The King's War

by The King's War- The Friendship of George VI

  The King spoke from Sandringham; the personal angle he mentioned involved talking about ‘three vivid personal experiences’ that 1948 had brought: his silver wedding anniversary that April; the birth of Charles, his first grandchild, in November; and the bout of poor health at the end of the year that had forced postponement of his planned trip to Australia and New Zealand.

  ‘As for the third, even this, like every other cloud, can have a silver lining, and it has had one striking result which it shares with the other two,’ the King said. ‘For the impression made equally by all three experiences is the grateful recollection of the volume of good will and affection that they brought from all over the world to me and mine.’ They had also, he continued, left him with a fuller understanding of his role as monarch, which was ‘no abstract symbol of constitutional theory’ but rather ‘one pole of a very real human relationship’.

  The King’s health continued to be so poor that he did not return to London until the end of February, when he resumed a limited programme of audiences and held an investiture. The following month brought more bad news, however. After a full examination, it became clear his recovery had not been as complete as the doctors had thought. Learmouth advised a right lumbar sympathectomy, a surgical procedure intended to free the flow of blood to his leg. The operation, carried out at the King’s insistence in an impromptu operating theatre in Buckingham Palace rather than a hospital, went well. The King was under no illusions, however, that he would be completely restored to health. His doctors ordered him to rest much more, reduce his official engagements and cut down drastically on the smoking that had aggravated his condition. A second attack of thrombosis could be lethal, he was warned.

  Logue wrote to the King on 28 March: ‘It has been with a very anxious mind that I have watched the bulletin issued by your Doctor – and seen the gallant struggle you have made, but my mind has been greatly relieved by the utterance of The Princess Elizabeth at the headquarter of the WVS [Women’s Voluntary Service] when she said: “My Father is getting on very well indeed’”, he wrote. ‘It is only natural that I should be perturbed after having had the great honour of being associated with your Majesty over so many years.’

  ‘My dear Logue,’ the King wrote back two days later:

  ‘Thank you so much for your letter, I am at last much better & hope in time to become a new man with a new lease of life.

  ‘The rest & treatment have done me a world of good & once the effects of the operation have settled down I should feel quite different.’

  The King’s health did indeed appear to continue to improve through 1949, but the doctors nevertheless ordered as much rest as possible. That Christmas brought another message to the nation, the Commonwealth and the Empire. ‘Once more I am in the throes of preparing my broadcast,’ he wrote to Logue, thanking him for his annual birthday greetings, which were still accompanied, as they had been every year for almost three decades, by a gift of two or three books that Logue thought he would like. ‘How difficult it is to find anything new to say in these days. Words of encouragement to do better in the New Year is the only thing to go on. I am longing to get it over. It still ruins my Christmas.’

  Despite the King’s usual reluctance, the broadcast went well. Afterwards, Michael Adeane, who in 1945 had become his assistant private secretary, wrote to Logue to congratulate him on all the work he had done with the King for previous years’ broadcasts. ‘I happened to be here & therefore listened from the next room but I have never heard a speech go smoother and better. Moreover,’ Adeane wrote, ‘I have never known the speaker more calm or more confident about the whole thing beforehand. One did not get the impression that he was in the least worried or anxious, & I don’t believe he was. I know I would have been.’ Adeane began his letter ‘Dear Lionel’, adding that he felt they knew each other sufficiently well for him to ‘get away’ with such an informal form of address – a contrast with other officials at the Palace and indeed, the King, himself, who would always refer to Logue by his surname.

  Logue wrote back (beginning his letter ‘Dear Michael’) to say he was delighted that Adeane had liked the broadcast. ‘I spoke to H.M. on the telephone at 5 o’clock & he was very pleased with the performance,’ he said. ‘I agree with you that it was the best ever, he worked up to 80 words to the minute which is excellent, his voice was well pitched, & very well controlled, & the whole effort was marked with smooth force. He is indeed reaping a reward for all his hard work & so many people have rung me up about the Broadcast.’

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Last Words

  To the millions who gathered around their radios on Christmas Day 1951, the voice was both familiar and yet worryingly different. Delivering his message, the King sounded husky and hoarse, as if he were suffering from a particularly heavy cold. At times, his voice dropped to almost a whisper. He also seemed to be speaking slightly faster than usual. Yet few of those listening could have failed to have been moved by what their monarch had to say.

  After beginning by describing Christmas as a time when everyone should count their blessings, the King struck a deeply personal note. ‘I myself have every cause for deep thankfulness, for not only – by the grace of God and through the faithful skill of my doctors, surgeons and nurses – have I come through my illness, but I have learned once again that it is in bad times that we value most highly the support and sympathy of our friends,’ he declared. ‘From my peoples in these islands and in the British Commonwealth and Empire as well as from many other countries this support and sympathy has reached me and I thank you now from my heart. I trust that you yourselves realise how greatly your prayers and good wishes have helped and are helping me in my recovery.’

  The King’s five doctors telephoned their congratulations, but the newspapers both in Britain and beyond were shocked by what they had heard. Although it was a relief to hear the King speak for the first time since undergoing a major operation that September, the wavering tone of his voice made clear how poorly he was. ‘Millions of people all over the world, listening to the King’s Christmas Day broadcast, noticed with concern the huskiness in his voice,’ the Daily Mirror reported two days later. ‘The question at many Christmas firesides was: Is the King just suffering from a chill, or is the huskiness a sequel to the lung operation he had three months ago?’

  For the first time since the King had delivered his first Christmas message in 1937, he had not spoken his words live but they had instead been pre-recorded. The explanation lay in a further deterioration in his health. After the various medical crises he suffered in the late 1940s, he had been ordered by his doctors to rest and relax as much as possible and to cut down his public appearances. A further strain came from the worsening economic and political situation: Attlee’s Labour party, elected by a landslide in 1945, had seen its majority eroded to a handful in 1950 and was struggling to remain in power. A general election in October 1951 brought a change of government, with Winston Churchill, now aged seventy-six, returning to Downing Street.

  The King had been well enough to open the Festival of Britain in May 1951, riding with the Queen in an open carriage through the streets of London, escorted by the household cavalry. ‘This is no time for despondency,’ he announced from the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral. ‘I see this festival as a symbol of Britain’s abiding courage and vitality.’ But many of those who saw him close up during the service remarked on how ill he looked – and that evening he took to his bed with influenza.

  The King was slow to recover and also suffered from a persistent cough; he was initially diagnosed with a catarrhal inflammation of the left lung and treated with penicillin. The symptoms persisted, however, and that September he was found to have a malignant growth. Clement Price Thomas, a surgeon who specialized in such problems, told the King the lung should be removed as soon as possible – although, as was the practice of the day, he did not reveal to his patient that he was suffering from cancer.

  The operation, carried
out eight days later, went well. It had been feared that the King might lose certain nerves in the larynx, which would have made him unable to speak in more than a whisper. The fear proved unfounded. By October, he was writing to his mother expressing relief that he had not suffered complications, but he remained a sick man. During the State Opening of Parliament that November, his speech from the throne – exceptionally – was read for him by Lord Simonds, the Lord Chancellor. There were suggestions that he should not make his Christmas broadcast either. According to a newspaper report in the Daily Express,190 it was proposed his place at the microphone be taken by his wife or by Princess Elizabeth. The King refused, even though it would undoubtedly have spared him considerable discomfort. ‘My daughter may have her opportunity next Christmas,’ he reportedly said. ‘I want to speak to my people myself.’ The King’s determination to deliver his message in person – much he had always dreaded doing so – showed the extent to which, during the course of his reign, those few minutes on the afternoon of 25 December had been turned into one of the most important events in the national calendar.

  The doctors warned, however, that a live broadcast could prove too much of a strain. Thus a compromise was found: the King recorded the message in sections, sentence by sentence, repeating some over and over again, until he was happy. Although the final product was barely six minutes long, the whole process took the best part of two days. The result was also far from perfect: imperfect editing led to what seemed to listeners an uncharacteristically fast delivery. For the King, though, it was far better than any of the alternatives. ‘The nation will hear my message, although it might have been better,’ he told the sound engineer and a senior official from the BBC, who were the only two people allowed to listen back with him to the final version before it was broadcast. ‘Thank you for your patience.’

  The letter that the King sent Logue in response to his customary birthday greetings reflected the poor spirits in which he found himself in the days before the recording. It was to be the last letter that he wrote him, and his remarks seemed all the more poignant because Logue, too, was in poor health.

  ‘I am so sorry to hear that you have not been well again,’ the King wrote:

  As for myself, I have spent a wretched year culminating in that very severe operation, from which I seem to be making a remarkable recovery. The latter fact is in many ways entirely down to you. Before this operation, Price Thomas the surgeon asked to see me breathe. When he saw the diaphragm move up and down naturally he asked me whether I had always breathed in that way. I said no, I had been taught to breathe like that in 1926 & had gone on doing so. Another feather in your cap you see!!

  Logue intended to reply after listening to the Christmas broadcast but was taken back into hospital on 28 December before he could do so. It was not until 19 January when he was finally discharged and back in his flat in Princes Court that he responded.

  It is a wonderful thought to me that in 1924 when I left Australia, I could not get the medical profession to believe in Diaphragmatic Breathing, they imagined it was a fad. Then I had the wonderful fortune to have the Greatest in the Land as a patient & you & your letter have proved that I was right. We all listened with the greatest interest to your Majestic broadcast & I think it was very noble of you to do it & that is the general opinion & considering what you had been through, I think it came through wonderfully well.

  The King had stayed on at Sandringham into the New Year with the Queen. The note of hope and confidence in his Christmas speech appeared to be justified. He was well enough to begin shooting again, and when his doctors examined him on 29 January, they pronounced themselves satisfied with his recovery. The next day the royal family went to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane to see Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. The outing had something of an air of celebration about it, partly because of the improvement in the King’s health and partly because the following day, Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh were due to set off for East Africa. The improvement was illusory, however: a week later he died.

  The King’s death opened the way for discussion of something that had been rarely spoken of during his lifetime: the terrible toll that his stammer had taken on him and the importance of Logue’s role in helping him to overcome it. Appropriately, it was John Gordon, the journalist who knew best the relationship between the two men, who led the way with an article entitled ‘The King: a Story That Has Never Been Told’, which dominated the front page of the Sunday Express on 10 February. In it, Gordon recounted at some length the story of ‘the man who came to London unknown . . . and gave the King the power to speak’, beginning with their first meeting in Harley Street almost three decades earlier. The King’s relationship with Logue, Gordon concluded, was ‘more vital to a true understanding of his character than anything else in his reign’. A briefer and less prominent piece that appeared the same day in the Sunday Pictorial, penned by an unnamed ‘special correspondent’, explained to that newspaper’s readers the role of Logue, who, it said, ‘alone knows all the secrets of the King’s dramatic and courageous struggle to conquer his stammer’. Both articles were widely quoted and reproduced in newspapers in Australia, which were keen to celebrate the important role played by their native son.

  Logue, still the soul of discretion, was not directly quoted by either paper, although it was difficult to imagine that his old friend Gordon would have written his story without consulting him. Logue nevertheless shared his feelings with Alan Elliott, his patient from Northern Ireland, who was now fifteen. ‘It has been a rather terrible time for me, but I rejoice that my King passed out so sweetly, & has left all his pain,’ he wrote in a letter the day before the funeral. ‘He was a very wonderful patient.’

  Logue expanded on his thoughts in a letter he sent to the King’s widow on 26 February, almost three weeks after her husband’s death. He referred to the ‘wonderful letter’ that the King had sent him in December and expressed his regrets that his own illness had delayed his reply, which he feared the King had not seen.

  ‘Since 1926 he honoured me, by allowing me to help him with his speech, & no man ever worked as hard as he did, & achieved such a grand result,’ Logue wrote. ‘During all those years you were a tower of strength to him & he has often told me how much he has owed to you, and the excellent result could never have been achieved if it had not been for your help. I have never forgotten your gracious help to me after my own beloved girl passed on.’

  In her reply two days later, the Queen Mother was fulsome in her praise of Logue. ‘I think that I know perhaps better than anyone just how much you helped the King, not only with his speech, but through that his whole life & outlook on life,’ she wrote:

  I shall always be deeply grateful to you for all you did for him. He was such a splendid person and I don’t believe that he ever thought of himself at all. I did so hope that he might have been allowed a few years of comparative peace after the many anguished years he has had to battle through so bravely. But it was not to be. I do hope that you will soon be better.

  That May, her daughter, now Queen Elizabeth II, mindful of how close Logue had been to her father, sent him a small gold snuff box that had belonged to the King, together with the following message:

  I am sending you this little box which always stood on the King’s table, & which he was rather fond of, as I am sure you would like a little personal souvenir of someone who was so grateful to you for all you did for him. The box was on his writing table, & I know that he would wish you to have it.

  I do hope that you are feeling better, I miss the King more & more.

  Yours v sincerely,

  Elizabeth R.

  Logue was delighted with the letter, which he showed off proudly a few months later at an annual dinner for alumni of Prince Alfred College, the school he had attended in Adelaide, which was held at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in Pall Mall. An insight into Logue’s state of mind is provided by one of his own letters, dated 30 May 1952, which was fo
und years later in a bookshop in New Zealand. It was addressed to ‘my good friend’ – a person whom Logue doesn’t name but describes as a ‘blast from the past’, who has contacted him out of the blue. ‘I had to sit down & concentrate, to call up your features – but I think I have got them now,’ Logue began.

  How nice of you to write to me. I have so very many letters these days & the way my old friends have rallied round is very heartening, in fact I didn’t know I had so many.

  These days, I do more consulting work than any other. If I didn’t work I would go mad. It is very nice to be hailed as the greatest in the world at your job, but it is hard at my age (72) to live up to it.

  My 3 sons have been a great credit to me. Laurie the eldest has an engineering shop in Nottingham, Val is a brilliant neurosurgeon, & the ‘baby’ (28) is a Barrister so I am very grateful, that they have done so well. My beloved King killed himself by working too hard, but – thank God – we have a much loved girl as Queen, to take his place & her husband will be a great help. I lost my beloved wife 6 years ago, & since then life has been very difficult.

  That December, the Queen delivered her first Christmas message, from Sandringham. ‘Each Christmas, at this time, my beloved father broadcast a message to his people in all parts of the world,’ she said. ‘As he used to do, I am speaking to you from my own home, where I am spending Christmas with my family.’ Broadcasting in clear, firm tones – and without a trace of the impediment that had so clouded her father’s life – the Queen paid tribute to those still serving in the armed forces abroad and thanked her subjects for the ‘loyalty and affection’ they had shown her since her accession to the throne ten months earlier. ‘My father and my grandfather before him, worked hard all their lives to unite our peoples ever more closely, and to maintain its [the Commonwealth’s] ideals which were so near to their hearts,’ she said. ‘I shall strive to carry on their work.’