I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: "Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown." And he replied: "Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way."
George VI, Christmas broadcast, 1939, quoting the poem "God Knows" by Minnie Louise Haskins
George VI
parents: George V and Mary of Teck
date and place of birth: 14 December 1895 at York Cottage, Sandringham, Norfolk
wife: Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon
date of marriage: 26 April 1923 at Westminster Abbey
children: Elizabeth (later Elizabeth II), Margaret
years of reign: 1936-1952
date of coronation: 12 May 1937 at Westminster Abbey
date and place of death: 6 February 1952 at Sandringham House, Norfolk
place of burial: St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle
George VI was born Prince Albert of York, and his family called him Bertie all his life. He arrived on 14 December 1895, the anniversary of the death of his great-grandfather Prince Albert, which his great-grandmother Queen Victoria still marked every year as a day of mourning. His parents named him after the late Prince Consort to soften the blow. As the second son of the Duke of York, later George V, he grew up in the shadow of his confident, charming elder brother David, the future Edward VIII.
His childhood was not happy. He suffered from gastric trouble, was made to wear painful splints at night to correct his knock knees, and was forced to write with his right hand though he was naturally left-handed. From about the age of eight he developed a severe stammer. His father, a stern naval man, had little patience with it, and his tutors had little success with him.
Navy and War
Albert followed his father into the Royal Navy, passing through Osborne and Dartmouth near the bottom of his class. He served as a midshipman and then a sub-lieutenant on HMS Collingwood, and on 31 May 1916 he manned a gun turret during the Battle of Jutland, the largest naval battle of the First World War. He was mentioned in despatches. Chronic stomach trouble, eventually diagnosed as a duodenal ulcer, ended his time at sea in 1917. He transferred to the new Royal Naval Air Service and then the Royal Air Force, and in 1919 he qualified as a pilot, the first member of the royal family to do so.
After the war he spent a year at Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1920 his father created him Duke of York. He took a real interest in industrial relations, visiting mines, factories and shipyards so often that his family called him "the Foreman," and from 1921 he ran the Duke of York's Camps, which brought public schoolboys and working-class boys together for a week each summer. In 1926 he played in the men's doubles at Wimbledon, the only member of the royal family to have competed there.
Marriage
He met Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the youngest daughter of the Earl of Strathmore, in 1920 and fell for her at once. She turned him down twice, reluctant to give up her freedom for royal life, before accepting him in January 1923. They married at Westminster Abbey on 26 April 1923; on the way in, she laid her bouquet on the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in memory of her brother Fergus, killed at Loos in 1915, and royal brides have followed her example ever since. See our page on famous royal weddings. Their daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, were born in 1926 and 1930. The Duke called the four of them "us four," and the family lived a quiet life at 145 Piccadilly and Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park.
The Stammer and Lionel Logue
On 31 October 1925 the Duke had to give the closing speech at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, broadcast to the nation. He stumbled through it with long, painful silences. The following year he began seeing Lionel Logue, an Australian speech therapist with no medical qualifications and a practice in Harley Street. Logue combined breathing exercises and tongue twisters with a frank, friendly manner that no one else used with the prince, and he taught him to plan his speeches around the words that tripped him up. The Duke's speaking improved within months. Logue stayed at his side for the rest of his life, and helped him through every major broadcast of his reign. The 2010 film The King's Speech tells the story, with some licence.
The Abdication
George V died in January 1936 and David became Edward VIII. The new king was already involved with Wallis Simpson, an American then married to her second husband, and he made it clear he meant to marry her. Stanley Baldwin's government, the Church of England and the governments of the Dominions would not accept a queen with two living former husbands, and a morganatic marriage, with Wallis as the king's wife but not queen, found no support. Edward chose Wallis. He signed the instrument of abdication at Fort Belvedere on 10 December 1936, and his brother became king the next day.
Albert had not wanted the throne and did not feel fit for it. He wrote in his diary that when he told his mother the news, he "broke down & sobbed like a child." He took the name George, in tribute to his father and as a signal of continuity, and he was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 12 May 1937, the date already chosen for his brother's coronation. His brother became Duke of Windsor, married Wallis in France in June 1937, and the new king never let her share his royal status. Relations between the brothers never recovered.
The Road to War
In 1938 the King backed Neville Chamberlain's attempt to avoid war with Germany. When Chamberlain came home from Munich in September 1938 with his piece of paper, the King invited him onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace to wave to the crowds, a gesture that tied the crown to appeasement. In the summer of 1939 the King and Queen toured Canada and became the first reigning British monarchs to visit the United States. At the Roosevelts' home at Hyde Park, New York, they ate hot dogs at a picnic, and the visit did much to build American goodwill towards Britain.
War came on 3 September 1939. That evening the King spoke to the Empire by radio, with Logue beside him: "In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my peoples, both at home and overseas, this message." At Christmas he ended his broadcast with the lines from Minnie Louise Haskins at the top of this page, which the Queen had shown him. The poem became one of the best-known pieces of writing of the war.
The Second World War
When Chamberlain resigned in May 1940, the King would have preferred Lord Halifax as his successor, and he distrusted Churchill, who had supported Edward VIII during the abdication crisis. He sent for Winston Churchill all the same. The two men soon formed a close partnership. They lunched together every Tuesday, serving themselves so that no servant would overhear.
The King and Queen refused to leave London during the Blitz or to send their daughters abroad. On 13 September 1940 German bombs hit Buckingham Palace while they were inside. The Queen said afterwards, "I'm glad we've been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face." The palace was hit nine times during the war. The King and Queen toured bombed cities across Britain, from the East End to Coventry. In September 1940 he created the George Cross and the George Medal to honour civilian courage, and in April 1942 he awarded the George Cross to the whole island of Malta, then under siege. See also our page on Churchill and "the Few".
Before D-Day both the King and Churchill wanted to watch the landings from a warship. The King's private secretary, Alan Lascelles, talked him out of it, and the King then persuaded Churchill that if the King could not go, neither should the Prime Minister. He crossed to Normandy ten days after the landings to visit the troops. On VE Day, 8 May 1945, the royal family appeared on the palace balcony eight times, once with Churchill.
After the War
The peace brought great changes. In 1945 the King welcomed Clement Attlee's Labour government, which founded the National Health Service and nationalised coal, rail and steel. In 1947 India and Pakistan became independent, and the following year the King gave up the title Emperor of India, the last British monarch to hold it. That year he and his family toured South Africa, where Princess Elizabeth made her famous twenty-first birthday broadcast, and in November she married Philip Mountbatten.
Years of stress and heavy smoking had broken the King's health. He suffered from arteriosclerosis in his legs and had an operation in 1949, and in September 1951 surgeons removed his left lung because of cancer, though the public was never told the diagnosis. On 31 January 1952 he stood bareheaded in the cold at London Airport to see Elizabeth and Philip off on their tour. He died in his sleep at Sandringham in the early hours of 6 February, aged fifty-six, and his daughter learned in Kenya that she had become queen.
George VI was buried at St George's Chapel, Windsor, and in 1969 his remains moved to the King George VI Memorial Chapel there, where his wife, his daughter Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip now lie with him.
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Link will appear as Hanson, Marilee. "King George VI" https://englishhistory.net/20th-century/king-george-vi/, September 30, 2026