1895-1952
Formerly Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert of York, Duke of York
UK royalty
1. Introduction
Prince Albert (later George VI) started his career as a junior naval officer, seeing action in World War I. He became king unexpectedly in 1936 upon the abdication of his brother Edward VIII. He struggled with health problems throughout his life and worked hard to overcome a stammer. He and his wife Elizabeth were known for their morale-boosting visits around war-torn Britain. Although initially distrustful of Churchill, he became good friends with his wartime prime minister, who admired the king’s sense of duty and connection with the public. George’s daughter Elizabeth became queen upon his early death, aged 56.
2. Stories
- Churchill’s first encounter with Prince Albert was when the prince accompanied his father King George V on a naval inspection in 1912.
- Prince Albert served in the navy and air force in World War I, later becoming the first UK royal to obtain a pilot’s licence.
- Albert’s marriage to Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon gave him more confidence to undertake his public duties.
- Albert and Churchill both had speech impediments but were known for their morale-boosting speeches.
- George VI was initially very wary of Churchill but grew to respect and like him greatly.
- George VI had to be persuaded not to attend the D-Day landings and, in turn, had to persuade Churchill not to attend.
- George VI died at about the same age as Churchill’s son Randolph, and in a similar way.
Churchill’s first encounter with Prince Albert was when the prince accompanied his father King George V on a naval inspection in 1912.
As first lord of the Admiralty, Churchill hosted George V in Weymouth Bay in Dorset to view naval fleet manoeuvres. Churchill wrote afterwards to his wife Clementine that ‘The King came out in the submarine bringing a little puppy kitten prince and I had them taken for a two-mile dive. I am getting quite experienced in submarines & the novelty & sense of danger are wearing off altogether.’ Anticipating Clementine’s concern, he added somewhat defensively, ‘The boat dives v[ery] well – I c[oul]d not let him [the king] go alone.’1
The submarine’s commander, Lieutenant Martin Nasmith, had nearly sunk in a submarine in the Solent strait off the south coast of England in 1905 and was fully aware of the dangers of the technology at the time. He often wondered how the twentieth century would have turned out if he had sunk that day with the current king, future king and future World War II prime minister on board.
George V had become king two years earlier. His eldest son Prince Edward (later Edward VIII) was first in line to the throne, born five years before the death of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria. Victoria was disappointed that her first great-grandson was not known as Albert (although it was his second name), after her beloved ex-husband. She was somewhat placated by her second great-grandson being called Prince Albert, but regretted that his birthday of 14 December was the same date as the deaths of her ex-husband and her daughter Princess Alice. After Edward VIII’s abdication, Albert chose ‘George’ as his regnal name, to indicate continuity with his father in turbulent times.
Churchill’s reference to ‘a little puppy kitten prince’ (aged 16) was probably a reflection of young Albert’s shyness and physical frailty. Historian Colin Matthew commented that ‘With his stammer, his splints, his gruff father, his distant mother, and his showy brother, it was not surprising that he was frequently in tears’.2 Although left-handed, Albert was forced to write right-handed, and he suffered from intestinal problems as well as seasickness, not ideal for someone expected to follow his father into the navy.
Prince Albert served in the navy and air force in World War I, later becoming the first UK royal to obtain a pilot’s licence.
Albert was commissioned in 1913 as a midshipman, the most junior level of naval officer, at age 17. He was a turret officer during the Battle of Jutland in 1916, the main naval battle of the war, and received a commendation. He became an acting lieutenant but had to end his time at sea due to a duodenal ulcer.
He joined the Royal Naval Air Service at Cranfield, Bedfordshire, in 1917, and was one of the first flight lieutenants in the Royal Air Force when it was instituted in April 1918. It was a ground-based role but he took flying lessons at Croydon airport after the war and qualified as a pilot in July 1919. Churchill also took lessons at Croydon, crashing twice. The prince did not enjoy flying and his medical examiners said he should not fly solo, perhaps prompted by his parents because of the dangers of aviation at the time. Instead, he played tennis, winning the RAF doubles in 1920 but being heavily defeated in the first round of Wimbledon in 1926.
His brother Edward had been the first royal to go airborne when he travelled as a passenger in a biplane in September 1918. Edward purchased a Gipsy Moth in 1929 and gained his qualification, later being the first UK monarch to hold a pilot’s licence.
Two of Albert’s other brothers Henry (Duke of Gloucester) and George (Duke of Kent) also took flying lessons but did not qualify as pilots. Henry had a temporary liaison with the future aviator Beryl Markham, the first person to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic from east to west. George died aged 39 as a passenger on an RAF aircraft that crashed in Scotland on a journey to Iceland in 1942. Royal pilots since then include Princes Philip, Charles, Andrew, William and Harry. In active service, Andrew flew navy helicopters during the Falklands conflict, William flew RAF search-and-rescue helicopters in the UK, and Harry flew army helicopters in Afghanistan.
Albert’s marriage to Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon gave him more confidence to undertake his public duties.
Like Churchill, Albert’s early superficial affections were won by pretty and dynamic stage personalities. In Albert’s case they included Phyllis Monkman, an actress, dancer and singer, and Evelyn Laye, known as ‘Boo’, a light opera performer.
He was then attracted to Lady Maureen Vane-Tempest-Stewart,* Churchill’s second cousin, once removed, before becoming a close companion of Sheila Chisholm, a society beauty from Australia.** Sheila was married to Lord Loughborough and was a good friend of Freda Dudley Ward, mistress of Albert’s brother Edward. The nature of Albert’s relationship has been the subject of speculation but was of sufficient concern to his father that Albert was warned to end it, which he did reluctantly, compensated by being made Duke of York in 1920. George V also pressured Edward to finish his relationship with Freda, which Edward refused to do.
At around the same time, aged 24, Albert met 19-year-old Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon who accepted his proposal at the third time of asking, perhaps reluctant to marry so young. His father approved. Elizabeth’s family seat was Glamis (pronounced ‘Glarms’) Castle in northeast Scotland, where she spent much of her childhood and where her second daughter Margaret was born (her first daughter Elizabeth was born in London: see Elizabeth II).
Albert and Elizabeth spent a week of their honeymoon at Polesden Lacey, a Surrey country house owned by family friend and society hostess Margaret Greville. Mrs Greville was the illegitimate daughter of Scottish brewing magnate William McEwan and his sole heir. She built up a large jewellery collection, much of which she bequeathed to Elizabeth (later known as ‘the Queen Mother’) on her death in 1942 and is still worn by royals today. One of Elizabeth’s favourite pieces was a honeycomb-patterned tiara which she modified slightly, later sometimes worn by Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall (subsequently Queen Camilla).
Marriage suited the shy Albert and he gained confidence in public appearances with Elizabeth. They became popular as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, making many domestic and international appearances, sometimes accompanied by their two daughters. George VI found it difficult to travel by himself to visit operations overseas during the war, partly because of his dislike of flying and also due to his fear of inspecting lines of troops, a phobia which does not have a name.
* Maureen was the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, who was Churchill’s great-grandfather (see Éamon de Valera).
** It is unlikely that she is the origin of the Australian term ‘sheila’ for a female, despite some claims, as the term has earlier origins, although her high profile may possibly have reinforced its use.
Albert and Churchill both had speech impediments but were known for their morale-boosting speeches.
Albert and his brother Henry both had difficulty with the letter ‘r’ (‘rhotacism’). Albert also had a stammer (pauses) from around age seven, while Henry had a lisp, like Churchill. Albert’s consultations with therapists made little difference until he started seeing Lionel Logue at the age of 30. Logue was amiable and confident, developing a friendly, almost equal relationship with the prince. He instilled self-belief and prescribed breathing exercises. Albert never overcame his condition completely but made considerable progress.
The movie The King’s Speech (2010) focuses on his address after Chamberlain’s declaration of war on Germany in 1939. However, his most important speaking achievement was probably his series of addresses in Logue’s home country of Australia in 1927. Logue refused to join him, saying that he needed to stand on his own two feet, which he did well. Other vital events were his coronation service in 1937, which he could not rewrite to avoid difficult words, and his speech to the British Empire and the world afterwards. Both went very well.
The day before his coronation, he handed Logue a package saying, ‘wear this tomorrow’.3 It was the ribbon of the Royal Victorian Order, recognising distinguished personal service to the monarch.
The screenwriter for The King’s Speech, David Seidler, had a stutter as a child which he believes may have been caused by wartime trauma in London. His parents pointed to the example of George VI overcoming most of his speech challenges and the king became his hero. Seidler’s acceptance speech for his Oscar for best original screenplay gives no indication of his earlier condition except that he accepted the award on behalf of ‘all the stutterers throughout the world. We have a voice. We have been heard.’4
Churchill had a lateral lisp, pronouncing ‘s’ as ‘sh’.* He saw a consultant and worked hard at moderation but eventually accepted it. He also modified some words, such as saying ‘Nar-zees’ instead of the usual pronunciation of ‘Nazis’. His lisp became almost a trademark and he is said to have had his dentures designed to preserve it in later life.
* Other types of lisp include frontal (pronouncing ‘s’ as ‘th’), nasal (air passing through the nose), and strident (producing a whistling or hissing noise).
George VI was initially very wary of Churchill but grew to respect and like him greatly.
In 1939, George VI said to Canadian prime minister William Mackenzie King that ‘he would never wish to appoint Churchill to any office unless it was absolutely necessary in time of war’.5 In May 1940, UK prime minister Neville Chamberlain resigned when Labour refused to join his coalition government and recommended Churchill to the king. Churchill was summoned to Buckingham Palace and the king said, ‘I suppose you don’t know why I have sent for you?’ Churchill replied, ‘Sir, I simply couldn’t imagine why.’ The king laughed and said, ‘I want to ask you to form a government’,6 and Churchill said he would certainly do so.
Initially, Churchill was late for his Tuesday evening audiences with the king and left hurriedly, but slowly they built a bond. Both had a strong interest in the navy, had seen front-line combat and had a deep sense of duty. The audiences were changed to Tuesday lunches, lasting an hour and a half over a self-serve buffet, sometimes interrupted by air raids. The king made many trips around the country, meeting thousands of people, and discussed his experiences with Churchill, feeling increasingly useful in his country’s leadership.
Alec Hardinge, a private secretary to the king, noted that ‘It took me a long time to get the King and Queen to look on the new Prime Minister with favour, but in the end the King at any rate made great friends with him’.7 Jock Colville, Churchill’s private secretary, wrote, ‘As the war proceeded the King and Queen became as devoted to Winston Churchill as he consistently was to them.’8
Buckingham Palace was bombed nine times in World War Two. Sharing the same experience as many others, without dramatizing it, increased the king’s popularity with the general population and with Churchill, who wrote to him, ‘I have been greatly cheered by our weekly luncheons in poor old bomb-shattered Buckingham Palace & to feel that in Yr. Majesty and the Queen there flames the spirit that will never be daunted by peril, not wearied by unrelenting toil.’9 By February 1941, George VI had reached a point where he could tell Churchill that ‘I could not have a better Prime Minister’.10
George VI had to be persuaded not to attend the D-Day landings and, in turn, had to persuade Churchill not to attend.
Churchill mentioned to George VI that he intended to view the D-Day landings from flagship HMS Belfast, and the king said he would join him. The king’s private secretary Tommy Lascelles was horrified and asked the king whether risking his life would be fair to his wife and whether he was prepared to advise his daughter Princess Elizabeth on who her first prime minister should be as queen ‘in the event of her father and Winston being sent to the bottom of the English Channel’.11
By the next morning the king had decided not to go and tried to persuade Churchill to take the same approach. He argued that the Allies could not afford to lose him and that he would be a distraction on the ship. He also said that ‘The anxiety of these coming days would be very greatly increased for me if I thought that, in addition to everything else, there was a risk, however remote, of my losing your help and guidance’.12
Churchill showed no sign of changing his mind, so Lascelles told him that the king could deny him permission to leave the country. Churchill responded that he would not be going abroad as he would be on a British vessel.
The king tried again: ‘Please consider my own position. I am a younger man than you, I am a sailor, & as King I am the head of all three Services. There is nothing I would like better than to go to sea but I have agreed to stop at home; is it fair that you should then do exactly what I should have liked to do myself?’13
Very reluctantly, Churchill agreed not to attend, but instead made a day trip to Normandy six days after D-Day to have lunch with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. The king did the same a few days after Churchill. The closest Churchill got to action in World War II was about 500 yards away while looking down on the front line from a vantage point in Italy, accompanied by General Harold Alexander.
George VI died at about the same age as Churchill’s son Randolph, and in a similar way.
Randolph was a heavy smoker (and drinker) and developed a lung tumour which was removed. His health deteriorated after the operation, and although he lasted four more years, he died in his sleep at home from a heart attack, aged 57. Likewise George VI smoked heavily (though he was only a moderate drinker) and had a lung operation. Less than five months later, he had a heart attack in his sleep at home and died in 1952, at age 56. His father George V had also died primarily from smoking-related lung problems, although he had survived until age 70.
Jock Colville was surprised by Churchill’s response to George VI’s death. ‘When I went to the Prime Minister’s bedroom he was sitting alone with tears in his eyes, looking straight in front of him and reading neither his official papers nor the newspapers. I had not realised how much the King meant to him.’14
Churchill made a radio broadcast the next day, saying that ‘In the end death came as a friend, and after a happy day of sunshine and sport, and after “good night” to those who loved him best, he fell asleep as every man or woman who strives to fear God and nothing else in the world may hope to do’.15
At the king’s funeral at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, there was a government wreath with a card on which Churchill had handwritten two words taken from the inscription on Britain’s highest military honour, the Victoria Cross: ‘For valour’.
Elizabeth became the ‘Queen Mother’ on her husband’s death and outlived him by 50 years, serving as patron or head of over 300 organisations and 13 regiments. She owned many racehorses, developed an art collection and maintained her Scottish connections with visits to Balmoral Castle and her own Castle of Mey, near John o’ Groats. She was lord warden and admiral of the Cinque Ports* from 1978 to 2002, an ancient office that Churchill had been so pleased to hold from 1941 to 1965 and whose flag still flies by special permission over Chartwell today. She passed away in 2002, aged 101, outliving her daughter Margaret by seven weeks.
* The holder is also the Constable of Dover Castle. Cinque is pronounced ‘sink’, despite modern French cinq being pronounced ‘sank’.
3. Biographical overview
| Occupation | Royalty |
| Country | UK |
| Career | Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1895-1917). Prince Albert of York (1895-1920). Duke of York (1920-36). King George VI (1936-52). Emperor of India (1936-47). Head of the Commonwealth (1949-52). |
| Born | 1895, in York Cottage, Sandringham, Norfolk (19 years younger than Churchill); Albert Frederick Arthur George (‘Prince Albert’) |
| Father | George V (1865-1936); house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; renamed house of Windsor in 1917; son of Edward VII and Alexandra zu Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, Princess of Denmark (‘Alix zu’) |
| Mother | Princess Mary of Teck (1867-1953) (‘May’); Queen Mary after husband became king; daughter of Franz von Teck and Mary Adelaide Hanover, Princess of Cambridge (‘Fat Mary’) |
| Siblings | Second of six siblings: 1. Edward (1894-1972), King Edward VIII 1936; abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson; became Duke of Windsor; governor general of the Bahamas 1940-45 2. Albert Frederick Arthur George (1895-1952); later George VI 3. Mary (1897-1965), princess royal, nurse, married Viscount Lascelles, cousin of Alan ‘Tommy’ Lascelles who was private secretary to Edward VIII and Elizabeth II 4. Henry (1900-1974), prince, 1st Duke of Gloucester, governor-general of Australia 1945-47 5. George (1902-1942), prince, 1st Duke of Kent, died aged 39 in an air crash while serving in the RAF 6. John (1905-1919), prince, died aged 13 of epilepsy |
| Education | Home schooling; Royal Naval College, Osborne; Royal Naval College, Dartmouth; Trinity College, Cambridge University (one year) |
| Spouse | Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (1900-2002), m. 1923 until his death; daughter of Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne and Nina Cavendish-Bentinck; became Duchess of York; later Queen Elizabeth, then Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mother |
| Relationships | Sheila Chisholm (1918-20), Australian society beauty; relationship terminated by Prince Albert’s father |
| Children | 1. Elizabeth (1926-), title at birth Princess Elizabeth of York; later Queen Elizabeth II; married Philip Mountbatten, Duke of Edinburgh, naval officer, m. 1947 2. Margaret (1930-2002), princess; married Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, photographer, m. 1960, div. 1978 |
| Died | 1952 at home, Sandringham House, Norfolk, aged 56 (13 years before Churchill); heart attack after lung cancer |
| Buried | St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, Windsor, Berkshire |
| Chartwell | Visitors’ Book: no recorded visits |
| Other Club | – |
| Nickname | Bertie (family); the Dutiful King (generic) |
| Height | 5’9” (1.75 m) |
4. See also
UK royalty
Flying
- Maze, Paul (son Étienne)
- Roosevelt, Franklin D. (wife Eleanor and Amelia Earhart)
- Sassoon, Philip (millionaires’ squadron)
Churchill controversies
- Abdication crisis
5. Further reading
George VI
- Bradford, Sarah, George VI: The Dutiful King (Penguin, 2013)
- Judd, Denis, King George VI (Bloomsbury, 2012)
- Ziegler, P., George VI: The Dutiful King (Penguin Books Limited, 2014)
George VI and Churchill
- Vickers, Hugo, ‘The Dutiful King: George VI’, The International Churchill Society, 2019
- Weisbrode, Kenneth, Churchill and the King: The Wartime Alliance of Winston Churchill and George VI (Penguin, 2013)
George VI and Lionel Logue
- Logue, Mark, and Peter Conradi, The King’s Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy (Quercus, 2010)
- Logue, Mark, and Peter Conradi, The King’s War: The Friendship of George VI and Lionel Logue During World War II (Hachette UK, 2018)
Miscellaneous
- Cadbury, Deborah, Princes at War: The British Royal Family’s Private Battle in the Second World War (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015)
- Lascelles, Alan, King’s Counsellor: Abdication and War: The Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles, ed. by Duff Hart-Davis (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006)
- Lovell, Mary S., Straight On Till Morning: The Life Of Beryl Markham (Little, Brown Book Group, 2012)
6. References
1. Winston S. Churchill and Clementine Churchill, Speaking for Themselves: The Personal Letters of Winston and Clementine Churchill, ed. by Mary Soames (Black Swan, 1999), p. 65.
2. H.C.G. Matthew, ‘George VI’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2014).
3. Mark Logue and Peter Conradi, The King’s Speech: How One Man Saved the British Monarchy (Quercus, 2010), p. 000.
4. David Seidler, ‘David Seidler Winning Best Original Screenplay for “The King’s Speech”’, YouTube: Oscars Channel, 2011.
5. Andrew Roberts, Churchill: Walking with Destiny (Penguin, 2018), p. 453.
6. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: Volume 2: Their Finest Hour (Houghton Mifflin, 1949), p. 313.
7. Hardinge private notes, quoted in The Great World War, 1914-45: Vol. I: Lightning Strikes Twice, ed. by P. Liddle, J.M. Bourne, and I.R. Whitehead (HarperCollins, 2000), p. 374.
8. John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries: Volume One: 1939-October 1941 (Sceptre, 1986), pp. 247–48.
9. Robert Rhodes James, A Spirit Undaunted: The Political Role of George VI (Little, Brown, 1998), p. 165.
10. John Wheeler-Bennett, King George VI: His Life and Reign (St. Martin’s Press, 1958), p. 447.
11. Alan Lascelles, King’s Counsellor: Abdication and War: The Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles, ed. by Duff Hart-Davis (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006), p. 224.
12. George VI and Churchill, Winston, ‘Correspondence in June 1944 between King George VI and the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, Concerning the Possibility of Their Witnessing “Operation Overlord”’, Royal Collection Trust, 1944.
13. Ibid.
14. John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries: Volume Two: 1941-April 1955 (Sceptre, 1987), p. 294.
15. Winston S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897-1963: Volume 8: 1950-1963, ed. by Robert Rhodes James (Chelsea House Publishers, 1974), p. 8337.