Jane Ridley - George V: Never a Dull Moment

For Toby and Humphrey

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The reign of King George V spans more than twenty-five of the most tumultuous and eventful years faced by any twentieth-century British sovereign. How George V managed to steer the monarchy through the perils of a constitutional crisis, the First World War, the Russian Revolution, the collapse of dynastic Europe, Irish Home Rule, strikes, Bolshevism, the rise of the Labour Party and the Great Depression only to be outmanoeuvred by an American divorcee is a great story and the central theme of this book. A key player in national politics, he guided his country through political crises, acting as conciliator over Home Rule and skilfully facilitating the appointment of four prime ministers at a time of party realignment. Most remarkable of all, perhaps, he nurtured the Labour Party through its rise, actively promoting the first Labour governments.

Yet this statesmanlike sovereign has been undervalued by posterity. He has been dismissed as dull and limited, a martinet overly concerned with petty details of dress and protocol. He was dull, beyond dispute, wrote Alan (Tommy) Lascelles, but my God, his reign (politically and internationally) never had a dull moment. Having spent seven years working on George V, I disagree about the dullness. As for the reign, Lascelles was absolutely right.

In 1948 Lascelles, who was private secretary to King George VI, commissioned Harold Nicolson to write the official biography of George V. He told Nicolson: You will be writing a biography on the subject of a myth and will have to be mythological. Nicolson was given unrestricted access to the kings papers. He was not expected to write anything that was not true; but he was ordered to leave out anything discreditable. Silences, then, but not lies.

Nicolson wrote a magisterial biography which succeeded in its purpose of promoting the monarchy and placing it at the centre of the nations political life. Sometimes, especially when dealing with the post-war period, he seemed to conflate the kings life with the story of British politics. But Nicolson, who was a fine biographer, had no illusions about the book. I have created a pure tailors dummy, he wrote, and have not tried to make him live at all, since if I did so he would appear as a stupid old bore.

Nicolson framed the king as the simple man with a categorical sense of duty. This was a problem for Nicolson as it undermined his careful construction of the dutiful prince. These missing years seemed to show George to be lazy and selfish, neglecting to prepare himself for kingship.

Nicolson began the research for his book by talking to the surviving members of Georges household and others who had known him. Being in search of George will be fun, he wrote. The old courtiers talked very freely about the late king. The royal household was still reeling from the Abdication in 1936, and the great enigma was Queen Mary. Some said she managed her husband, others claimed that she was terrified of him and failed to confront him. Words used to describe the king were: stupid, ignorant, horrible, garrulous, simple, unimaginative; but also: loyal, modest, funny and acute.

None of this went into Nicolsons book, but he recorded the conversations in his diary. Reading Nicolsons unpublished diary and his letters to his wife Vita Sackville-West, I glimpsed for the first time the reality behind the myth of King George the Dull. We must not let in daylight upon magic, warned Walter Bagehot, the Victorian constitutionalist, speaking of royalty. In the case of George V, however, letting in the daylight reveals the magic which was concealed behind the humdrum exterior.

King George V wrote his diary nearly every night of his life, slowly and laboriously forming the letters in his schoolboy handwriting, using a gold-nibbed fountain pen. He recorded the time he got up, the times he ate breakfast and dinner and the time he went to bed (usually 11.30). The weather and the direction of the wind are noted, and so are his engagements and the names of the people he met. There is a lot of counting: miles walked, birds shot, cartridges fired, hands shaken, medals pinned. There are few comments, and no descriptions; no confessional nor any evidence of an inner life.

Sitting high up in the Royal Archives in the Round Tower at Windsor, I have spent many months reading and transcribing the diary. When he wanted to be, George V was a surprisingly good letter writer succinct, entertaining and often affectionate. No one could describe the diary as a lively or enjoyable read, however. But to criticise the diary as mundane is to fail to see the point of it. King Georges diary is similar to the one his father kept a narrative of names and engagements: a royal exercise in social accounting. For the biographer the diary is indispensable; it gives a detailed chronology almost hour by hour of the kings life. And there are nuggets of humour and flashes of insight as well as invaluable detail.

When John Gore was commissioned to write a personal memoir of George V in 1938, the royal librarian Owen Morshead made the diary available to him. The king had been dead for only two years, and Queen Mary objected that she never meant the diary of George V to see the light for years, if ever, though she changed her mind and co-operated when she saw Gores manuscript.

George was a second son. Eddy, Duke of Clarence, the elder brother, died suddenly when George was twenty-six, leaving George the unexpected heir. If Eddy hadnt died, George would have grown up to become a minor prince, quietly pursuing a career in the navy, making an arranged marriage to a suitable princess and ending by serving in an office such as governor-general of Canada, as his uncle the Duke of Connaught was to do. Instead, he found himself plunged into the role of heir for which he was totally unprepared.