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George VI

Albert Frederick Arthur George ["Albert" or "Bertie"], the second son of the Duke of York, was the man not born to be king. He nonetheless rescued the British monarchy in the aftermath of the abdication crisis and cemented its prestige with his well-judged performance during World War II and the Blitz. Prince Bertie's transformation into King George VI included his struggle with a crippling shyness and sense of inadequacy, exacerbated by the stammer which was the focus of the Oscar-winning film The King's Speech.

George was a sickly child and was often ill. He also developed an acute stammer. As a naval cadet at Osborne he had a severe attack of pneumonia, and passed out bottom of his class. In the early weeks of the Great War he was operated on for appendicitis; but he saw active service on HMS Collingwood in the Battle of Jutland. Then a period of serious illhealth ended in an operation for duodenal ulcer at the end of 1917.

It was indeed with the young that he seemed to be at his happiest, and it was in 1921 that he arranged for the first of his boys' camps, made up of 200 public school boys and 200 boys from working-class homes. Two years before this he had become President of the Boys' Welfare Association, under whose aegis the camps were-run. Here was a direct contribution to social welfare and to what was known later as " positive health." As Duke of York he lived in the camp, took part in the sports and the games, and joined with zest in the camp-fire singsongs. His interest in the health and welfare of the young was further shown by his presidency of the Barnardo's Homes, the Boys' Welfare Association, the National Playing Fields' Association, and the National Safety First Campaign.

His marriage to the self-assured and supportive Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons was a turning point in his life. She was born the Honourable Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon on 4 August 1900 (fourth daughter of Lord Glamis, later 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne) and spent her early childhood at St Paul's Waldenbury in Hertfordshire, north of the capital. This was the country home of her parents. The Bowes-Lyon family is descended from the Royal House of Scotland. One of The Queen Mother's 14th-century ancestors, Sir John Lyon, became Thane of Glamis, home of Macbeth 300 years before, and Glamis Castle is the family seat. She loved her pet dogs, loved to bet on horse races and enjoyed the odd bit of alcohol. These aspects of her life resonated with average citizens.

His unexpected accession to the throne in 1936 changed the direction of the young prince's life for good. Once on the throne, it was he who bore the weighty responsibility for restoring the nation's confidence in their monarchy following his elder brother's abdication in 1936.

Upon ascending to the throne, he took the name George VI, partly to comply with Queen Victoria's wish that no king of England have the name "Albert" and partly to restore confidence in the monarchy by using the same name as his father. King George VI served as the last king of Ireland in accordance with the provisions of the (Irish) External Relations Act, 1936.

George VI struggled to overcome a debilitating stammer. The first Christmas Broadcast was delivered by George V in 1932 and since then has evolved into an important part of the Christmas Day celebrations for many in Britain and around the world. The task fell to King George VI, King Edward's younger brother, who made his first broadcast in December 1937 in which he thanked the nation and Empire for their support during the first year of his reign. There had been no broadcasts in 1936 or 1938. It was the outbreak of war in 1939 which firmly established the Royal Christmas Broadcast. With large parts of the world now facing an uncertain future, King George VI spoke live to offer a message of reassurance to his people. The war-time Christmas Broadcasts played a large part in boosting morale and reinforcing belief in the common cause.

Between 9th and 12th June 1939, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth were the guests of Roosevelt at his country estate in Hyde Park, New York State, during what was the first ever visit by a reigning British monarch to the United States. Coming at a time when Britain desperately needed American help in the conflict that now seemed inevitable, the meeting was front page news on both sides of the Atlantic and imbued with huge political significance.

"In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my people, both at home and overseas, this message." The hesitations in an archival recording of a 1939 broadcast from Buckingham Palace give only a hint of how difficult it was for King George VI to speak in public because of his lifelong stammer.

George VI worked to maintain morale during the darkest days of World War II, when, together with Winston Churchill, his dignified presence functioned as a beacon of reassurance to civilians and military alike. The King remained at Buckingham Palace throughout the war despite the danger from bombing. He vowed to defend the Palace to the death with a pistol if necessary. During the war the King visited troops, munitions factories, supply docks and bomb-damaged areas in support of the war effort. The actions of the King and Queen in the war years improved the perception of the monarchy for many.

In 1946, King George VI asked the nation to mark the first ever Armistice Day with a moment of silence and reflection. In the Times, he requested: “…for the brief space of two minutes, a complete suspension of all our normal activities. During that time… all work, all sound and all locomotion should cease, so that, in perfect silence, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the Glorious Dead”.

By November, 1948, his medical advisers must have been gravely concerned about the condition of the cerebral and coronary arteries, a concern which they naturally had to keep within their own counsel. In March, 1949, the country learnt that lumbar sympathectomy had been performed. The King's recovery from the operation was uneventful, and happily he gained relief from his distress and the circulation in the right foot improved. But the state of the King's cardiovascular system must have continued to be a source of grave anxiety to his medical attendants.

In September 1951, about three months after signs of inflammation in the lung structural changes appeared of such a nature as to compel the King's doctors to advise resection, a serious operation from which the King made a mnagnificent recovery. Although a name was never officially given to the illness which necessitated the King's sudden operation on September 23, most doctors thought that the 'structural changes' first announced on September 18 were those of cancer of the lung.

His sudden but peaceful death from coronary thrombosis on 06 February 1952, was the sad and now all-too-familiar outcome of the condition diagnosed in 1948 and bearing no relation to the disease of the lung for which resection was carried out the previous year. Medical men and women, knowing the nature of the King's illnesses and operations, must often have feared that his life might end after protracted suffering and anguish of mind and body. The great shock and grief at his sudden death must in the nature of things be tempered with the knowledge of what he may have been spared.

The country and the Commonwealth mourned the passing of a beloved and kindly King who by his steadfast bearing, devotion to duty, and manly example made all his peoples truly members one of another, bound with hoops of steel in the adversity of war and knit together in a firm resolve to build a new world in the peace that yet hovered on the horizon. He gave the strength that comes from the unity of a Monarch with his people. When Britain stood alone the King and his family stood there in the center of the people's life, enduring in full measure the ordeal of the battle that raged over the cities and ports of a besieged country. If the constitutional sovereign of a free people became in much of his significance a symbol, King George VI was a symbol not of the pomp and circumstance of palaces but of a devoted father of a family who in his unaffected simplicity came close to the heart of the common man, and in this became so much the more a King.

The mother of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, the Queen Mum, the grandmother to the nation, died 30 March 2002 at the age of 101. Throughout the decades, the Queen Mum worked to uphold the reputation of the monarchy during a period of immense social change, which has brought about the demise of the old order and the erosion of traditional British class barriers.

Britain stopped as the nation bid farewell to the Queen Mother during her funeral at Westminster Abbey. Through song and word, they reflected upon her long, event-filled life. A life, said the Archbishop of Canterbury, she lived to the full. "Her's was a great old age, but not a cramped one. She remained young at heart and the young themselves sensed that," Dr. George Carey said.

The Queen Mother was generally regarded as the best-loved royal and is revered by the older generations of Britons. This was in sharp contrast to many younger members of her family who have fallen in and out of favor over the years.