Introduction
When I sat down to write The Crown in Crisis in late 2018, it was without any intention of the book turning into the first instalment in a trilogy. Indeed, in all its drama and richness, the abdication saga seemed like a perfectly self-contained story. Yet by the time I had finished, I was desperate to continue the narrative, which concluded with the exiled former Edward VIII heading into Europe under cover of night. It was a particular thrill while writing its sequel, The Windsors at War, to be able to draw upon a vast amount of rare and unseen material, which gave insight into everything from the fractious relationship between King George VI and his disobedient brother, the Duke of Windsor, to the extent to which leading courtiers’ Nazi sympathies permeated Buckingham Palace at the beginning of World War II.
Yet when I finished Windsors, I was caught in a dilemma. It seemed clear that the logical next step was to finish the story of the era that I had begun, and that I needed to write a third and final book that would begin with VE Day and follow the story up until the coronation of Elizabeth II. But my fear was that it would be anticlimactic compared to the other two. Those books had been steeped in grand, operatic themes of betrayal, power and a family being torn apart by war and treachery. If this one could offer nothing more dramatic than a royal wedding, the slow death of a king, and a coronation, was it really worth the effort?
It will be for readers to judge for themselves as to whether I have succeeded, but Power and Glory proved every bit as thrilling and revelatory to research and write as the earlier books, exploding any belief that I had that this period was somehow less eventful. The focus this time lies with three separate protagonists: the young Princess Elizabeth, whose marriage and family life is coloured by the increasing knowledge that she will be taking on an awesome weight of responsibility; George VI, whose fragile health was dealt a terminal blow by the strain that the war placed upon him and his country; and, naturally, the Duke of Windsor, seeking to pursue his own agenda and damn the consequences.
I have attempted to be fair towards the duke, as in my other books, but the man does not make it easy for even the most generous of biographers to portray him in a warm and sympathetic light. In 2022, I stayed at a hotel in Paris that he and Wallis used to frequent, and, unable to sleep, wondered what the chances were of a spectral visit from an outraged Edward, chastising me for his presentation in these books. Had I been taken to task by his apparition, I hope that I should have had the presence of mind – shortly before telephoning the concierge and asking for bell, book and candle – to reply that nothing I have said about him in the trilogy is based on anything other than meticulously documented fact: usually, and most damningly, his own entitled words. Unlike fine wine, he does not improve with age.
If the duke supplies much of Power and Glory’s high drama (and, at times, comic relief), it is his brother’s story that constitutes its tragic arc. George VI was the monarch who never wanted the responsibility of the role, and it is testament to his belief in duty that he committed himself to its onerous burdens, even as it became increasingly clear that the strain was having a terminal effect upon his health. I have attempted to present the monarch as a rounded character, neither sanctifying him nor belittling him, but I hope that my portrayal of him as someone whose greatest strengths were domestic rather than regal is one that firmly anchors the book as a deeply human story.
If the book has a heroine, however, it can only be the future Elizabeth II. She made only fleeting appearances in The Crown in Crisis and The Windsors at War, but I am finally able to give her the full measure that she deserves, bringing her to life in both private and public spheres. If my first book was a ticking-clock suspense thriller set against the backdrop of something thought constitutionally unprecedented, and the second a wartime saga that explored a dysfunctional, squabbling family tested to its limits, so this one too has a simple story at its heart: it is an account of a close and loving father-and-daughter relationship, albeit one where the father is dying and the daughter is facing upheaval and change on an unimaginable scale.
Both of my earlier books were intended, to a large extent, as black comedies of manners. Power and Glory is different. While writing about the Duke of Windsor’s misdemeanours never ceased to amuse – or shock – me, I was struck by how often I would attempt to finish chapters of this book and be unable to type because I was weeping so copiously. Even now, certain lines – ‘I felt that I had lost something very precious’; ‘my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service’ – still have a Pavlovian effect upon me.
I was writing Power and Glory when I learnt of the queen’s death on 8 September 2022, and like everyone else in Britain, I felt as if one of the aspects of my life that had been forever constant was removed from me. Yet amid the millions of words written about her in the subsequent days, by sources sympathetic, hostile or otherwise, there was one central point universally acknowledged: in both her remarkable longevity and her lifelong dedication to service, she was a monarch sans pareil. It is therefore appropriate that Power and Glory should depict the end of one era, and of one Britain, and the birth of a new one. This book may be a tragedy, and a requiem for a lost nation, but it is also a paean of praise to the woman who redefined the country in her image.
It may, or may not, come as a surprise to my readers to learn that I am not a monarchist. Unlike some of my historian peers, I have always attempted to look at the royal family with clinical detachment, rather than from the perspective of a fully paid-up admirer of what strikes me as a deeply flawed and anachronistic institution. Certainly, the ludicrous indulgence offered to the Duke of Windsor – a man who should have gone to prison during World War II for treason, and ideally remained there – shows the worst aspects of ‘the Firm’ and the noblesse oblige offered to its members, regardless of their activities. Yet the virtues they exemplified at their best were real, too: courage, generosity, compassion and a dedication to serving their country rather than themselves. When I finished writing this book, I had to restrain an urge to leap onto a table and shout, ‘God Save the Queen!’ If I am a republican, I am a very, very flawed one indeed. But if this conclusion to the trilogy engenders a similar urge in a single reader, I will proudly consider my duties as a historian and biographer fulfilled.
Alexander Larman
Oxford, June 2023
Chapter One‘The Most Terrible Thing Ever Discovered’
On the evening of 8 May 1945, the nineteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth, dressed in her Auxiliary Territorial Service uniform, stood next to her mother, father and sister and gazed out at an innumerable crowd from the balcony of Buckingham Palace.* The noise was deafening. A great shout of ‘We want the king!’ yelled in unison by tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of voices was all that could be heard, followed by a vigorous rendition of ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’ whenever the assembly’s wish was granted.
Yet although the attention and volume were overwhelming, there was also a dizzying sense of escape and catharsis that meant that what would have been an otherwise overwhelming ordeal for a young woman became a stirring, even thrilling, moment of unity with the people who she would one day reign over. As she gazed down at the ecstatic men and women who were celebrating the end of World War II, she felt, for perhaps the first time, that there was no barrier between them and her.
Her younger sister, Margaret, then fourteen years old, was more impatient for excitement and drama than the rest of her family. She petitioned their parents that she and Elizabeth should be allowed to go out into the crowd and mingle with the revellers. Under normal circumstances, such a request would have been refused on grounds of both propriety and simple security, but, exhilarated and conscious of the unique occasion, the king granted them both leave. He later wrote indulgently in his diary that ‘Poor darlings, they have never had any fun yet.’1
The girls headed out, accompanied by an honour guard of sorts that included their former nanny, Marion ‘Crawfie’ Crawford, their French tutor, Marie-Antoinette de Bellaigue, and, for their necessary protection, some Guards officers, along with a royal equerry. Elizabeth had not had an opportunity to change out of her uniform, and, conscious of not wishing to seem too conspicuous, pulled her cap over her eyes. One of her fellow officers, a stickler for propriety even amid the celebrations, insisted that she remain properly dressed while wearing such attire, and made her adjust it into its correct form.
The group wandered freely around the neighbouring streets, heading over to Piccadilly and Park Lane, visiting the Dorchester and Ritz hotels and finally returning to the palace through Green Park. For the average teenage girl, such a journey would have been unexceptional in the extreme, but for Elizabeth, and especially, Margaret – who had often chafed at the bit when it came to protocol and restriction – the moments of being let off the leash were as glorious, in their own way, as the wider victory that was being hailed. As Elizabeth later said, ‘[There were] lines of people linking arms and walking down Whitehall and all of us were swept up by tides of happiness and relief.’2
As the communal excitement gripped them, initial ideas of decorum were forgotten, and the princesses joined their countrymen in wild and ecstatic dances, kicking their legs up to ‘The Lambeth Walk’ and the Hokey Cokey. Then, in a moment of untrammelled giddiness, they raced back to the palace and stood outside, looking up at their parents and shouting, ‘We want the king!’ with the rest of the crowd. What Crawfie later described as ‘almost hysterical relief’3 was shown by everyone in London, and indeed the country, at that moment. Princess Margaret would later describe her own impressions of the evening in a televised interview: ‘Suddenly the lights came on and lit up the poor old battle-scarred palace … my mother was wearing a white dress with a tiara … and it all sparkled and there was a great roar from the crowd, which was very exciting. VE Day was a wonderful sunburst of glory.’
The next morning, the country awoke, happily, to a collective hangover. The princesses were desperate to take advantage of their new-found freedom, and so, with the king’s permission, headed out once again into the great crowds still gathered in central London. As Elizabeth wrote in her diary, ‘Out in crowd again – Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly, Pall Mall, walked simply miles. Saw parents on balcony at 12.30 a.m. – ate, partied, bed 3 a.m.!’4 This time, they were unable to retain their anonymity; a headline in The Times read, ‘Big Crowds at the Palace. Royal Family on the Balcony. Princesses Join the Throng.’
A visit to the bombed-out districts of the East End was a more sobering experience for both princesses, as they saw the devastation that the previous years of war had caused. As they had been largely sequestered in the safety of Windsor Castle since the outbreak of the conflict, they had been spared the omnipresent experiences of death and destruction that their subjects had become all too familiar with over the last half-decade. It was no wonder that Margaret was driven to remark, in dismay, ‘It was a nasty shock to live in a town again.’5
The party had been brief, exhilarating and wonderful. But as the broken country could not be mended by dancing and singing, transformation had to come. Churchill might have been cheered to the skies by the people when he appeared on the balcony next to the royal family, flashing his signature ‘V for Victory’ sign to the applauding masses, but two months later, he and the Conservative Party would be ousted from power, replaced by Clement Attlee’s transformative Labour government in a landslide election.
Britain was impoverished, exhausted and in dire need of change. The people looked to the politicians for everyday reassurance, but it was the monarchy from which they sought inspiration. The unspoken agreement was that the royals would hold themselves above the populace, and pledge themselves to a higher standard of personal conduct and dignity. In exchange, they would be both adored and trusted. It was a deal, and one that required both parties to play their part. But in the new world order that now existed, with old certainties swept away with the rubble of cities, it remained deeply uncertain as to what was going to come next.
* * *
‘We listened to the King’s [victory] broadcast. It was really too embarrassing: he ought to talk better by now: the contrast to Winston’s eloquence and that of [the] Dominion PMs is shocking.’ The politician and bon viveur Henry ‘Chips’ Channon remained in a caustic humour with George VI after VE Day, despite being in the embrace of the playwright Terence Rattigan. Nor did he reserve his contempt for the king. On the same day, he wrote, ‘I have no patience with the present Sovereigns [sic], both are bores and dull’, although he allowed, gracelessly, that ‘[they] do their job well enough, I suppose’. Although Channon made it to the palace to see the celebrations on VE Day (‘the enthusiasm extreme, but little rowdiness’),6 he anticipated that in the post-war settlement, there would a mixed public reaction to ‘Their Majesties’.
Shortly afterwards, he was present at St Paul’s on Sunday 13 May for a service of thanksgiving, where he observed the royal duo. Never one to say anything pleasant if something caustic would do instead, he commented that although the king and queen looked ‘young and smiling’, and that George VI had ‘the Windsor gift of appearing half his age’,* the king seemed ‘drawn and tired’ and the queen’s appearance was ‘appalling – her bosom is big and her bottom immense’7. Although Channon was cheerfully vile about the couple,† he was also able to observe how, at the opening of Parliament, the king made a long speech with only one pause, on the word ‘imperishable’, and that Churchill demanded that there be ‘three cheers for the King and Queen’. Channon noted that ‘people were too embarrassed to cheer lustily, but there was a rather embarrassed, well-bred response’8.
Peace in Europe had been secured, and hopes were high of similarly imminent resolution in Japan. But domestic matters were harder to come to terms with. The king himself wrote in his diary on 22 May that ‘I have found it difficult to rejoice and relax as there is still so much hard work ahead to deal with.’9 The war had been an all-consuming and exhausting affair, demanding more from him than any man could have reasonably given. But at least throughout most of its duration he had had Churchill by his side, combining the offices of counsellor, friend and, on occasion, surrogate father. Nonetheless, as he observed on 28 May, ‘Parliament is 10 years older, no one under the age of 30 has ever voted, and the House of Commons needs rejuvenating. Country before Party has been the [Coalition’s] watchword. But now what?’10
He soon had his answer. When the prime minister was relieved of power on 5 July, the king responded both petulantly and angrily, as if it had been a personal betrayal. In their last audience as monarch and premier, he denounced his people’s ingratitude ‘after the way they had been led in the war’11. Even as Lascelles and Churchill attempted to reassure him that the country’s desire for change had to be respected,* and Lord Mountbatten, a man whose own political sympathies were closer to Labour than the Conservatives, suggested that the king might even be able to influence political developments in a way that he had seldom been able to before, there was still the innate sense that the shift in the country’s postwar political and social temperature could yet have unforeseeable repercussions.
George VI feared the coming of socialism.* He wrote in his diary on 20 June that ‘Dr Harold Laski’s† statements that Mr Attlee cannot go to the Meeting in Berlin except as an observer show that Mr Attlee is not the real leader of the Labour Party. Laski as chairman of the Executive Committee of the Labour Party appears to be the real leader & can tell Attlee what he is to do.’12 Nonetheless, he also wished for a decisive result, writing, ‘A small majority to either Party would be useless. I must have a Government to run the country & the war against Japan.’13 His daughters may have sung and danced around London incognito, but it was clear that their father was not in a similarly jocular humour. He desperately needed a holiday from what could only be onerous responsibilities. But no such remedy was possible.
The relationship between the king and his new premier, meanwhile, did not begin amicably; as, in fairness, his association with Churchill had not. Attlee might have served with distinction as deputy prime minister in the wartime Government of National Unity, but even after the Labour government had been elected in a landslide victory, there was still some doubt as to his suitability to be prime minister, mostly sown by his right-hand man, Herbert Morrison. As Laski put it, ‘Nature intended for [Attlee] to be a second lieutenant.’14 On 25 July 1945, when Attlee was supposed to head to Buckingham Palace to accept the king’s invitation to form a government, Morrison informed him that he would not be able to do so until there was another election within the Labour Party for a new leader: the implication being, naturally, that Morrison himself (who had unsuccessfully stood for the leadership in 1935) should now take up his position.
Attlee may have written in his autobiography – in lines that did not make the final version – that ‘the idea [of Morrison as prime minister] was fantastic and certainly out of harmony with the feeling of the Party’15. Nonetheless, when he did arrive at Buckingham Palace that evening, sent on his way by his lieutenant Ernest Bevin (‘Clem, you go to the Palace straight away’), his first official meeting* with the king was an underwhelming one. Lost for anything more insightful to say, the new premier blurted out, ‘I’ve won the election!’ The king, who had said an emotional farewell to Churchill only a few minutes earlier that evening,† replied, ‘I know. I heard it on the six o’clock news.’ Taking pity on the bewildered Attlee, who seemed uncertain as to whether he really was prime minister, he added, ‘You look more surprised than I feel.’16
Following up on Mountbatten’s suggestion that he might seize the advantage and be more interventionist with the new government, the king overruled Attlee’s suggestion that Hugh Dalton should be his new Foreign Secretary, putting forward Bevin instead. The reasons for this appointment were at least partly personal: Dalton’s father, John, had been tutor to a young George V, and his Old Etonian son’s socialist beliefs were felt to be a betrayal of this once-close relationship between the Daltons and the royal family – so much so that Hugh was scornfully referred to by George V as ‘your anarchist son’; there was also the matter of a thoughtless disposal of gifts that John Dalton had been given by the former king.‡ Attlee, who may or may not have known of this association, agreed, and the meeting ended. Afterwards, the king quipped to Lascelles that ‘I gather they call the new Prime Minister Clem. “Clam” would be more appropriate.’17
The king’s disappointment at the ousting of Churchill was mirrored by his uncertainty as to what kind of prime minister he now had. Although a Labour victory in the election had been anticipated in the polls for some considerable time, neither Churchill nor ‘Clam’ seemed to have expected it, and certainly not in the magnitude that had resulted. The monarch wrote in his diary that Attlee ‘was very surprised his Party had won & had no time to meet or discuss with his colleagues any of the Offices of State’18. In the spirit of determined optimism, he observed, ‘I hoped that our relations would be cordial & that I would always be ready to do my best to help him.’19 After the premier left Buckingham Palace, he arrived, shell-shocked, at a victory party at Central Hall in Westminster. In a daze, he murmured, ‘I have just left the Palace.’ As cheers and celebrations echoed around him, he was able to observe, with characteristic understatement, that ‘it had been quite an exciting day’20. For the king, by way of contrast, it had been ‘a long and trying’21 one.
This final confirmation that Britain now had a transformative socialist government, with a Labour prime minister for the first time since Ramsay MacDonald a decade before, confirmed that the old order had indeed changed, and had yielded its place to modernity. It was now up to the royal family to see how far they could adjust to the new Britain, or whether they would come to be regarded with the polite curiosity that bygones of an earlier era usually merited.
* * *
‘The Japs have rejected the joint ultimatum, so I suppose they will shortly get what is coming to them.’22 So Lascelles reflected in his diary on 27 July. He was proved correct soon enough. Yet before this could take place, there was another, equally pressing matter. The king wished to meet the new president of the United States, Harry S. Truman, for the first time, and the president’s presence at the Potsdam peace conference in Europe meant that such an encounter could be easily arranged.
Memories of the late Franklin D. Roosevelt were still fresh, and the close and affectionate relationship that had grown up between the king and Roosevelt – first sparked by the time that the two had spent in Roosevelt’s holiday home, Hyde Park, in 193923 – was one that had been invaluable for the successful prosecution of the joint war effort. Truman and the monarch would be hard pressed to recapture such a degree of personal affinity, but circumstances meant that the audience had to be arranged swiftly.
Truman had become vice president at the beginning of 1945, in the expectation that Roosevelt was unlikely to survive his fourth term, and so his presidency had begun in the most stressful circumstances imaginable. He informed reporters on his first day that ‘Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.’24 Although victory in Europe was assured, the issue of Japan remained urgent. Yet as Lascelles had so grimly forecast, a reckoning lay at hand. In the midst of the Potsdam conference, Truman wrote in his diary on 25 July 1945 that ‘We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.’
Truman was wholly aware of the potential of what the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer had discovered; he had known about it since April that year, and now the moment of its implementation lay at hand. He wrote that ‘This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec[retary] of War, Mr [Henry] Stimson, to use so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children … the target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the [Japanese] to surrender and save lives. I’m sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler’s crowd or Stalin’s did not discover the atomic bomb. It seems to me to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.’
Copyright © 2024 by Alexander Larman/
