I may be uninspiring, but I'll be damned if I'm alien.
George V, on hearing that H. G. Wells had called his court "alien and uninspiring," 1917
George V
parents: Edward VII and Alexandra of Denmark
date and place of birth: 3 June 1865 at Marlborough House, London
wife: Mary of Teck
date of marriage: 6 July 1893 at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace
children: Edward (later Edward VIII), Albert (later George VI), Mary, Henry, George, John
years of reign: 1910-1936
date of coronation: 22 June 1911 at Westminster Abbey
date and place of death: 20 January 1936 at Sandringham House, Norfolk
place of burial: St George's Chapel, Windsor
George was the second son of the Prince of Wales, and he was brought up for the navy, not the throne. At twelve he joined the training ship HMS Britannia at Dartmouth with his elder brother, Prince Albert Victor, known as Eddy. From 1879 to 1882 the two boys sailed around the world as cadets on HMS Bacchante, visiting South America, South Africa, Australia, Japan and the Mediterranean. In Japan George had a dragon tattooed on his arm. He stayed in the navy after Eddy left, rose to command his own ship, and loved the life. He took from it a lifelong liking for punctuality, plain speaking, routine, and an immaculate beard.
Eddy and May
In December 1891 Eddy, now heir to their father after him, became engaged to Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, known as May, a great-granddaughter of George III. Six weeks later, in January 1892, he died of pneumonia after catching influenza. George became second in line to the throne, gave up his naval career, and was made Duke of York. Queen Victoria and the family still thought May the ideal royal wife, and in May 1893 George proposed to his dead brother's fiancée. They married on 6 July 1893. It was a match that began in duty and became a deep, if undemonstrative, love.
The couple lived at York Cottage on the Sandringham estate, a small, cramped house George loved. They had five sons and a daughter. George was a strict, gruff father who is supposed to have said that his father had been frightened of his mother, he had been frightened of his father, and he was going to make sure his children were frightened of him. His favourite occupations were shooting, at which he was one of the best shots in the country, and stamp collecting. The royal philatelic collection he built is still one of the finest in the world.
King and Emperor
Edward VII died in May 1910 and George came to the throne in the middle of the constitutional crisis over the Lords' rejection of the People's Budget. The Liberal prime minister, H. H. Asquith, asked for a secret promise that if the Liberals won another election, the king would create enough Liberal peers to pass the bill curbing the Lords. George gave it reluctantly and resented it for years. The Liberals won the December 1910 election, and faced with the threat, the Lords passed the Parliament Act in August 1911. It removed their power to veto money bills and limited their delay on others to two years.
George was crowned in June 1911. That December he and Queen Mary travelled to India for the Delhi Durbar, where they appeared before hundreds of thousands in their coronation robes and crowns as Emperor and Empress of India. He was the only reigning emperor to visit India for the Durbar. He announced there that the capital would move from Calcutta to Delhi.
The First World War
When war broke out in August 1914, George's first cousins included Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and, through his mother, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, whom he closely resembled. He threw himself into the war effort. He made hundreds of visits to troops, hospitals, factories and shipyards, several of them to the Western Front. In October 1915, while he was reviewing troops in France, his horse reared at the cheering, fell on him and broke his pelvis. He banned alcohol from the royal household for the duration as an example to munitions workers, but few people followed it.
Anti-German feeling ran high. Dachshunds were kicked in the streets and shops with German names attacked. The royal family's own name, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, came from Prince Albert, and in 1917 German Gotha bombers were raiding London. On 17 July 1917 George proclaimed that the royal house would henceforth be known as the House of Windsor, and he gave up all German titles for himself and his family. His relatives in Britain took English names: the Battenbergs became Mountbattens. When he heard of the change, the Kaiser reportedly said he was off to see The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
That year also brought the Russian Revolution. The British government offered asylum to the deposed Tsar and his family, but George, fearing that a Russian autocrat in Britain would stir up revolution at home and damage the crown, persuaded his ministers to withdraw the offer. The Bolsheviks shot the family at Ekaterinburg in July 1918. For decades the palace let the government take the blame.
A Changing World
The war ended three European empires, and George worked to make sure it did not end the British monarchy. He and Queen Mary visited industrial towns and hospitals, took an interest in housing and unemployment, and made the crown a symbol of national unity rather than party. In 1924 he appointed Ramsay MacDonald as Britain's first Labour prime minister, and got on with him well. He wrote in his diary that night: "Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour Government!" During the General Strike of 1926 he urged the government not to provoke the strikers. When a mine owner called them revolutionaries, he is supposed to have replied, "Try living on their wages before you judge them."
The loss of Ireland was a blow. George had opened the new Northern Ireland Parliament in Belfast in June 1921 with a speech appealing "to all Irishmen to pause, to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation," which helped bring about the truce that led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the Irish Free State. In 1931, during the financial crisis, he persuaded MacDonald to stay on as prime minister of a National Government of all parties, splitting the Labour Party. The Statute of Westminster the same year made the Dominions equal partners with Britain, united by their allegiance to the crown.
The King on the Radio
At Christmas 1932 George broadcast from a small room at Sandringham to the whole Empire, the first royal Christmas message. Rudyard Kipling wrote the text. The king had been reluctant to use the new medium, but his deep, gruff voice was a success, and every monarch since has continued the tradition. In May 1935 he celebrated his Silver Jubilee, and the crowds surprised him. "I'd no idea they felt like that about me," he said after driving through the poor districts of London. "I am beginning to think they must really like me for myself."
Death at Sandringham
George had never recovered fully from a serious chest infection in 1928-29, which he spent convalescing at Bognor, and he worried about his heir. The Prince of Wales, charming and popular, was unmarried in his forties and involved with a series of married women. George reportedly told the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, "After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in twelve months." In January 1936 the king fell ill at Sandringham. The official bulletin, drafted by his doctor Lord Dawson, read: "The King's life is moving peacefully towards its close." Late on 20 January Dawson injected him with morphine and cocaine to hasten his death, partly so that the announcement would appear first in the morning edition of The Times rather than the evening papers. Dawson's notes, revealed fifty years later, made it public. The king died just before midnight, aged seventy.
His eldest son became Edward VIII. Within a year he had abdicated, and his brother Albert became George VI.
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