George VI: remembering the monarch 60 years on
George VI
King George VI died peacefully in his sleep at Sandringham on February 6, 1952 and his death was the occasion of a great outpouring of national grief. Local historian GORDON LUCY reflects on monarch’s life
ALTHOUGH it was perhaps not widely appreciated at the time, in retrospect the abdication of Edward VIII in December 1936 was a blessing in disguise. A shallow, selfish, self-indulgent playboy, Edward VIII had little or no conception of what being a constitutional monarch entailed. He even had Nazi sympathies. In brief, the reign of Edward VIII would have proved an unmitigated disaster.
By contrast, George VI proved to be an excellent constitutional monarch. When Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes met Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 he concluded that Roosevelt had a ‘second-class intellect but a first-class temperament’. The same assessment might be equally applied to George. Unlike his brother, he possessed both application and stamina. As we all know, thanks to Tom Hooper’s excellent film The King’s Speech, he had a nervous stammer but he had the strength of character to wrestle with his disability and, with the help of Lionel Logue, a very unorthodox Australian speech therapist, largely conquer it.
He also suffered from vertigo and as a child was forced to wear splints at night to prevent him getting knock-knees. He was so painfully shy that he once sat in a darkened room rather than ask a servant to light a lamp.
George VI was undeniably a good man, possessed of a strong sense of duty. In Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, he had the good fortune to have married a wonderfully supportive wife. They were a devoted couple and they and their two daughters – Elizabeth and Margaret – formed a very close knit family, which he referred to as ‘Us Four’.
A secure family life was underpinned by his deep Christian faith. He had become a committed Christian at the age of 17. He had the good sense to keep his fairly conventional conservative political opinions largely to himself.
Growing up with no expectation of succeeding to the throne, George spent the greater part of his life in the shadow of his elder brother. The day before the abdication, he went to London to see his mother, Queen Mary. He candidly recorded in his diary: ‘When I told her what had happened, I broke down and sobbed like a child’.
Although christened Albert Frederick Arthur George, he assumed the regnal name ‘George VI’ to emphasize continuity with his father and to restore confidence in the monarchy.
In the years before the outbreak of the Second World War George VI supported Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler, as he was constitutionally bound to do. When the King and Queen greeted Chamberlain on his return from Munich, they invited him to join them on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
This very public association of the monarchy with a politician was exceptional: balcony appearances traditionally were restricted to the royal family. While there was virtually a national consensus in favour of the Munich Agreement, it was nevertheless opposed by Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden and others.
The historian John Grigg has described George VI’s very public association with Chamberlain as ‘the most unconstitutional act by a British sovereign’ in the twentieth century.
In retrospect, it is fair to say that, while there was a degree of constitutional impropriety, comparatively few would have taken that view at the time.
In May 1940, George VI was not initially well-disposed to Winston Churchill, Chamberlain’s successor, not least because of his wholly irresponsible role during the Abdication Crisis. Nevertheless, George VI and his new prime minister managed to develop a close and harmonious rapport.
The war transformed George VI’s into a national icon and the embodiment of the British people’s determination to oppose the evils of Nazism. Buckingham Palace was bombed nine times but he resolutely refused to allow himself or his family to be evacuated during the Blitz.
He worked tirelessly to maintain the morale of the British people, touring the UK’s bomb-ravaged cities. He devised the George Cross and the George Medal to recognise acts of exceptional civilian bravery.
In 1943 he bestowed the George Cross on the entire ‘island fortress of Malta’. George VI shared the grief of the nation when the Duke of Kent, his youngest brother, was killed on active service. He also paid morale-boosting visits to Malta in 1942, to North Africa in 1943, to Italy in 1945, and to the Normandy beaches just 10 days after D-Day.
When George VI had succeeded his brother he had been a largely unknown figure and public confidence in the monarchy was at a low ebb. However, through his exemplary family life and personal courage, George VI succeeded in restoring the popularity and prestige of the monarchy.
In August 1945 Lord Cranborne, the Conservative leader in the House of Lords and heir to the Marquess of Salisbury, told his fellow peers: ‘In this moment of victory, their first thoughts would go to God, who had brought them through great danger; next to the King, the cornerstone of that great Empire of which they were proud to be citizens. He had passed through the Valley of Death; long might he live to guide them through the sunny uplands of prosperity and peace’.
In the short term ‘the sunny uplands of prosperity and peace’ would prove elusive. British power, if not prestige and status, had been seriously undermined by the war and the independence of the Indian continent in 1947 marked the beginning of the end of the British Empire.
As an instinctive conservative, George VI would have viewed Clem Atlee’s premiership with a degree of trepidation. Yet, the King found that the UK’s only genuinely socialist prime minister (to date) was a product of Haileybury and imbued with the same strong ethos of selfless public service and hard work as himself. Having that in common, they got on famously.
Unfortunately, George VI was not long spared ‘to guide’ the British people. His health was never robust. His unexpected succession was a great strain for a man who suffered from an acute stammer.
In 1948 he was diagnosed as suffering from the early stages of arterio-sclerosis in his right leg. An operation was successfully performed and he seemed to recover.
A heavy smoker, in September 1951 cancer of the left lung was diagnosed and it had to be removed. The operation was successful but the King was never told that he had cancer. His doctors were well aware of the risk of a coronary thrombosis during or after the operation, and this was what killed him.
By the time of his premature death at the age of 56, George VI was genuinely popular and was sincerely mourned.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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