In 1943, the King told his mother, Queen Mary, that he had “studied the way in which his brain works. Many of his important problems are difficult to extract from him”-the two men formed a mutually confiding bond. After an uneasy beginning-“Winston was not very talkative. His diary pages as well as his correspondences make clear that George VI had a close professional relationship with Winston Churchill, his prime minister from May 10, 1940, until the end of the European war. A man has to suffer many disappointments in its cause.” Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov “looks like a small quiet man with a feeble voice but is really a tyrant.” The King showed humility in his private jottings after three weeks of war by admitting that “it is all an amazing puzzle.” Yet when faced with the failure to repel night bombing in London, he philosophically observed, “Science is always very slow in its methods. Eight months after the start of the war, he told the minister of supply, Herbert Morrison, that his Labour Party was “partly to blame” for a shortage of armaments.įrom the earliest days of the war, George VI regularly urged government officials to start postwar planning “to keep the spirit of the class mixing going.” His character assessments were sharp and sometimes biting. I came to appreciate not only his inquisitive mind, eager to absorb every detail, but also what his postwar Labour prime minister Clement Attlee described as “a good judgment and a sure instinct for what was really vital.” I was taken aback that the King could be bracingly assertive in private. It was the seven years’ worth of diaries that George VI began writing on September 3, 1939, the first day of the Second World War, that yielded the most revelations. One from you I hope darling in xxxxx etc etc & then an ordinary culinary one.” Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon took 12 days to say yes after her future husband proposed for the third time. I also learned that when they were apart, Bertie (as George VI was known to friends and family) and Elizabeth wrote passionate letters to each other-his to “my own little darling one” and hers to “my dear darling.” Once when he was away stalking deer, she longed for his return “sunburnt, manly, & bronzed, bearing in your arms a haunch of venaison roti as a love offering to your spouse.” He replied that on arrival he expected “two lunches of course. I discovered that Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon took 12 days to say yes after her future husband proposed for the third time, and that she spent 20 hours discussing the proposal with her ardent suitor as well as members of her close circle. The diaries and letters were endlessly intriguing. A fuller view of the man took shape after Queen Elizabeth II granted me special access to the papers of George VI and his wife (later popularly known as the Queen Mum) in the Royal Archives, at Windsor Castle. But I had only fuzzy impressions of him as a loving husband and as a key figure during Britain’s fight for survival during World War II. I learned about him as a father when I wrote my biography of his daughter, Queen Elizabeth II. But what are the other dimensions of this man, who died in 1952? In it, he’s portrayed, largely accurately, as an earnest young man who overcame a crippling stutter with the help of an unconventional speech therapist and the unwavering support of his wife, Queen Elizabeth. Most people know George VI from the movie The King’s Speech.
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