A Brief History of the House of Windsor

by Michael Paterson

  Buckingham Palace, extremely obvious from the air in its set-piece location facing down the Mall, was targeted by the Luftwaffe. Bombs destroyed the chapel and the swimming pool. On another raid, a bomb failed to explode but detonated the following day, destroying the room in which the king had been working only minutes earlier. Windsor Castle was similarly conspicuous, and over a hundred bombs – both the conventional sort and the remote-control ‘doodlebugs’ fired from across the Channel during 1944 – landed in its surrounding park. Such was the risk of destruction that the queen commissioned the artist John Piper to make extensive drawings of the Castle, to preserve a record of it.

  In the war, as at no other time in recent history, the royal family proved their worth as a national (and indeed international) symbol. While the prime minister was the one who actually inspired the country and galvanized its efforts, the monarchy provided an example of quiet, steady decency that contrasted with the barbarity of the enemy leadership. They were a reminder of old certainties, of a better, pre-war world and – through their children – a better future. The welcome they received when they visited towns and cities was eloquent testimony to this. The king also visited the theatres of war in North Africa, Italy and north-west Europe. He landed in Normandy only ten days after D-Day. Though he could not share the dangers faced by his soldiers, he made efforts to see at first hand the places in which they had recently fought. Because he was accompanied on these trips by a film crew, he was obliged to wear thick theatrical make-up for close shots. Soldiers idling by roadsides who saw him pass were bewildered – and horrified – to see the monarch made up like a pantomime dame.

  An unlooked-for and tragic circumstance increased the family’s popularity still further. The Duke of Kent, the king’s youngest brother, was serving in the Royal Air Force. In August 1942 he was aboard a Sunderland flying boat that was travelling to Iceland, where he would inspect bases. In dense fog, it crashed into a Scottish mountainside. It had been two hundred years since royalty had taken part in battles, and therefore fatalities among them were, in recent history, unheard of. Somehow the death of this handsome young man created a bond between the royal family and the people. They too were subject to the random fortunes of war.

  The most enduring image of royalty during wartime is that of the family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on VE Day, 9 May 1945. The huge crowd that was celebrating the news of Germany’s defeat converged, by instinct (there was no prior arrangement that the family would appear, and it was not clear that they were even in residence), at the end of the Mall. The war was not, of course, over. Japan remained to be invaded – an operation that would, it was thought, cost up to a million Allied lives – but the end of fighting in Europe was nevertheless a moment of national catharsis. Churchill appeared with the royal family. The two leaders, one ceremonial and one political and military, represented the strength of the British constitutional system. The prime minister did not know it yet but he was about to be swept from office by an electorate that wanted radical change from the attitudes and institutions of the past – one which he personified in the post-war era. The empire was about to be dismantled, major industries would be nationalized, education was already being reformed to make it more democratic, and the National Health Service – a utopian concept that would be envied by other countries – was on its way. At no time, however, did these changes threaten the Crown. Even though for a short time the Left in Britain had the chance to put some of their dreams into practice (they considered a Soviet-style medal for productivity by workers, but found that men and women would rather receive monetary rewards), no one thought it possible, or politically advisable, to suggest abolishing the monarchy.

  In the new socialist government, George’s Foreign Secretary was to be Ernest Bevin, a trade-union veteran and left-winger. They developed a warm and genuine friendship, but this was not the first time that the king had charmed a member of the Labour movement. Both he and his father had been genuinely interested to meet men who had risen from backgrounds so different from their own. Knowing how intimidating the surroundings of the Palace could seem, they went out of their way to put them at ease. For the politicians it came as a surprise to find at the apex of a despised social order men of such modesty and humour. Once both sides had adjusted their expectations there was genuine mutual regard. The daughter of George VI was to have an equally notable success in winning over Harold Wilson.

  The king would reign for a further six and a half years, but the remainder of his life was to be a time of drabness and decline. Despite a few bright moments (in 1947 his daughter Elizabeth was married, and the following year London hosted the Olympic Games), the tone of these years was one of grey austerity and overall poverty. Rationing of some commodities continued until after his death, so that when Elizabeth married she had to be allocated additional clothing coupons for her dress, and food rations had to be arranged for all the foreign royals who were to stay at the Palace. India, which not for nothing was known as the ‘jewel in the crown’ of the British Empire, became independent in August 1947, a year earlier than had been envisaged by the government.

  To anyone who had grown up in the reign of Victoria and her successors this loss would have seemed immense, though the departure of the sub-continent was not unexpected. India had been increasingly difficult to govern since the end of the previous war. It was too big, and now too politically aware, willingly to remain a vassal of another nation, and because of the war the whole climate of international feeling was in favour of self-determination for Europe’s colonies. The Holocaust had produced an outpouring of sympathy for subjugated peoples, and the victories of the Japanese over the British, Americans and Dutch in the Pacific had shown that Westerners were not invulnerable. Now the two superpowers, the United States and Russia, were both opposed to colonialism, and in any case the colonial masters were impoverished by the war. In Gandhi’s famous words to a British official: ‘It is time you left.’

  This was the feeling throughout much of Asia and Africa in the post-war decade, and as one territory after another gained independence the momentum, and the clamour, picked up. Churchill, in another famous phrase, had said that he ‘did not become prime minister to preside over the dismemberment of the British Empire’, but that appeared to be precisely what George VI would have to do. The king, perhaps having learned greater wisdom after mistakenly siding with Chamberlain, made a point of not showing any regret at the loss of India, since the issue was a political one in Britain.

  In fact he was deeply attached to his overseas territories, and resented enormously the new Labour administration’s willingness to get rid of them. ‘What bits of my empire have you given away today?’ he irritably asked one of them, Lord Stansgate, when it became plain Britain’s new government could not afford both to keep the empire and to pay for the National Health Service that was one of their key objectives. Trivial though it may seem, George hated losing the title of emperor and the practice of signing himself ‘GRI’ (George Rex Imperator), for from now on he would merely be ‘GR’. His mother shared this sentiment in full, cherishing the last missives he wrote her with his imperial title on the letterhead. She also added Louis Mountbatten (who as the last Viceroy had been the one to grant independence to India, and who had carried out the process with surprising speed) to the list of those she would never forgive.

  One especially painful severance was very close to home. The Irish Free State had for decades held Dominion status and had distanced itself, consistently and deliberately, from the United Kingdom. It had remained neutral during the war, and without having undergone that experience was separated by something of a gulf from the rest of the Commonwealth. In 1949 the Eire government completed the process of establishing a Republic, with a president at its head instead of a Governor-General acting – however nominally – on behalf of the Crown. Indeed they had abolished the position of Governor-General even before the war. The drift to separation was unstoppable, and Ireland was to relinqu
ish its membership.

  With Ireland there had, of course, been a violent, sometimes horrific, past. The country’s War of Independence had indeed been a war, albeit a guerilla one. Though fighting had been bitter, most of the separation of Ireland from Britain was to be a matter of legislation carried out by Eire’s parliament, yet there was considerable regret on the mainland that a country whose history was so bound up with Britain’s, and whose common interests ought to have made for friendship, should so completely have left the fold.

  Though the king was in no sense involved in the politics of this matter, he asked John Dulanty, the Irish High Commissioner (who was about to lose this status), ‘Must you leave the family?’ The king and queen were both genuinely fond of Ireland, and had had hopes of visiting the country. When the moment came to part, the British government drafted a message for the king to deliver, but he amended it to express his own thoughts more clearly. It read in part: ‘I send you my good wishes on this day, being well aware of the neighbourly links which hold the people of the Republic of Ireland in close association with my subjects in the United Kingdom. I hold in most grateful memory the services and sacrifices of the men and women of your country who rendered gallant assistance to our cause in the recent war, and who made a notable contribution to our victory. I pray that every blessing may be with you today and in the future.’

  To modern ears this may sound like a mere exercise in bland officialese, but many in the Republic were deeply touched by this personal message of farewell. Seven hundred years of resistance to what nationalists portrayed as draconian, repressive foreign occupation had ended with a friendly greeting from a pleasant, quiet and well-meaning man who was known to love their country, and who genuinely wished them well for the future. This was not how they had expected the struggle for independence to reach fulfilment. Sean T. O’Kelly, one of the most committed supporters of the Republic, was so impressed by the message that he wrote that: ‘It was a most generous and imaginative act on the part of the king and its sensitive and moving terms had been deeply valued. When the English did a thing,’ he concluded, ‘they did it sensitively and well.’

  The real dismantling would not come, however, until the reign of the king’s daughter. For the moment India, Ceylon and Burma departed, while the African nations remained for a further generation. While the king lost the title of emperor of India (in a touching gesture, he awarded both his daughters the Order of the Indian Empire just before it was abolished), he became the first Head of the Commonwealth. Though Burma refused to join this organization, George remained nominal head of state for many millions of those whom he had formerly ruled as subjects. It was a smooth transition from outright colonial rule to something the modern world found – and still finds – more palatable. No other colonial power had so high a success rate in turning vassals into partners and then colleagues. The Dutch were to fight a bloody and unsuccessful war in the forties to retain their East Indies territories. The French would suffer a similar fate in Indochina and Algeria in the fifties, the Belgians would lose the Congo in the sixties, and the Portuguese Empire would descend into chaos in the seventies. Though Britain’s decolonization, in Palestine, Kenya, Cyprus, Aden and Ireland, would by no means be without bloodshed and horror, it was at least without the virtual civil war at home that plagued other powers.

  One thing that member countries were supposed to have in common was an expressed loyalty to the British Crown. India became a Republic, yet wanted to remain within the organization. After considerable discussion it was agreed that the rules could be bent to allow it to do so, and this opened the way for other countries to belong while retaining their preferred form of government. This flexibility meant that more nations were happy – indeed eager – to join, and made the Commonwealth stronger.

  The king presided over the beginnings of this decolonization with apparent equanimity, but then it was not obvious at first what a landslide it was to become. In his reign Kenya was still recruiting white settlers with the promise of lifelong access to fertile farmland, and young men were joining the Colonial Service expecting to make a career in overseas administration. King George, his wife and daughters made an official visit to South Africa – the first of what were expected to be several such tours of British territories – to thank the country for its help during the war. Here too they were immensely popular. The king’s modesty, as well as the queen’s gift for engaging with those she met (she famously charmed a Boer whose hatred of Britain was undiminished almost fifty years after the South African War by saying: ‘I know just how you feel. In Scotland that is how we regard the English!’), made the tour a triumph. The two princesses were now young adults – Elizabeth was to celebrate her twenty-first birthday while in the country – and they too won many hearts. Perhaps the most appreciated gesture by the family during this visit was the return – by the king to General Smuts – of the Bible owned by President Kruger, which British troops had captured during the Boer War.

  The king, however, was unwell, and this was to be the last overseas tour he would make. The war had been a serious strain on his health, and complications caused by his heavy smoking began to tax what vitality remained to him. He continued to fulfil royal duties – the notion of soldiering on regardless of ill health is something bred into the royal family through generations – but he found it increasingly tiring. At that time the family was so much smaller than it later became that there was not the same opportunity to delegate. Apart from Queen Mary, who was more or less in retirement, there were only the king and queen and the two princesses, who had to cover all official business between them. Princess Elizabeth added another member by marrying Philip Mountbatten, but he was a career naval officer who had neither the time nor, so far, the experience to take on much of the workload. When he was posted to Malta in 1949 the king encouraged Elizabeth to go with him, despite the fact that the couple by now had one child and were soon to have another. Their departure meant that Prince Charles, between the ages of one and four, lived with his grandparents. He would always be grateful for the opportunity this gave to acquire at least some memories of King George.

  George’s health declined so fast in the years after the war that even by 1949 – two years after the South African visit – he was visibly ailing. He appeared at Trooping the Colour that year in a carriage because he was unable to ride, but then he had had a major operation only three months earlier and the amputation of his right leg had only just been avoided. He was found to have Buerger’s Disease, which attacks the arteries, as well as having bronchial carcinoma. His health had been undermined by the strain of the war, and his lifelong habit of heavy smoking had of course not helped. He had to have an operation in September 1951 that removed one of his lungs, and his recovery was slow.

  Princess Elizabeth was obliged to return several times to Britain to deputize for her father, and in 1951 she and Philip had to undertake an entire official visit for him, spending a month in Canada. The following year they were asked to undergo another tour. On this occasion it was to be a lengthier and more exhausting itinerary that would take in East Africa, Ceylon, Australia and New Zealand. The princess and her husband were to depart by air, and her family went to see them off. Newspaper images showed King George standing on the runway, hunched against the wintry chill, bare-headed and haggard. He looked a decade or more older than his fifty-six years. Nevertheless his family believed his health was improving, and there seemed no reason to think he would not be on the same tarmac to meet his daughter on her return in six months’ time. ‘Look out for yourselves,’ he said on parting.

  That was on 31 January 1952. Just days later the princess and her husband were in Kenya, staying in a tree-house on a game reserve. The royal family was at Sandringham, where this was the last day of shooting. The king went out with the gamekeepers to clear up what birds were left, and much enjoyed himself. He dined with the queen and Princess Margaret, and once again his spirits were high. He retired to bed and, sometime in the ni
ght of 5–6 February, he died.

  His health and appearance had been so bad that his death was not the shock to the public that it might have been, but his family were naturally grief-stricken. The most immediate problem was to find and inform the new sovereign, who was somewhere in the African bush. The code for George’s death – ‘Hyde Park Corner’ – was sent but not received, perhaps because the telegraph operator mistook it for the address. It was hours before Elizabeth discovered that she was now queen. A journalist contacted her Private Secretary, who told her husband, who broke the news. The king had died of thrombosis.

  George VI lay in state in the church at Sandringham, guarded by tweed-suited gamekeepers – the very men who had spent with him his last day alive. His body was then conveyed by train to London. Crowds stood by the trackside to watch it pass, the men doffing their hats. After lying in state once again, in Westminster Hall, he was buried in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in an attractive little side-chapel. His wife, who was to have a longer and more remarkable career as a dowager than she had had as a consort, would join him there just over half a century later.

  5

  ELIZABETH II, 1952–PRESENT

  ‘Voluntary change is the life-blood of the Crown.’

  Prince Philip

  Queen Elizabeth II is within a few years of becoming the longest-reigning monarch in British history. The daughter of a long-lived mother (who was almost 102 when she died), she may well continue to rule for some time yet. Her presence has dominated almost the entire post-war era in Britain, so that to many of her subjects the notion of the country without Queen Elizabeth at its head is difficult to grasp.

  She came to the throne, suddenly and largely unexpectedly, in the late winter of 1952. She was twenty-five, the wife of a serving naval officer and the mother of two very young children. In the decades since then, British society has undergone massive changes, yet she has remained astonishingly consistent in outlook, tastes and habits throughout that time. She may seem like a gentle old lady, and she is, but the firmness of her views is legendary and there are within her qualities of self-discipline, determination and devotion to duty that match any of her predecessors’. Because she has been by far the longest-serving sovereign of the House of Windsor, it may well be her reign, and her personality, that will come to dominate its history.