King George VI

1895 – 1952 · Generation XXXVI · King of the United Kingdom (r. 1936–1952) · House of Windsor

George VI was never meant to be king. Born Albert Frederick Arthur George at York Cottage on the Sandringham estate on 14 December 1895, he was the second son of the future George V and Queen Mary, and throughout his childhood his elder brother, Edward, the heir, took precedence. His family called him “Bertie”. He was a sickly, anxious child with a stammer, and although he was naturally left-handed he was made to write with his right hand.

He trained at the naval colleges at Osborne and Dartmouth, and in 1916, as a turret officer in HMS Collingwood, he fought at the Battle of Jutland and was mentioned in dispatches. A duodenal ulcer kept him from further combat. In 1918 he moved to the Royal Air Force, and he became the first member of the royal family to qualify fully as a pilot. After a year at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was created Duke of York in 1920. He visited so many mines, factories and rail yards on his father’s behalf that he was nicknamed “the Industrial Prince”, and from 1921 he ran yearly summer camps that mixed boys of different social classes. In 1926 he even played in the men’s doubles at Wimbledon.

After refusing him twice, Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, youngest daughter of the Earl of Strathmore, agreed to marry him, and the wedding took place in Westminster Abbey on 26 April 1923. Their daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, were born in 1926 and 1930. His stammer made public speaking an ordeal, and after a painful address at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley in 1925 he began working with the Australian-born speech therapist Lionel Logue. Logue drilled him in breathing exercises, his wife helped him practise, and his delivery grew steadier. In 1927 he was able to open Australia’s new Parliament House in Canberra.

When Edward VIII abdicated on 11 December 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, Albert became king and took the name George VI to signal continuity with his father. He was crowned in Westminster Abbey on 12 May 1937, the date already fixed for his brother’s coronation. In 1939 he and Queen Elizabeth toured Canada and the United States, the first visit to North America by a reigning British monarch, and they stayed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The friendship formed on that visit mattered greatly in the war that followed.

Throughout the Second World War the King and Queen remained officially at Buckingham Palace, which was bombed while they were there in September 1940, though they usually slept at Windsor. They visited bombed towns and munitions factories, and the King went to see his forces in France, North Africa, Malta, Normandy, Italy and the Low Countries. He lunched privately with Winston Churchill every Tuesday, in what has been called the closest personal bond between sovereign and prime minister in modern British history. In 1940 he instituted the George Cross and George Medal for civilian bravery, and he later awarded the George Cross to the whole island of Malta. The war reached his own family in August 1942, when his younger brother, the Duke of Kent, died on active service. On VE Day in May 1945 the crowds outside the palace called for the King, and he brought Churchill onto the balcony beside the royal family.

In 1947 he took his wife and daughters on a long tour of southern Africa, the same year that India and Pakistan became independent. In June 1948 he gave up the title Emperor of India, and the London Declaration of 1949 made him the first Head of the Commonwealth. Years of strain and heavy smoking had ruined his health, and in September 1951 his left lung was removed after a malignant tumour was found. On 31 January 1952 he went to London Airport to see Princess Elizabeth leave on a Commonwealth tour, his last public appearance. He died in his sleep at Sandringham on 6 February 1952, aged 56, of a coronary thrombosis, and was buried at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. His daughter flew home from Kenya as Queen Elizabeth II.

Place in the family

• King George VI was the father of Queen Elizabeth II.
• King George VI was the second of 6 children of King George V and Mary of Teck recorded in this archive.
• The archive records 31 of his descendants, across 4 generations.

Images

• Prince Albert in Royal Air Force uniform, 1919 (Unknown photographer (Flight magazine), public domain)
• With Queen Elizabeth and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt aboard the USS Potomac, 9 June 1939 (Harris & Ewing, public domain)
• With Field Marshal Montgomery, commander of the 21st Army Group, on arriving in the Netherlands, 12 October 1944 (Edward George William Malindine, public domain)

One of 53 people of House of Windsor (from 1917) in this archive. The present house — it renamed itself Windsor in 1917, setting aside the German title Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Line of descent: Owen Tudor → Edmund Tudor → King Henry VII → Margaret Tudor → King James V of Scotland → Mary Queen of Scots → King James I → Elizabeth Stuart → Sophia of Hanover → King George I → King George II → Frederick Prince of Wales → King George III → Edward Duke of Kent → Queen Victoria → King Edward VII → King George V → King George VI.

Read more on Wikipedia

Parents

• King George V (1865 – 1936)
• Mary of Teck (1867 – 1953)

Siblings

• King Edward VIII (1894 – 1972)
• Mary Princess Royal (1897 – 1965)
• Henry Duke of Gloucester (1900 – 1974)
• George Duke of Kent (1902 – 1942)
• John Windsor (1905 – 1919)

Partners

• Married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (1900 – 2002) in 1923 — 2 children together

Children

• Queen Elizabeth II (1926 – 2022)
• Margaret Windsor (1930 – 2002)

Life

• 1895 — Born
• 1923 — Married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
• 1936 — George VI accedes to the throne upon the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII
• 1952 — Died
• 1952 — George VI dies.

Sources

1. George VI · Wikipedia
2. George VI (r. 1936–1952) · The Royal Family (royal.uk)
3. George VI · Westminster Abbey