling by way of the Suez Canal and Aden. Both of them went big-game hunting along the way.

  On the 31st of October 1925, Albert gave the closing speech at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. It was an ordeal for him and for his listeners, and it convinced him to seek help. He began seeing Lionel Logue, an Australian-born speech therapist. The two practised breathing exercises, and the Duchess patiently rehearsed with him at home. His speech grew less hesitant.

  The improvement showed in 1927, when Albert opened the new Parliament House in Canberra during an empire tour with his wife. They sailed on HMS Renown to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, stopping at Jamaica on the way. There Albert played doubles tennis with a black partner, Bertrand Clark. This was unusual at the time, and locals took it as a sign of equality between races.

  The couple's daughters arrived in 1926 and 1930. Elizabeth, called "Lilibet" by the family, was the elder, and Margaret was the younger. The family lived first at White Lodge in Richmond Park and then at 145 Piccadilly, rather than in a royal palace.

  In 1931, the Canadian prime minister, R. B. Bennett, considered Albert for the post of Governor General of Canada. George V rejected the idea on the advice of J. H. Thomas, the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs.

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• 5. The Accidental King

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  George V held grim views about his eldest son. He once said, "After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in twelve months." He also said: "I pray God that my eldest son will never marry and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne."

  The King died on the 20th of January 1936, and Edward ascended as Edward VIII. In the Vigil of the Princes, the new king and his three brothers took turns standing guard over their father's closed casket in Westminster Hall. The other two brothers were Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and Prince George, Duke of Kent.

  Edward was unmarried and childless, so Albert was heir presumptive. Less than a year later, on the 11th of December 1936, Edward abdicated. He wished to marry Wallis Simpson, who was divorced from her first husband and divorcing her second. Prime minister Stanley Baldwin had advised him that he could not stay on the throne and marry a woman with two living ex-husbands. Albert, who had been reluctant to take the crown, became king.

  In Dublin, the parliament of the Irish Free State, the Oireachtas, acted on the day of the abdication. It removed all direct mention of the monarch from the Irish constitution. The next day it passed the External Relations Act, which gave the monarch limited authority over diplomatic appointments and treaties, strictly on the government's advice. Together the two acts made the Irish Free State a republic in essence, while keeping its links to the Commonwealth.

  Gossip spread across Britain that Albert was physically and psychologically unfit to be king. A further rumour claimed the government had considered skipping Albert, his children and Prince Henry in favour of Prince George, Duke of Kent. The reasoning was that George was then the only brother with a son. No evidence has been found to support that rumour.

  Albert took the regnal name George VI to stress continuity with his father and to rebuild confidence in the monarchy. His first problem was what to call his brother. Edward had been introduced as "His Royal Highness Prince Edward" for the abdication broadcast. George felt that by renouncing the succession, Edward had lost the right to royal titles.

  His first act as king was to make Edward the Duke of Windsor, with the style "Royal Highness". The letters patent creating the dukedom barred any wife or children from bearing royal styles. George also had to buy Balmoral Castle and Sandringham House from Edward, because they were private properties that did not pass to a new king automatically. Three days after his accession, on his 41st birthday, he invested his wife, now queen consort, with the Order of the Garter.

  The coronation at Westminster Abbey took place on the 12th of May 1937, the date once intended for Edward's. Queen Mary attended, breaking with tradition to show support for her son. No Durbar was held in Delhi, unlike for his father. The cost would have burdened the Government of India, and rising Indian nationalism threatened a muted welcome. A long absence from Britain before the Second World War would also have been unwise. Instead he made two overseas tours, to France and to North America, both chosen for their strategic value if war came.

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• 6. Shadow of War

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  In 1938, the King and Queen greeted prime minister Neville Chamberlain on his return from negotiating the Munich Agreement. They invited him onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace with them. Balcony appearances were normally reserved for the royal family, and the King was constitutionally bound to support Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. The historian and politician John Grigg later called George's conduct "the most unconstitutional act by a British sovereign in the present century".

  In May and June 1939, the royal couple toured Canada and the United States. It was the first visit to North America by a reigning British monarch. From Ottawa, with Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King, they presented themselves as King and Queen of Canada. Mackenzie King and the governor general, Lord Tweedsmuir, hoped the visit would show the principles of the Statute of Westminster 1931, which gave the Dominions full sovereignty.

  On the 19th of May, George personally accepted the letter of credence of the new US ambassador to Canada, Daniel Calhoun Roper. He gave royal assent to nine bills and ratified two international treaties with the Great Seal of Canada. The official tour historian, Gustave Lanctot, wrote that "the Statute of Westminster had assumed full reality". In a speech, George stressed "the free and equal association of the nations of the Commonwealth".

  The tour also had a political aim, which was to soften isolationist feeling among North Americans as tensions grew in Europe. Crowds greeted the couple enthusiastically, and the fear that George would be compared badly to his predecessor faded. They visited the 1939 New York World's Fair and stayed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House and at Hyde Park, New York. A strong friendship formed between Roosevelt and the couple, which mattered greatly for relations between the two countries through the war years.

  Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, and the United Kingdom and the Dominions, other than Ireland, declared war on Nazi Germany. The King and Queen resolved to stay in London despite the bombing raids. Officially they remained at Buckingham Palace throughout the war, though they usually spent nights at Windsor Castle.

  The first night of the Blitz on London, the 7th of September 1940, killed about one thousand civilians, mostly in the East End. On the 13th of September, two German bombs exploded in a courtyard at Buckingham Palace while the couple were inside. The Queen declared: "I am glad we have been bombed. It makes me feel we can look the East End in the face."

  The royal family lived under rationing like everyone else. US first lady Eleanor Roosevelt remarked on the rationed food and the limited bathwater during a stay at the unheated, boarded-up Palace. In August 1942, the King's brother, the Duke of Kent, was killed on active service.

  In 1940, Winston Churchill replaced Chamberlain as prime minister, though George would personally have preferred Lord Halifax. The King was dismayed at first when Churchill brought Lord Beaverbrook into the Cabinet. Even so, the two men developed what has been called "the closest personal relationship in modern British history between a monarch and a Prime Minister". From September 1940, they met privately for lunch every Tuesday for four and a half years, speaking frankly about the war. George recorded much of what they said in his diary, which is the only surviving first-hand account of those talks.

  The King and Queen visited bomb sites, munitions factories and troops across the United Kingdom to lift morale. George also visited forces abroad: France in December 1939, North Africa and Malta in June 1943, Normandy in June 1944, southern Italy in July 1944 and the Low Countries in October 1944. Their visibility and apparent tirelessness made them symbols of national resistance.

  At a social function in 1944, Field Marshal Alan Brooke confessed that whenever he met Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, he felt Montgomery was after his job. The King replied: "You should worry, when I meet him, I always think he's after mine!"

  On Victory in Europe Day in 1945, crowds outside Buckingham Palace shouted "We want the King!" Echoing the Chamberlain episode, George invited Churchill onto the balcony with the royal family, to public acclaim. In January 1946, the King addressed the first assembly of the United Nations, held in London, and reaffirmed "our faith in the equal rights of men and women and of nations great and small".

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• 7. Empire to Commonwealth

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  In August 1947, under prime minister Clement Attlee, British India split into the two independent Dominions of India and Pakistan. George became King of India and King of Pakistan, and he gave up the title of Emperor of India in June 1948. The empire he inherited was turning into a voluntary association of independent states known as the Commonwealth.

  In late April 1949, Commonwealth leaders issued the London Declaration, which laid the foundation of the modern Commonwealth. It recognised George as Head of the Commonwealth. In January 1950, he ceased to be King of India when it became a republic. He stayed King of Pakistan until his death. Other members departed along the way, including Burma in January 1948, Palestine in May 1948 and the Republic of Ireland in 1949.

  In 1947, George and his family toured southern Africa. Jan Smuts, prime minister of the Union of South Africa, faced an election and hoped to gain political advantage from the visit. The South African government instructed the King to shake hands only with whites. George was appalled, and he referred to his South African bodyguards as "the Gestapo".

  The tour did not save Smuts, who lost the election the following year. The new government introduced a strict policy of racial segregation.

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• 8. Illness and Legacy

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  By the late 1940s, the strain of war and heavy smoking had badly damaged George's health. He developed lung cancer, arteriosclerosis and Buerger's disease. In March 1949, an arterial blockage in his right leg threatened the loss of the limb and was treated with a right lumbar sympathectomy. A planned tour of Australia and New Zealand was postponed, and his elder daughter Elizabeth took on more royal duties. She and her husband, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, later made the tour in place of the King and Queen.

  George was well enough to open the Festival of Britain in May 1951. On the 4th of June, it was announced that he needed four weeks of complete rest, even though Haakon VII of Norway arrived for an official visit the following afternoon. On the 23rd of September 1951, surgeon Clement Price Thomas removed the King's left lung after a malignant tumour was found.

  In October 1951, Elizabeth and Philip began a month-long tour of Canada, delayed by a week because of his illness. At the State Opening of Parliament in November, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Simonds, read the King's speech. The King's Christmas broadcast of 1951 was recorded in sections and then edited together.

  On the 31st of January 1952, against the advice of those close to him, George went to London Airport to see Elizabeth and Philip leave for Australia by way of Kenya. It was the last time he was seen in public. At 7:30 am on the 6th of February, he was found dead in bed at Sandringham House. He had died in the night of a coronary thrombosis, aged 56. His daughter flew home from Kenya as Queen Elizabeth II.

  His coffin rested at St Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham, from the 9th of February, then lay in state at Westminster Hall from the 11th. The funeral took place at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on the 15th. He was first placed in the Royal Vault and moved to the King George VI Memorial Chapel inside St George's on the 26th of March 1969. In 2002, his widow, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and the ashes of Princess Margaret were interred beside him. In 2022, Elizabeth II and Prince Philip joined them.

  Labour MP George Hardie said the abdication crisis did "more for republicanism than fifty years of propaganda". George himself wrote to Edward that he had reluctantly taken "a rocking throne" and tried "to make it steady again". Public faith in the monarchy was at a low ebb when he became king. Through personal courage and his image as a dutiful family man, he restored its popularity.

  At his suggestion, the George Cross and the George Medal were founded during the war to honour exceptional civilian bravery. In 1943 he awarded the George Cross to the entire "island fortress of Malta". In 1960, the French government posthumously awarded him the Order of Liberation. Only one other person, Churchill in 1958, received that medal after 1946. In 2010, Colin Firth won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing George VI in the film The King's Speech.

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