HistoryExtra https://www.historyextra.com/people/george-v Sun, 21 Jun 2026 16:01:04 GMT en hourly 1 From acrimonious split to the ‘special relationship’: how the Fourth of July has been marked in Britain https://www.historyextra.com/membership/from-acrimonious-split-to-the-special-relationship-how-the-fourth-of-july-has-been-marked-in-britain/ Sun, 21 Jun 2026 16:00:40 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/from-acrimonious-split-to-the-special-relationship-how-the-fourth-of-july-has-been-marked-in-britain/ The independence of the US from Britain seems an unlikely moment to commemorate on this side of the Atlantic. But, as Sam Edwards explains, strong ties between imperial motherland and erstwhile colonies have long inspired celebrations in the UK In a quiet corner of rural Lancashire sits the small village of Warton. Medieval in origin, it’s not far from the infamous sands of Morecambe Bay, and a rocky limestone crag looms to the north-west. Just off the main street stand the ruins of a c14th-century rectory; nearby – and of a similar vintage – is the parish church, dedicated to Saint Oswald. It is a picturesque spot, now largely cast adrift from the tides of history. But it was not always so.
In fact, like a handful of other locations in England, it proudly claims a connection to a figure of immense historical significance: George Washington. The first US president’s ancestors once owned land here. There’s still a Washington House in the village, and the local pub – next to St Oswald’s Church – is named for the great man.
With such connections, it’s no surprise that the people of Warton have often revelled in celebrating their links to the US. This was never more apparent than in July 1976 – the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence.
Celebrating US independence... in Lancashire
In the US, the bicentennial was a huge occasion marked by numerous celebrations across the country. Some of them were even attended by Queen Elizabeth II, at the personal invitation of President Gerald Ford.
The Queen embraced the opportunity to reflect on the historical ties between the US and the UK. In fact, during a speech in Philadelphia, she went so far as to say that the Fourth of July “should be celebrated as much in Britain as in America”. She would surely have been delighted to learn what the good folk of Warton were doing at that very moment.
By July 1976, Warton was no stranger to celebrating American independence. Back in 1932, for example, during another bicentennial – of George Washington’s birth – the village was the focal point for a special Fourth of July pilgrimage. A large group of expatriate Americans from across northern England came to lay wreaths at the two Washington graves at St Oswald’s – the very last members of the family to be buried at Warton: Elizabeth died in 1751, Thomas in 1823.
This significant occasion no doubt offered a useful precedent for those in the village preparing for the July 1976 events. As it turned out, though, Warton’s plans for the independence bicentennial were on a different scale entirely.
The celebration, developed over several months, featured a 10-day programme involving children’s sporting competitions, a transatlantic radio broadcast, a carefully choreographed procession, and various theatrical and musical performances, including one from a visiting American choir. At its centre was a Fourth of July ceremony in St Oswald’s church led by the Bishop of Blackburn – an event so well attended that it was standing room only for many of those present.
By all accounts, it seems to have been a roaring success – “Warton’s Week of Glory”, as one local paper described the celebrations. It was certainly good for local businesses: the landlord of the Black Bull pub – renamed the George Washington only in the 1990s – was delighted to discover that he had sold four times as much beer and lager as usual.
Baseball, flags and parties
The events in Warton in July 1976 were, admittedly, rather unusual. But they were not entirely without precedent or parallel. In fact, groups of Britons had been commemorating 4 July across the 20th century, certainly since the First World War.
During the Revolution, when news of the Declaration of Independence first broke in Britain, the London press was largely hostile. The now-famous lines authored by Thomas Jefferson were seen in many quarters as a dressed-up attempt to justify treason.
Sentiment softened in the decades following American victory, which was formalised in 1783. By the time the US entered the First World War, in April 1917, feelings in Britain had changed significantly. The intervening years had witnessed a ‘great rapprochement’, with many influential figures in Anglo-American government, business and culture very keen to look beyond the disagreements of distant history and celebrate instead the ‘ties that bind’.
America’s decision to fight alongside the Allies, including Britain, offered a perfect opportunity to further consolidate what had become an increasingly close transatlantic relationship. After all, the two countries had now embarked together on a noble endeavour: to make the world safe for democracy, in the famous words of US President Woodrow Wilson.
By July 1918, thousands of US troops were passing through Britain on their way to the front in France. The stars were aligned for something significant: the first formal and widespread celebration of 4 July in Britain. As ever, the capital led the way.
In Westminster, the Stars and Stripes and the Union Flag were flown together above government buildings. Watching from below as the breeze picked up, one reporter wrote that the two flags appeared “hopelessly entangled” in “a serious love affair”.
At Stamford Bridge, home ground of Chelsea Football Club, an exhibition baseball game was played between teams from the US Army and US Navy, with thousands of Britons in attendance – including King George V and Queen Mary. And at various other locations across the country, especially in those communities hosting US troops, there were parties and locally organised civic celebrations.
Other members of the great and good got in on the act. In a special speech delivered to mark 4 July, Winston Churchill told a gathering of Americans that he and his countrymen were now “glad to know that an English colony declared itself independent under a German king”. (George III, the monarch who ‘lost’ the American colonies was, of course, from the Hanoverian dynasty.)
Conflict resolution
Similar events were staged during the Second World War, with the presence in the country of hundreds of thousands of US troops once again encouraging the authorities to celebrate 4 July.
On 4 July 1942 – the first anniversary of independence following American entry into the war – the Royal Air Force and US Army Air Force teamed up in a joint bombing operation against German airfields in the Netherlands. From across the Atlantic came a very welcome editorial from the New York Times calling on Americans to use Independence Day to “reaffirm our faith in British courage, British endurance, British honor”.
Just as in 1918, there was also activity in various British communities. At Sulgrave in Northamptonshire – another location with an ancestral connection to George Washington – a group of American soldiers were welcomed to the manor house built in the 16th century by the first president’s ancestors.
- Read more | How did the American Revolution begin?
Up in Warton, meanwhile, locally based US troops attended an Independence Day service in St Oswald’s. On leaving, they gifted to the villagers a US flag which was flown from the church tower every 4 July for many years afterwards.
In July 1943, reflecting on how the Anglo-American relationship had gone from the violent break-up of 1776 to the burgeoning ‘special relationship’ of the Second World War, one British reporter happily claimed 4 July as “part and parcel of our common heritage”.
As the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaches, it’s worth noting that the events of 1776 no longer trigger the negative response they once did in Britain. On the contrary: for many decades now, 4 July has sparked recurrent (and often enthusiastic) British interest, especially in those communities – like Warton – that revel in their links to the people and places of the 13 colonies that formed the nascent United States.
]]> 16 of the worst monarchs in history https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/9-of-the-worst-monarchs-in-history/ Fri, 17 Apr 2026 11:12:27 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/9-of-the-worst-monarchs-in-history/ From the morally bankrupt to the staggeringly inept, Jonny Wilkes guides us through the lives of 16 rulers who wrote their names into the history books for all the wrong reasons The past has no shortage of disastrous kings, queens, and other rulers; such a list could easily have been filled with the worst Roman emperors alone. Some have been homicidal, like Nero or Genghis Khan; simply incompetent, like Edward II; completely untrustworthy, like Charles I; or amiable but inadequate, like Louis XVI of France.
But who are truly the worst, and why? Jonny Wilkes makes the case against 16 rulers from history…
1. Lucius Tarquinius Superbus
King of Rome, 534–509 BC
Before Rome had emperors, it had a line of kings going back to the city’s mythical founder, Romulus. The last, however, presided over a reign of terror so bad that the people gave up on the monarchy altogether, heralding the dawn of the Republic.
Lucius Tarquinius Superbus (commonly known as ‘Tarquin the Proud’) had seized the throne by planning the assassination of his own father-in-law, then once in power he killed senators on a whim and imprisoned or executed anyone suspected of disloyalty.
His undoing came when his son raped a noblewoman, which caused such outrage that a revolt broke out that saw the tyrannical king overthrown and exiled. In his doomed attempts to regain the throne, he persuaded neighbouring cities to attack Rome, seemingly unfazed by the damage this would do to his erstwhile kingdom.
2. Commodus
Roman emperor, 177–92 AD
There are a number of contenders to the title of ‘most despicable emperor of Rome’, so we could just as easily be discussing the cruel and murderous rules of, say, Nero and Caligula.
The bloodthirsty, vainglorious spendthrift, Commodus, however, went from inheriting an empire enjoying a long period of peace and prosperity, the Pax Romana, to leaving it broke and in turmoil. If not executing anyone he suspected of plotting against him, he was leaving the job of ruling the empire to a series of corrupt, cruel and incompetent favourites. He much preferred to fight as a gladiator, relishing in slaughtering a menagerie of animals in the arena.
No wonder, then, that Commodus was chosen as the villain in Ridley Scott’s swords-and-sandals masterpiece, Gladiator.
3. John
King of England, 1199–1216
Seriously, how could the arch-villain of Robin Hood not make an appearance? Beyond the tale of the fabled outlaw, John severely damaged the authority of the English monarchy. As a prince, he angered the nobles of Ireland and attempted to steal his brother Richard I’s crown, only ending up as king after Richard died without a legitimate heir. Notably, he also managed to outmanoeuvre a rival claim from his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, whom he is later believed to have had murdered.
Within a few years in power, John had lost Normandy – the foundation of his family’s Angevin empire on the continent – then he emptied the kingdom’s coffers trying to win it back. His oppressively high taxes, his clashes with the church and his cruel and conniving personality all led to a revolt of England’s barons.
Under threat of civil war, John was forced to seal Magna Carta, a historic document that limited royal power. He then proceeded to ignore it. The barons rose up again and John’s reign ended, dying of dysentery, as he fought to keep hold of his kingdom.
4. Wanyan Chenglin
Emperor of the Jin dynasty, 1234
On 9 February 1234, with the warriors of the Mongol empire besieging the city of Caizhou, the emperor of the Jin dynasty in China, Aizong, knew that his 10-year reign would be over shortly. That said, he did not want to be the last in his line, so he abdicated and passed the throne to his general, Wanyan Chenglin, before taking his own life.
The reluctant new emperor began a reign that would be doomed to last just a matter of hours. He was killed leading his soldiers in a last stand when the Mongols broke through the city walls.
5. Charles the Bad
King of Navarre, 1349–87
The name gives away why he belongs on this list, doesn’t it? Charles earned ‘the Bad’ for his duplicitous and treacherous behaviour in the Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Although King of Navarre in Spain, he owned a lot of land in northern France, which put him in the middle of the conflict, and his response was to keep flipping sides.
Driven solely by ambition, he believed he should be on the French throne, and he plotted and murdered to get it. All the while, Navarre went ignored. What made him truly bad, though, was that his schemes failed utterly. Charles is perhaps best-known today for his grisly end in 1387, when the brandy-soaked sheets he had been wrapped in to cure an illness accidentally caught fire, burning him alive.
6. Henry VI
King of England, 1422–61, 1470–71
Ascending the throne of England as an infant and the son of the hero of Agincourt, the young Henry VI was always going to struggle to live up to his dynastic legacy.
Not helped by his total lack of leadership, it went even worse than feared: he lost control of France (won by his father Henry V), suffered a mental breakdown, and saw his kingdom plunge into the Wars of the Roses. The Lancastrian cause would be headed not by the king, but his queen, Margaret.
Henry’s role amounted to being kicked off the throne by the Yorkist Edward IV, then placed back on it by the ‘kingmaker’, the Earl of Warwick, and finally losing it again after being captured.
7. Christian II
King of Denmark and Norway, 1513–23
Christian’s reign may seem more insignificant than terrible at first glance, but it signalled the end of the Kalmar Union, which had bound together the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden for well over a century. Having been crowned in the first two of those countries in 1513, he set out to secure the third.
It would not be until 1520 that he captured Stockholm, although, hardly magnanimous in victory, his immediate action was to execute 82 nobles. The so-called Stockholm Bloodbath fuelled a Swedish rebellion against Christian and weakened his authority back in Denmark and Norway.
He was overthrown and exiled, and then when he launched a desperate bid to win back his thrones by force, he was imprisoned for the rest of his life.
8. Ivan the Terrible
Tsar of Russia, 1547–84
As the first tsar, Ivan was in some ways an able ruler since he laid the foundations of the Russian empire. He became known as ‘the Terrible’ for a reason, though. Having hated the nobles from an early age (at 13, he had one fed to a pack of dogs), he wasted no time in purging the upper classes.
The domain he inherited clearly was not enough: he instigated numerous, and disastrous, wars of expansion, and even established his own fiefdom within his land where, essentially, anything went. With Ivan prone to paranoia and fits of rage, no one was safe: he ordered a full-on attack on one of his own cities, Novgorod, and beat his daughter-in-law into having a miscarriage, then murdered his son.
9. Rudolf II
Holy Roman Emperor, 1576–1612
Despite being hailed as a generous patron of the arts and sciences, Habsburg emperor Rudolf II utterly failed in his role as the leader of one of Europe’s major powers. Rather than focusing on politics and administration, he instead shut himself away to focus on personal pursuits like alchemy.
When he did show some determination – starting a war with the Ottoman empire to unify Christendom – it proved a disaster. His subjects in Hungary revolted and his family made him hand over power to his younger brother.
Rudolf’s most damning legacy, however, was that his miserable tenure as emperor has been blamed as one of the causes of the Thirty Years’ War, one of the bloodiest conflicts in history.
- Read more | What was the Habsburg jaw?
10. Louis XV
King of France, 1715–74
It could certainly be argued that Louis XV’s status as a poor king of France was overshadowed by his successor, Louis XVI, since he was the one who lost his head in the French Revolution. Yet Louis XV’s reign sowed the seeds of the people’s discontent that would lead to such a violent rejection of the monarchy. In short, he was a deeply ineffectual ruler, let alone the all-powerful absolutist king that France had become accustomed to under Louis XIV.
Reports of corruption and handing over influence to his mistresses hurt the crown’s authority, while his wars and extravagant spending depleted the coffers. France became a less powerful nation under his rule, and smaller too: he gave up New France in the Americas after the disastrous Seven Years’ War.
11. Ferdinand VII
King of Spain, 1808, 1813–33
Shortly after taking the throne in 1808, Ferdinand handed over his kingdom – and himself – to Napoleon Bonaparte. Six years of captivity in France later, he returned with a need to prove his absolutist credentials and so ditched Spain’s liberal constitution that had been written in his absence. This led to multiple uprisings, notably the revolt of 1820, which ushered in three years during which the king was forced to accept a constitutional regime.
While more selfish than monstrous, Ferdinand’s legacy and place on this list were confirmed by two things: he oversaw the loss of nearly all of Spain’s colonial territories in the Americas and, following his death, his petty bid to exclude his brother from the succession resulted in a long civil war.
12. Ranavalona I
Queen of Imerina, 1828–61
To try and hold back the wave of European colonisation in Africa, Queen Ranavalona I, of modern-day Madagascar, would go to any lengths. She wanted to purge all foreign influence, expelling missionaries, persecuting Christians and restricting trade. She even tried to have a giant pair of scissors made so that she could literally chop foreigners in half.
The ones who suffered the most, however, were her people: to preserve her land’s self-sufficiency and way of life, as she saw it, Ranavalona used forced labour for her royal projects and fear to maintain order.
Many executions took the form of the tangena ordeal, a witch-hunt-style trial where the accused was made to ingest poison and if they showed any adverse effects, they were deemed guilty. It is claimed that as much as 50 per cent of the population perished during her rule.
13. Leopold II
King of the Belgians, 1865–1909
Leopold II may not have been a terrible king in Belgium itself, but with the Congo Free State, he revealed just how much of a monster he could be. In 1885, he created his own state in central Africa, having convinced European powers that he intended to improve the lives of the people living there.
In reality, this privately owned kingdom allowed Leopold to exploit the Congolese people so that he could make money from its ivory and natural rubber reserves. Under his system of forced labour, any workers who failed to meet their quotas would be punished with mutilation. Leopold’s preferred method was chopping off hands and feet. Millions died from the brutality and rampant diseases.
This was an age where European empires carved up and exploited the African continent, so the fact that international outrage finally forced Leopold to hand over the Congo Free State illustrates the appalling extent of the atrocities.
14. Khalid ibn Barghash
Sultan of Zanzibar, 1896
Not only did Khalid ibn Barghash rule for just three days, but he was ousted in the shortest war in history. So, in truth, there is no knowing whether he would have been a bad ruler: there wasn’t enough time. In 1896, the sultan of Zanzibar died, which put the British in a tough position. They controlled the islands off the east African coast as it served as a strategic trade post for the Indian Ocean.
Against British wishes, Khalid, who may well have killed his predecessor, assumed the role of sultan and fortified the palace with around 3,000 supporters. The British sent warships, though, and initiated a brief bombardment. The Anglo-Zanzibar War lasted around 38 minutes, and Khalid fled into exile.
15. Nicholas II
Tsar of Russia, 1894–1917
The Romanov dynasty ruled Russia for more than 300 years – and it all ended during the reign of Nicholas II. Not suited to wielding autocratic power over a huge empire, he made a catalogue of errors and refused to adapt beyond his rigid belief that he had the divinely ordained right to rule.
In 1905 alone, Russia lost a war with Japan and broke out in revolution, yet Nicholas only made cursory changes and tried to move on. His court became dominated by the strange and ambitious mystic, Rasputin, his nobles and politicians abandoned him, and his decision to take command of the armies in the First World War meant that he was held personally responsible for every defeat and death.
Revolution erupted again in 1917, forcing his abdication. While imprisoned by the revolutionaries, Nicholas and his entire family were murdered. It was a bloody and definitive end to the tsars, as Russia became a communist regime.
16. Edward VIII
King of England, 1936
Edward became king on 20 January 1936, on the death of his father George V. Before the year was out, he had abdicated in disgrace. His brief reign had entirely been focused on his wish to marry an American named Wallis Simpson, but she had been divorced once and was seeking a second, making her wholly unacceptable to the royal family, the political establishment and the church.
Yet his reputation as a bad monarch could have been even worse had he stayed: Edward has long been accused of being a Nazi sympathiser, who toured Hitler’s Germany almost two years before the Second World War.
]]> The death of King George V – and why his doctor hastened his demise https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/death-of-king-george-v/ Mon, 20 Jan 2025 17:35:02 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/death-of-king-george-v/ The man who guided Britain through World War I was followed by a prince bent on abandoning convention After a short illness, George V died on 20 January 1936. The following day, British Pathé described him as “more than a King, a father of a great family”. George had steered the country through the horrors of First World War; by the end of his reign, Europe was a very different place.
Born in 1865, during the reign of Queen Victoria, George wasn’t expected to be King as he had an elder brother, Albert Victor. But his brother died of pneumonia in 1892, and so when his father – Edward VII – passed away in 1910, it was the second son who rose to the throne.
History would repeat itself years later when George’s second son Albert, later George VI, reluctantly succeeded to the throne. This time, it wasn’t a death that thrust responsibility on him – it was his brother Edward’s scandalous abdication.
George V inherited the throne at a politically turbulent time; his reign would be marked by the Indian independence, women’s suffrage and Irish republicanism movements, and fascism and communism began to rise. There was change amongst royalty, too. Before the First World War, the majority of Europe was ruled by George’s relatives. By the time of his death, Austria, Germany, Greece, Spain and Russia had all seen revolutions, and the British royal family’s name had been changed from the distinctly German Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the English-sounding Windsor.
Why was George V's death controversial?
George's death was embroiled in controversy – but not until in 1986. That was the year that the diaries of his physician, Lord Dawson, came to light.
These diaries revealed that the good doctor had hastened the dying King's demise. To preserve George's dignity (and to ensure that he died in time for the morning edition of The Times) Dawson had administered a lethal injection.
More than 800,000 people visited George V’s body while it lay in state. During his funeral procession, part of the Imperial State Crown fell into the gutter. Edward VIII saw this as an bad omen for his new reign. George V had expressed concerns for his son: “After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in 12 months”.
Edward VIII would abdicate within the year; his brother, George VI, would emulate their father, guiding the country through the Second World War.
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]]> Britain's golden jubilees: from George III to Elizabeth II https://www.historyextra.com/membership/royal-jubilee-celebrations-history-britain-monarchs-who/ Mon, 30 May 2022 05:05:17 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/royal-jubilee-celebrations-history-britain-monarchs-who/ King George III pardoned prisoners of war, Queen Victoria dressed down to fit the public mood, and George V brought London to a near-religious standstill. As Queen Elizabeth II marks 70 years on the throne in 2022, Tracy Borman tells the story of three previous monarchs’ jubilee celebrations... This year Elizabeth II marks her platinum jubilee – the first time any monarch has completed 70 years on the throne in the history of the British crown. A raft of celebrations is planned across the UK, the Commonwealth and around the world: from street parties to a star-studded concert at Buckingham Palace, a new jubilee garden (“Superbloom”) in the Tower of London moat, and even a platinum pudding.
While the scale of the celebrations is likely to eclipse any other in the history of the British monarchy, Elizabeth II is by no means the first sovereign whose jubilee has inspired their subjects to pull out all the stops.
When did royal jubilees begin?
The history of official jubilee celebrations only goes back as far as George III (reigned 1760–1820). But the origin of jubilees can be traced to the Bible – the Old Testament uses the term to describe the marking of a 50-year milestone. Since then, the naming of these celebrations has followed the traditions of wedding anniversaries: 25 years is called a silver jubilee, 50 years a golden jubilee, 60 years a diamond jubilee, and 70 years a platinum jubilee.
- Read more | Elizabeth II: the queen who saved the royals
Only three other British monarchs before George III achieved a golden jubilee: Henry III (r1216–72), Edward III (r1327–77) and James VI & I (reigned in Scotland 1567–1625, and England 1603–25).
Although little is known about how they celebrated, the records hint at some similarities to the present day. Edward III was the earliest English ruler to mark his golden jubilee publicly. This began with a procession from the Tower of London accompanied by trumpeters, followed by a spectacular week-long joust at Smithfield.
Most monarchs might not have notched up a half century on the throne, but nearly all marked the anniversary of their accession each year – notably Elizabeth I, who held accession day tilts, theatre, poetry and costume parties. In fact, she made her accession day such a prominent part of the court calendar that it continued to be celebrated into the 18th century as a national holiday.
- Read more | Who is Britain’s greatest monarch?
Yet even Elizabeth’s accession day celebrations struggle to rival the splendid global pageantry of the jubilees of George III, Victoria (r1837–1901) and George V (r1910–36).
Here, we chart the highs and lows of their celebrations, from the thronging crowds who turned out to see them to personal battles with grief and mental instability...
George III: a last hurrah
In contrast to every other golden jubilee since, George III marked the beginning, not the end, of his 50th year on the throne. The “Grand National Jubilee”, as it was known, began on 25 October 1809 with festivities across the United Kingdom and the British colonies. The governor of India threw a fête in Bombay on 4 June, the king’s birthday, while in Britain the price of candles had begun to rise from as early as March that year as people planned for indoor jubilee parties.
Most of the events were scheduled around the anniversary itself, and shops were closed so that everyone could take part. They kicked off with balls in Basingstoke and Wokingham and, on 25 October, the king and queen, along with three of their children, attended a private service of thanksgiving at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Other festivities included a firework display at Frogmore, a 50-gun salute from the Tower of London and a service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral.
George III’s subjects entered fully into the spirit of things. A number of children born during jubilee year were christened “Jubilee George” or “Jubilee Charlotte” in honour of the royal couple; military deserters and prisoners of war were pardoned; and monuments were erected, such as a statue of George III in his favourite seaside resort, Weymouth. There was plenty of jubilee merchandise, too, including a series of jugs and medals.
- Read more | George III: why his reputation as the mad king who lost America needs to be re-evaluated
Sadly, because of his declining health, George III was unable to take part in most of the celebrations. From early in his reign, he had suffered from what he termed his “ulcer’d mind” – bouts of mental instability that became ever more serious and prolonged as the years passed.
On 25 October 1810, the king appeared in public for the last time at a reception to mark the end of his 50th year on the throne. It was obvious to all those present that the “madness” had returned. Early the following year parliament passed the Regency Act, conferring George III’s authority upon his eldest son and heir, who became prince regent and the future George IV.
Queen Victoria: out of mourning… into the modern age
The next monarch to reach the 50-year milestone was George III’s granddaughter Queen Victoria, who had ascended the throne in 1837, aged just 18.
It was with some difficulty that her ministers persuaded her to go through with the celebrations for her golden jubilee in 1887, because she had largely withdrawn from public life after the death of her husband, Prince Albert, in 1861. On the anniversary itself (20 June) the queen had breakfast outdoors under the trees at Frogmore, close to where Albert lay buried.
She then travelled by train from Windsor to London for a “large family dinner” at Buckingham Palace. “We dined in the supper room, which looked splendid with the buffet covered with the gold plate,” she recalled in her journal.
At the service of thanksgiving held at Westminster Abbey the following day, Victoria refused to wear her crown and robes of state, substituting them for a bonnet laced with diamonds and travelling in a simple landau coach. In so doing, she proved more in tune with the public mood than her ministers. At a time of economic hardship, the pageantry of a full-scale royal event would have caused widespread resentment. Vast crowds that “stretched to the limit of sight in both directions”, wrote the American writer Mark Twain, turned out to cheer the queen’s procession.
Ten years later, Victoria became the first monarch in British history to celebrate their diamond jubilee, which was made a Festival of Empire. Among the gifts that Victoria sent across the globe to commemorate the occasion was a white silk shawl to Harriet Tubman, a formerly enslaved African-American woman who had become an abolitionist. The significance of the colour was lost on neither woman: white was synonymous with freedom and power.
On 22 June 1897, the queen was driven in a six-mile procession through London, witnessed by huge crowds. Thanks to the wonders of what was then cutting-edge technology, it was also broadcast to cinema audiences across the world, with 40 camera operators stationed along the route. An open-air service was held outside St Paul’s so that the queen could take part from within her carriage rather than climb the steps to the cathedral.
Lame from rheumatism and using a wheelchair, her health was declining rapidly. But the adoration of the crowds left a deep impression on the queen, who wrote in her journal: “No one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given to me… The cheering was quite deafening & every face seemed to be filled with real joy. I was much moved and gratified.”
George V: turning the monarchy into a religion
There would not be another golden jubilee until Elizabeth II’s in 2002. The only other jubilee of any kind between the reigns of Victoria and Elizabeth was that of George V, who celebrated his silver jubilee in May 1935.
A willingness to respond to his people’s desires had made George a popular king. He had become the first British sovereign to record a Christmas broadcast, and he acted as a vital figurehead for the nation during the First World War. As a result, the silver jubilee celebrations prompted an outpouring of affection among his subjects.
- Read more | How George V won the war
The celebrations began on 6 May with a procession through London to St Paul’s Cathedral for a ceremony of thanksgiving. The king recorded his astonishment at: “The greatest number of people in the streets that I have ever seen in my life… The enthusiasm was indeed most touching.”
On another carriage ride that month, George was joined by his granddaughter, the future Elizabeth II. Meanwhile, Britons celebrated with garden parties, pageants and sports events, and every child born on jubilee day was given a commemorative silver cup. In a jubilee speech broadcast to the nation, the king gave thanks “from the depths of his heart to his dear people”.
Reflecting on the celebrations, prime minister Ramsay MacDonald observed: “We all went away feeling that we had taken part in something very much like a holy communion.” This marked an important moment in the evolution of the crown. As one commentator has since put it: “Monarchy was no longer simply in alliance with religion; it had become a religion.”
This article was first published in the June 2022 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> George V: not so dull after all https://www.historyextra.com/membership/george-v-not-dull-podcast-jane-ridley/ Tue, 16 Nov 2021 13:09:32 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/george-v-not-dull-podcast-jane-ridley/ Jane Ridley discusses the life and reign of George V, who steered the monarchy through a tumultuous era of British history Jane Ridley speaks to Ellie Cawthorne about the life and reign of George V. She reveals how the king, often unfairly dismissed as something of a dullard, in fact successfully steered the monarchy through a tumultuous era of British history.
Jane Ridley is the author of George V: Never a Dull Moment (Chatto & Windus, 2021)
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]]> How did the British royals survive WW1? https://www.historyextra.com/membership/how-british-royals-survive-ww1-podcast-heather-jones/ Mon, 27 Sep 2021 14:56:47 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/how-british-royals-survive-ww1-podcast-heather-jones/ Heather Jones discusses the role of the British royal family during the First World War While many European royals faced abdications and revolutions during the First World War, the British monarchy not only survived the conflict, but was strengthened by it. Historian Heather Jones discusses her new book, For King and Country, which explores the royal family’s role during the war.
- Read more on how George V won the war
Heather Jones is the author of For King and Country: The British Monarchy and the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2021)
]]> How George V won the war https://www.historyextra.com/membership/george-v-royal-family-first-world-war-ww1/ Mon, 27 Sep 2021 14:44:07 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/george-v-royal-family-first-world-war-ww1/ The First World War ushered many European monarchies to extinction. But not in Britain. Heather Jones reveals how – through canny PR and genuine compassion for the troops – the royal family emerged from the conflict stronger than ever Listen to this article:
“You can’t conceive what I suffered going round those hospitals in the war,” George V confided in a friend after the First World War. The great global conflict that erupted in 1914 is often described as one that was waged “for king and country”. Yet, today there is little public awareness of the crucial role the monarchy played during the conflagration. Even The Crown – Netflix’s wildly popular series about the royals’ trials and tribulations over the past century – described George V spending the conflict collecting stamps.
The reality is very different. The First World War represented a monumental test for both the monarch and the nation. It was fought on an unprecedented scale, requiring the full mobilisation of society. The royal family was integral to this process.
In 1914, the king embodied the British state and empire. He was the most important symbol of British identity. This is why, at the outbreak of the war, he was front and centre in a surge of patriotic recruitment material. Posters and speeches played on the nation’s romantic attachment to their king, encouraging men to do their duty to him and fight. In 1915, George personally backed an army recruitment drive via a direct Royal Appeal.
Duty also applied to the royal family itself. From the king down to the most minor of royals, the monarchy felt an immense obligation to support the war effort. At the outbreak of the conflict, George’s wife, Queen Mary, took charge of mobilising women in the UK to knit clothing for the troops; her Needlework Guild had 60,000 members in London alone. The Prince of Wales’ National Relief Fund was set up to provide aid to those suffering penury due to the conflict. By the end of 1914, Edward, Prince of Wales, was serving as a staff officer at the front, while Prince Albert, the king’s second son (and future George VI), was in the navy and would serve in the battle of Jutland.
For Christmas 1914, Princess Mary, the monarch’s only daughter, set up a fund to send a Princess Mary Gift Box to all serving soldiers and sailors. This was the first time that the war’s working-class troops, many of whom did not yet have the vote, had received any form of national recognition.
In the early stages of the war, the king ceased all royal entertaining and cut luxurious foods from royal menus, telling his chef that visitors “should be grateful for anything”. He then donated £100,000 of the money he’d saved to the Treasury. He famously gave up alcohol during the war, something the writer and soldier CE Montague noted made him popular with troops who saw it as an unexpected “act of willing comradeship with the dry throat on the march”. The women of the royal family – in particular Queen Mary – regularly served refreshments to soldiers in railway stations and to war workers in deprived districts.
- Listen | Heather Jones discusses the role of the British royal family during the First World War
A king in the crossfire
George believed he should inspect all troops heading overseas to fight in his name – so much so that soldiers soon realised that a royal review meant they were about to leave for the front. He felt an overwhelming duty of care for the troops and visited the front six times during the war, hoping to boost morale, check on soldiers’ well-being and show royal empathy for what they were enduring.
These visits were not without risk. Sir Charles Cust, the king’s equerry, noted that, on 26 October 1915, while the royal party was in the communication trenches, “the German batteries fired three shells over their heads”. On the same trip, the king suffered a life-threatening accident when his charger reared and fell upon him. He had to be transported home in a hospital train. On other occasions the Germans shelled locations just after he had left.
The most remarkable royal visit to the front occurred shortly after the start of the Ludendorff offensives in late March 1918, a massive German onslaught that aimed to force the Allies to sue for peace. With British forces in headlong retreat, the king travelled to France for a three-day visit that saw him visiting casualty clearing stations, and witnessing “very sad and dreadful sights” among the wounded.
While one soldier, Raynor Taylor, recalled war-weary troops refusing to cheer the king during this 1918 trip, this was unusual. Soldiers, for the most part, appreciated the monarch’s efforts. When, in the 1930s, schoolchildren were asked to explain the king’s popularity, many cited his visits to the frontline almost 20 years earlier.
Although he was only symbolically commander-in-chief, with no command role, the king liaised constantly with the generals and was quick to inform them of his opinions. He was crucial in Douglas Haig retaining his position as commander in the field after Haig had lost the confidence of Prime Minister David Lloyd George. The king witnessed the start of the battle of Amiens on 8 August 1918 and on that same day, during an artillery inspection, he ordered a heavy artillery gun to fire on Douai station, scoring a direct hit on a German troop train.
On the home front, the king and queen constantly visited war factories, shipyards and, most importantly, the war wounded in hospital. A wounded officer, Lieutenant DC Burn, recalled that he “had a long talk” with the king in his ward and “found his guttural voice and laugh very engaging”.
The king personally conferred 50,000 awards for gallantry during the war, in many cases to badly disabled men or to distressed next-of-kin. Sometimes war widows brought their small children up to receive their dead father’s medal. “If it wasn’t for you I should break down,” the king wrote to Queen Mary.
Honouring the wounded
The introduction of conscription in 1916 was accompanied by an emphasis on the burdens of the war being shared equitably. This new spirit of egalitarianism even extended to Buckingham Palace, which hosted a series of tea parties at which hundreds of war wounded of all ranks were treated as honoured guests, served by the royals themselves. (One newspaper noted that Prince Albert carried the teapot.) Ordinary people were encountering the monarchy in newly personal ways – and that only served to enhance the wartime popularity of the crown.
The royals constantly witnessed wartime death. Frederick Ponsonby, the keeper of the Privy Purse, described the king visiting a hospital near the front in 1915. “Some of the men there had been gassed and it was painful to watch them, blue in the face and gasping for breath. I found one was a German and regretted the pity I had wasted on him; but the king rebuked me and said that after all he was only a poor dying human being, in no way responsible for the German horrors.”
When working-class districts of east London were subjected to a major Gotha bombing raid on 13 June 1917, killing 162 people, George visited the bombed-out areas within hours. Queen Alexandra, the king’s mother, also visited in the evening to condole with the mothers of 18 children who died when their school at Poplar suffered a direct hit.
Pulses of unrest
While the British royal family handed out medals, visited the front and consoled the widows of fallen soldiers, their counterparts on the continent were facing a series of existential threats. From 1917, Europe was convulsed by a wave of revolutions, often virulently anti-monarchist in their aims.
The British royals weren’t entirely insulated from these pulses of unrest. The second half of the war saw a limited increase in anti-monarchism here, too – and, when the February Revolution toppled Russian tsar Nicholas II, elements in the leftwing press were quick to wonder aloud if this was a fate that awaited all European monarchies. Left-leaning politicians also voiced their concerns that, overwhelmed by the demands of a long war, the cabinet was increasingly passing legislation via the Privy Council rather than parliament, using the royal prerogative.
It was around this time that sustained press criticism of the British royal family’s continental connections first appeared, shining an unsympathetic light on the fact that George V was a cousin of Russia’s Nicholas II, the German kaiser Wilhelm II and unpopular pro-German Greek king, Constantine I. George V’s response to this new threat was ingenious – and ruthless. In 1917, he changed the name of his dynasty from the Germanic “Saxe-Coburg and Gotha” to “Windsor”, and he pressurised the government into rescinding its offer of asylum to the tsar, who was later murdered with his family by revolutionaries in July 1918.
This dual response may have been radical, but it worked. As 1917 progressed, press coverage become more favourable. Journalists increasingly noted the king’s support of the extension of suffrage in the UK, and his willingness to engage with ordinary workers. They hailed the British royal family’s exceptionalism from other European monarchies; it was different, they argued, because it was “democratic”. The widely popular name change to Windsor was cited as an example of this exceptionalism.
So, despite the rocky ride of 1917, anti-monarchism in Britain ultimately remained fragmented and marginalised. Even the leftwing Daily Herald was forced to concede that republicanism was not “of any importance comparable with the economic issue between capital and labour”.
In a bid to cement their popularity across the political spectrum, George and Mary reached out personally to wartime Labour figures. Returning from a visit to revolutionary Russia, radical Labour MP Will Thorne was immediately invited to visit the king. He was won over: “I had expected to meet a haughty, stand-offish man with a highly polished university twang; but I found him a very different person.”
In 1917, faced with widespread strikes in the north of England and Glasgow, the cabinet sent the king and queen to the striking areas to calm the situation. This does not suggest a monarchy in danger of being swept away by revolution.
Defeated and toppled
Victory in the war mattered. Defeated nations were far more likely to see their monarchies toppled. But how these monarchies handled the war was also significant. Aloofness to the suffering of the people often triggered anti-monarchism, which in turn drove revolution. It was no accident that the British, Belgian and Italian monarchies – who displayed compassion for the sufferings of troops and workers, and made a point of tightening their purse strings in the face of wartime austerity – all survived.
Kaiser Wilhelm, by contrast, rarely visited munitions factories or Germany’s wounded during the conflict – a fact that contributed to his overthrow in November 1918.
Just after the Armistice, the British monarchy was described in parliament as existing “by consent” of the people. This was an institution, it was claimed, whose raison d’etre was to serve its subjects – unlike those autocratic dynasties collapsing on the continent. This may have been a generous interpretation of the reality. Yet there was little doubt that King George V and Queen Mary’s wartime efforts to support ordinary people meant that this rhetoric of “service” was no idle phrase. Their determination to stay connected to the people had given Britain’s crown a fresh purpose as a new era dawned of mass democracy and of greater socio-economic and political freedoms.
So, instead of hastening the British monarchy to extinction, the First World War gave the royal family greater relevance and new roles – one of which was to become the key symbolic conduit for national and imperial war grief. The king sent letters of condolence to families of the fallen throughout the conflict, and was chief mourner at the burial of the unknown warrior in Westminster Abbey. By honouring the war dead in this way, the monarchy enhanced its own image and purpose.
- Read more: First World War: beyond the western front
But successfully overcoming the challenges of the First World War had taken a huge emotional toll on the royals. When, in the 1930s, international tensions rose once more, George V raged at David Lloyd George: “I will not have another war. I will not. The last war was none of my doing, & if there is another one & we are threatened with being brought in to it, I will go to Trafalgar Square and wave a red flag myself sooner than allow this country to be brought in.”
George V was haunted for the rest of his life by the horrors he had witnessed during the First World War. The royal family, he believed, must always serve the people devotedly to honour their terrible sacrifices. This ethos would inform the rest of his reign – and remains the conflict’s primary legacy to the modern monarchy.
Heather Jones is professor in modern and contemporary European history at University College London. Her book For King and Country: The British Monarchy and the First World War is published by Cambridge. She presented The Frontline Prince, a BBC Radio 4 documentary about the future Edward VIII’s experiences in the First World War
This article first appeared in the October 2021 issue of BBC History Magazine
]]> The last days of the Romanovs: could George V have saved the family? https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/the-last-days-of-the-romanovs/ Thu, 29 Apr 2021 07:03:00 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/the-last-days-of-the-romanovs/ King George V has long stood accused of withdrawing an offer of asylum to Tsar Nicholas II, and abandoning him to his dreadful fate 100 years ago. It’s an alluring theory, but does it stand up to scrutiny? Could the British really have saved the Romanovs? Helen Rappaport explores On the night of 16–17 July 1918, in the bare and dingy basement of a house in Ekaterinburg in the foothills of the Urals, the Bolsheviks brutally murdered the seven members of Russia’s last imperial family.
This ignominious end to the Romanovs, a dynasty that had ruled Russia for more than 300 years, was far from being a neat and expeditious execution. There was no trial, no due process of law, no chance of appeal, nor any mercy shown to the five innocent children of Russia’s former tsar and tsaritsa, Nicholas and Alexandra. Olga (22), Tatiana (21), Maria (19), Anastasia (17) and Alexey (13) were all brutally slaughtered with their parents in an act of revolutionary vengeance that is still chilling today.
What makes the murders all the more horrifying is the inefficiency of the squad of Bolshevik guards that carried them out. Nicholas died the quickest, but the rest of his family and the four servants who accompanied them to Ekaterinburg all died horribly. Professional marksmen would have completed their gruesome task in seconds but it took a 20-minute frenzy of shooting, screaming, acrid smoke and fumes, blood and gore before ferocious bayonetting finally finished off those victims still alive. Soon afterwards, the 11 corpses were flung into the back of a Fiat truck, taken to the Koptyaki Forest nine miles outside Ekaterinburg, and there dumped in a shallow, muddy grave.
From the moment the Romanovs were murdered, Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik government began spreading a web of disinformation about whether they had killed the entire family, especially the women. This prompted the rise of a whole mythology surrounding what really happened, as a result of which the true facts were increasingly obscured in a fog of conspiracy theories. People clung to the hope that somehow one or even all of the family might have miraculously survived the bloodbath. But the emergence of Anna Anderson – claiming to be the tsar and tsaritsa’s youngest daughter, Anastasia – in Berlin in 1920, served only to divert attention away from burning questions surrounding the circumstances of the murders and, more pointedly, the failure to get the family out of Russia to safety.
- Listen | Helen Rappaport explains why the last Russian tsar and his family met a violent end in 1918
Exploring those final 18 months – and what really went on behind the scenes of the failed initiatives to help the Romanovs – for a new book, it was shocking to see how so much of the supposed ‘evidence’ was based on hearsay, conjecture and even blatant misinterpretation of the facts. Most Romanov books have deferred to the same few, unchallenged sources without attempting a systematic analysis of what bona fide efforts there were to save the family.
Too often, people have stuck to the knee-jerk response that it was all George V’s fault. After all, it’s widely believed that the British king offered his relatives asylum in Britain before pulling the plug on the offer. Even now readers repeatedly ask me: “Why did George V betray his Romanov cousins?”
George might have been a moral coward in changing his mind about the family being given sanctuary in Britain, but this in itself is too simplistic as an explanation of what happened. Rather, one needs to explore the true extent to which anyone – let alone the king and his government – was in a position to wave a magic wand over the fate of the Romanovs. Granting asylum was one thing, getting them out of Russia quite another.
Combing the archives
We cannot apportion blame without first going back to the specific political circumstances of 1917–18, and examining the evidence from as many angles as possible. In order to do this, I have searched for new and previously uncited material across archives in the UK, USA and Russia, as well as obscure published sources in eight languages. My searches resulted in inevitable dead ends, but they also turned up material that showed that the failure to save the Romanovs was never, ever a simple case of one king’s loss of nerve.
In the run-up to 1914, relations between Nicholas II and King George V had been close and cordial. The threat of growing German naval power had only served to strengthen the good relations established jointly with France under the Triple Entente of 1907. The two monarchs also shared family ties via the Danish royal family: their mothers, Dagmar and Alexandra, were sisters, making George and Nicholas first cousins.
One might have expected such close family ties to solicit an immediate, positive response from Britain when the chips were down. But by early 1917, Britain and Russia were in the fourth year of a debilitating conflict with Germany. The political exigencies of wartime were now taking precedence over old dynastic loyalties. Russia was convulsed by two revolutions in 1917. When the first of these broke in February, and in the face of Bolshevik demands for a separate peace with Germany, the Allied governments’ primary concern was keeping a demoralised and exhausted Russia in the First World War. Getting the former imperial family out of Russia to safety came a very poor second.
After his abdication in March, Nicholas and his family were placed under house arrest at the Alexander Palace near the Russian capital of Petrograd, hoping – indeed expecting – to be allowed into internal exile. But Russia’s new Provisional Government quickly dismissed Nicholas’s longing for a quiet life on the Romanov estate in Crimea. Much as the government wished to protect the family, to allow the Romanovs to remain in Russia might well encourage a counter-revolution.
The Provisional Government was also hamstrung by the need to maintain its fragile relationship with the hard-left workers and soldiers of the Petrograd Soviet. This rival, radical political organisation was demanding nothing less than the trial – and by implication, execution – of the tsar and was totally opposed to the Romanovs being allowed out of Russia to live out their days in the presumed ‘comforts’ of exile. There was a high price to pay for the Romanovs’ despotism – the revolution demanded it.
One of the most common misconceptions in the Romanov story is that King George V himself offered them asylum. No, he did not. It was not in the king’s gift, as a constitutional monarch, to do so. And while George might instinctively have wished to help his royal relatives, his government made no voluntary offer. It was in fact Pavel Milyukov, the foreign minister of the Provisional Government, who made the first move. He pressed the British government hard, via its ambassador to Petrograd, Sir George Buchanan, to offer asylum. It was days before a response came from David Lloyd George’s government, making a somewhat grudging offer of asylum – and it did so, very specifi-cally, for the duration of war only. The British government stood by its ally (to Milyukov’s huge relief) but previously unseen documents confirm that, contrary to general thinking, it was no more eager to have the Romanovs in Britain than King George, who within two weeks of the offer was panicking and wished that it had never been sent.
A fear of unrest
Why did the king change his mind? Quite simply, there was a war on. George V worried that to bring the controversial tsar and tsaritsa to England might cause unrest among the working classes sympathetic to the new revolutionary regime in Russia, a population he needed to keep on side in the war effort. ‘Nicholas the Bloody’, notorious for his repressive response to peaceful protestors in St Petersburg on Bloody Sunday 1905, was much reviled in Britain, as was his wife. And to make matters worse, the Germanborn Alexandra was a ‘boche’. Hostility towards Germany was at an all-time high, so much so that the British royal family changed its name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor that July. Fear of losing his own throne at a time of heightened political tension prompted the king to renege on his support for the asylum initiative.
But George was not alone in this. My research shows that many of the Romanovs’ European relatives believed that Nicholas and Alexandra had brought their throne crashing down entirely through their own folly, and in so doing had endangered the thrones of royal families across the continent as well.
Refused sanctuary
An alternative place of refuge was urgently sought: neutral Denmark was deemed too close to Germany to be suitable. Norway and Sweden offered help with an evacuation but declined to take the Romanovs in. France and Switzerland both refused asylum. Put simply, the Romanovs were a political hot potato that no government wished to handle in wartime. Except perhaps King Alfonso of Spain, who turns out to be one of the unlikely heroes of this tale, the only royal relative who made concerted efforts on behalf of the family from March 1917 right through until after they were murdered, in July 1918.
Much as we would like to believe otherwise, the fate of the Romanovs was never the most pressing political issue in 1917. Once they were moved to western Siberia – Tobolsk in August 1917 and then Ekaterinburg in April 1918 – they were out of sight and out of mind. This led to a fatal complacency about their safety and the need to get them out of Russia.
Meanwhile, rumour and gossip abounded over various Russian monarchist plots to spring the family from captivity and spirit them away. Sadly, these were at best half-baked, the stuff of Boy’s Own Paper derring-do and were doomed to failure. The sad reality is that the numerous disparate monarchist groups in Russia were incapable of uniting to organise any kind of viable rescue plan. When they did try, they were always stymied by a lack of funds and the difficulty of effecting a rescue without it resulting in a bloodbath.
Stories of British secret service operatives being involved in a mission to rescue the Romanovs have also surfaced regularly, but most of these remain nebulous in the extreme. Like the monarchist plots, they fell at the first hurdle: the logistics of actually getting the Romanovs out of Ekaterinburg. Would-be rescuers were faced with the enormous problems of distance, geography and climate – of getting seven people long distances via railways controlled by belligerent revolutionaries, and after that by sea through the treacherous ice floes of the Arctic and safely past German submarine patrols.
This is not to mention the absurdly fanciful suggestion of airborne rescue. During the short period that the family was held under house arrest at the Alexander Palace, it might just have been possible to effect a safe and speedy evacuation – but only if the Provisional Government had been able to get a train beyond Petrograd to Finland and from there to the border with Sweden.
One hundred years later, on 17 July 2018, the Russian Orthodox faithful gathered in Ekaterinburg to mark a centenary that for them is proving far more significant than the 2017 anniversary of the revolution that preceded it. The Russian people are desperate for closure and forgiveness, and we too must let go of the idea that Anastasia somehow survived the massacre – and the idea that George V could have clicked his fingers and saved the Romanovs.
Russia’s last imperial family all died at Ekaterinburg. There were no miraculous escapes. It is time to put the lid on the coffin of this mythologised story, and allow the Romanovs to rest in peace.
Dr Helen Rappaport is a specialist in Victorian and late Russian imperial history. Her books include Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses (Pan, 2014)
This article was first published in the August 2018 edition of BBC History Magazine
]]> Your guide to King George V: facts about his life, reign and death https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/george-v-king-facts-biography-life-family-reign-death-children/ Mon, 26 Apr 2021 14:49:47 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/george-v-king-facts-biography-life-family-reign-death-children/ Born during the reign of his grandmother, Queen Victoria, the young George V was never intended to end up on the throne. Alexandra Churchill reveals everything you need to know about the founder of the House of Windsor who reigned during the First World War – from how he became king, to the cause of his death in 1936… Prince George was never meant to be king. Born on 3 June 1865, he was the second son of Edward, Prince of Wales (who was the eldest son of Queen Victoria), and Princess Alexandra of Denmark. His elder brother, Prince Albert Victor (known as ‘Eddy’ to his family), was one day destined to sit on the throne, perhaps as King Albert I.
And yet from early childhood, it was ‘Georgie’ who was the brighter of the brothers. He was no genius, but he was a satisfying enough pupil, if inclined to be boisterous. Various attempts were made to see if George could draw his brother out of his apathetic stupor; when it was decided that George would pursue a naval career, the heir to the throne went, too. The two brothers tackled the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth together, before taking a three-year cruise around the world to hone their seamanship skills. Then their paths diverged. Eddy had to be prepared for the throne, though he was still distinctly unpromising. Until 1892, Prince George would sail the world as a budding naval officer, and this was how he expected his life to continue. But in that year, events took an unexpected turn.
George V: quick facts
Born: 3 June 1865 Parents: Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) and Princess Alexandra of Denmark Reign: 1910–36 Death: 20 January 1936 Spouse: Princess Mary of Teck, m1893 Children: Edward VIII; George VI; Mary, Princess Royal; Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester; Prince George, Duke of Kent; Prince John of the United Kingdom Grandchildren: Nine, including Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret
At the beginning of 1892, Eddy had been looking forward to getting married and settling down. It was hoped that his bride, Princess Mary of Teck (also known as ‘May’), would ‘knock him into shape’ and get him ready for the throne. But a flu epidemic was sweeping the globe, and after attending a funeral in London, the family adjourned to Sandringham to celebrate Eddy’s birthday – taking the illness with them. He was dead within a week. The nation was in shock and George, who had barely survived his own battle with typhoid, was looking at an entirely different future, for which he was completely unprepared.
An unprepared heir?
Prince George took it well, though his life was irrevocably changed, and not through his own choice. In 1893, after a period of reflection on the part of both, he married his brother’s fiancée, Mary. It made sense, all things considered; after all, it wasn’t easy to find and assess a royal bride. But the beginning of the marriage was rocky. It was with the arrival of their first child (christened Edward though known to the family as David), that love finally began to bloom. At short intervals, more children followed: Albert (Bertie to the family, and later George VI) in 1895; Mary in 1897; Harry in 1900; George in 1902; and finally, John in 1905. The duke would have liked more girls, but was proud of the responsibility of having five sons. Yet the idea of George V as a Dickensian villain in respect of his children has persisted for decades, and is patently unsupported by the evidence available in the Royal Archives. In fact, George V was more of a hands-on dad than his contemporaries and if anything, he was a bit too clingy as a parent.
Crash courses in languages, the succession and constitutional monarchy were embarked upon to prepare him to reign. Unlike George’s grandmother, Queen Victoria, had done, his father, the Prince of Wales, did not jealously guard his access to royal responsibility. He introduced George, now Duke of York, to anyone he could think of: politicians, dignitaries, naval and military men. In 1901, the end of an era came with the passing of the old queen – George’s ‘Grandmama’. His father acceded to the throne as Edward VII and George became the Prince of Wales.
- The fall and rise of the Windsors
The notable aspects of George V’s time as both the Duke of York and Prince of Wales were his colonial tours. If his father was a Europhile, the prince reserved that affection for the British empire. In 1901, leaving the children at home, he and his wife embarked on an exhausting tour that included Egypt, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Mauritius, South Africa, Canada and Newfoundland. After the birth of their youngest child in 1905, they departed again, this time for an extended period in India. It left a lasting impression on them both. While he was devoted to the empire, the prince was always forward-thinking when it came to the idea of its future. Of course, he always had to balance his personal opinion with his constitutional duty, but he morally supported both Indian independence and Irish Home Rule in some measure, among other developments; not just maintaining the status quo.
Early reign and the First World War
On 6 May 1910, Edward VII died. George was devastated, both on a personal level and because he was terrified of ascending the throne. Amidst the pomp and ceremony, the new king had to contend with domestic issues that threatened to completely undermine the monarchy, including a crisis in the House of Lords that revolved around the liberals being unable to get any legislation past overwhelming numbers of their political opponents. The House was stacked against them. He was ultimately railroaded by his prime minister, Herbert Asquith, and though he respected Asquith very much, thinking him highly capable, he vowed never to be strong-armed like this again.
Early in his reign, George V also had to contend with strikes and industrial unrest, but it was the issue of Home Rule in Ireland that kept him awake at night during the run up to the First World War. Yet however complex and incendiary this issue was, it paled in comparison to the July Crisis of 1914 that followed the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo. It has been claimed that King George neglected the oncoming disaster, but this is incorrect. He was as aware as his ministers in June and July in terms of what was transpiring in the Balkans. The situation took a crucial turn at the end of July, and in fact, evidence suggests that the king referenced it before the cabinet did. He did not want war. He did everything in his limited, constitutional power to try and avert disaster, but once it became clear that war was unavoidable, he was determined that Britain would be on the winning side.
- Read more about George V and the First World War
George V and the House of Windsor
The First World War proved to be not only the making of King George, who went from inexperienced monarch to national symbol, but of the House of Windsor. The name ‘Windsor’, was adopted in 1917 as a response to republicanism running rampant in Russia and the persistent question of whom the king’s children would marry (if German princes and princesses were suddenly persona non grata). None of them were yet ready to wed, and so the name change from ‘Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’ to ‘Windsor’ was a powerful message to the country. But this overhaul is true of the whole set-up of the monarchy going forward. The Press Office at Buckingham Palace is also a product of the First World War, as is the structure of public engagements and the monarchy’s determination to get among the people. Thanks to the war, and the arrival of the popular press, by the end of the war in 1918 King George V was the most accessible monarch in British history.
Life did not get any easier in the 1920s. The world was reduced to rubble and it would take time to rebuild. Added to that, seismic social changes had been accelerated by the conflict. Women over 30 who met certain property qualifications had the vote as of 1918. By the end of 1922, Ireland had been partitioned, and in 1924 the king appointed James Ramsay MacDonald, Britain’s first Labour prime minister. In 1926, post-war industrial unrest culminated in a General Strike. In evidence of his empathy, when it was suggested that those out on strike were revolutionaries, His Majesty retorted that perhaps their accusers should try living on their wages before they passed judgement.
For a man of King George’s generation, born at the height of the Victorian era, the pace of life in the early years of the 20th century and the changes it ushered in were staggering. And the tremors just kept coming. The onset of the 1930s saw the world plunged into a financial crisis, and George V promoted the idea of a national government to see the country through it. He was also markedly suspicious of Adolf Hitler and the rise of the Nazi Party in 1930s Germany. He had long believed that there would be another war; in 1920, when Prime Minister David Lloyd George had questioned the idea of a two-minute silence in the wake of the First World War, saying that nobody would remember what they were observing in the years to come, the king said that they would. Not only that, but there would have been another war since. A century on, his prediction has proved accurate in both respects.
And yet, for a man bewildered (like many of his generation) by the new world that was so rapidly being ushered in, the king kept up to date with developments. He could fix a car, and knew how a radio worked. In 1932, he became the first monarch in British history to have his voice beamed into people’s houses, when he broadcast the first Christmas speech. The British people felt like they knew him more than they had ever known a sovereign.
How did George V die?
King George V had a brush with death in 1928 when he developed septicaemia, which markedly affected his health for the rest of his life. His last years were marked not only by turmoil both domestic and foreign, but by a declining relationship with his eldest son and heir, Edward, Prince of Wales. By the beginning of the 1930s, ‘David’ had taken up with Wallis Simpson, and for the entirety of his adult life he had demonstrated a strong reluctance to take up his future role as king. George V predicted that when he was gone, his son would ‘ruin himself’ within a year. Once again, he proved astute.
In 1935, the king was stunned by the outpouring of love and affection demonstrated on the occasion of his Silver Jubilee. It reduced him to tears. The man who had been totally unprepared for his role, had become a father figure to the nation. He had gone so far, with his trusted and long-serving advisors, as to rebrand the monarchy, strengthen it and bring it into the 20th century. The blueprint he left endures to this day.
At the beginning of 1936, King George V fell ill at Sandringham. His condition worsened, and he died on 20 January, aged 70. In her diary, Queen Mary wrote: “My heart is broken.” His body was taken by train to London and 800,000 of his subjects queued upwards of nine hours through the night to witness his lying in state. King George V was laid to rest at St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
Alexandra Churchill is a historian of the First World War and author of In the Eye of the Storm: George V and the Great War (2018)
]]> A brief history of the Christmas Speech https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/a-brief-history-of-the-christmas-speech/ Sun, 05 Apr 2020 12:05:00 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/a-brief-history-of-the-christmas-speech/ The King's or Queen's speech has been broadcast since 1932, but Queen Elizabeth II has read it since 1952. As many of us prepare to tune in to the Queen's Christmas message on Christmas day, Julian Humphrys investigates the origins of the first royal Christmas address... Which monarch made the first royal Christmas broadcast?
King George V. On Christmas Day 1932 he delivered a 251-word, three-minute wireless message, penned for him by poet and writer Rudyard Kipling. It was broadcast live just after 3pm, which was considered the best time for reaching most of the countries of the empire by short-wave radio.
Was it the king’s idea?
No. It was thought up by BBC director, John Reith, who saw it as a way of inaugurating the BBC’s Empire Service (now the World Service).
George V was initially uncertain about using the relatively untested medium of radio. He was persuaded to do so following a visit to the BBC and a discussion with prime minister Ramsay MacDonald who sold the idea of the Christmas broadcast as a tool to help the monarchy maintain unity within the empire.
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Where did King George V make the first Christmas broadcast?
In a small room in Sandringham House, connected by telephone lines to Broadcasting House. The king was highly nervous – he was reported as saying that the prospect of making the broadcast ruined his Christmas. The table at which he sat was covered with thick cloth to muffle the rustling of the papers held in his trembling hands.
How was the broadcast received?
Extremely well. Over 20 million people listened and there was widespread approval, not only of Kipling’s words, but also of the king’s no-nonsense delivery of them. His slightly gravelly voice was particularly well-suited to his image as the ‘grandfather’ of the empire.
What happened next?
George V made an annual Christmas broadcast for the rest of his reign, the last coming less than a month before his death in 1936. But there would be no Christmas speech from his son, Edward VIII, that year. When he did make a broadcast in December, it was to announce his abdication. It would take the wartime Christmas messages of George VI to turn the royal Christmas broadcast into the tradition it is today.
To listen to George V’s first Christmas message, go to bbc.co.uk/programmes/p027m2xp
This article was first published in the Christmas 2015 issue of BBC History Magazine
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