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Late last week I finished reading Princes at War by Deborah Cadbury, which follows the lives of King Edward VIII, King George VI, and their two surviving brothers, from the abdication crisis through the end of World War II.
Before I started school my sister and brother were both collecting stamps, each with their own stamp album. I was allowed to look all I wanted as long as I didn't destroy anything. In those days postage stamps were generally a lot less colorful. So, long series of stamps with the same design with different colors for each denomination were very eye catching when mounted together. Even though my reading skills were minimal, it didn't take long before I could recognize the stamps of quite a few different countries simply by the general design. ( My interest in foreign languages began with the desire to be able read what was on all of them.) I learned that the stamps from Great Britain did not have the country name on them, and in those days, there were no portraits on them other than kings and queens. Although I knew from watching her coronation on TV that Elizabeth was queen at that point, stamps with her picture on them had not yet arrived in quantity on our side of the ocean. So the portraits on the pictures of stamps printed in the albums, I was informed, were of Victoria, Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII and George VI. There weren't many stamps with Edward VIII and both my brother and sister had all of them, a green 1/2d, a red 1d, a brown 1 1/2d, and a blue 2 1/2d, covering all the pictures in their spaces in the album. I didn't have a lot of curiosity at the time about who the kings and queens were, other than their names and faces. So I didn't question why there weren't many of Edward VIII. My brother and sister may have told me what happened to him, but I don't think it sunk in till I was a little older. I would have been much older when I learned what a stink Edward's love life had caused... Both my brother and sister probably had a brownish-red Australian stamp from 1945 with the portraits of a mustached man and his wife both in uniform, he in a peaked officer's cap and she with an odd smashed-looking woman's military-style cap. I am certain that no one in my family, including my parents could have identified the couple as the brother and sister-in-law of two kings of Great Britain.
Princes at War doesn't cover a lot of new ground. If you've seen any of numerous recent documentaries about Edward VIII you know the kind of things that were said about him and his wife. The same is true about George VI, if you saw or read The King's Speech.
There is material unknown to most Americans about their brothers, Henry Duke of Gloucester, and George Duke of Kent. There isn't a lot of it, and some of it isn't very flattering. Henry, though professional army man, was not known for the sharpness of his intellect. At a critical point of the war when things were going badly and it looked like Winston Churchill was on his way out as Prime Minister, an MP rose in Parliament, and was giving a compelling speech for immediate peace. As the speech progressed Churchill was feeling worse and worse about the future, until the speaker suggested that the Duke of Gloucester be appointed the supreme commander of the empire's armed forced. There was such an outburst of laughter from all sides the whole effect of of the speech was ruined and Churchill's crisis seemed to pass with it. Duke George was the closest to Edward VIII. They shared interests and they liked each other. Like Edward, Duke George loved the 'elite' social circle. He like Henry married married well, and with a few words of caution from King George VI, he gave up the playboy life. Duke George seemed to have gained the king's confidence, being appointed Governor General of Australia during the war. However he died in a somewhat mysterious plane crash before he was scheduled to leave for Australia. As the war was ending, Henry was also made Governor General of Australia, and it was he and his wife who appeared on the stamp I mentioned above.
Probably the only new insight in the book, for us clueless Americans anyway, is the exploration of Edward VIII's personality. Not surprisingly, he was the dominant brother as they were growing up. Much of his difficulty in adult life seemed to stem from his expectation of getting exactly what he wanted. He really didn't want to be king. He like Princess Diana hated the rigamarole of all the ceremonies, and while he could be very charming, he was known to mutter under his breath about people barely out of earshot. He seemed to fall in love with Wallis because she wasn't the typical awestruck woman in his presence. She was demanding and didn't mind telling him exactly what she thought. Edward wasn't all that sorry to give up the throne so he could marry her. But it never seemed to dawn on him that his position as the leader of that generation of the family was also gone as soon as he signed away the kingdom to his brother. The key issue of the abdication, of course, was whether Wallis was an acceptable wife for someone whose position was so tied up with the Church of England. To the end of his life, Edward could not understand why the family was never willing to give Wallis the same recognition which his sisters-in-law had and which he felt was such a trivial thing. King George VI, who wanted it even less than Edward, understood being king as being a duty, which Edward apparently did not. Wallis' personalty was also a giant problem which Edward wanted everyone to overlook. She was so desperate for recognition, that she accepted the flattery and friendship of anyone including Nazis and Nazi sympathizers without too much thought of what kind of people they were, and how they might try to use her connection to Edward. Wallis became more and more suspect in the eyes of the intelligence services of the UK and of the US, making what Edward thought was trivial, totally impossible even beyond the personal feelings of the family.
For new information, Princes at War is a little thin. But as an example of how ego can mess up one's life it's instructive. It does give me, as an American, plenty of reason for wondering why the UK keeps up the very expensive and artificial shell of the institution called the monarchy.
Next week - Leningrad: Siege and Symphony
Before I started school my sister and brother were both collecting stamps, each with their own stamp album. I was allowed to look all I wanted as long as I didn't destroy anything. In those days postage stamps were generally a lot less colorful. So, long series of stamps with the same design with different colors for each denomination were very eye catching when mounted together. Even though my reading skills were minimal, it didn't take long before I could recognize the stamps of quite a few different countries simply by the general design. ( My interest in foreign languages began with the desire to be able read what was on all of them.) I learned that the stamps from Great Britain did not have the country name on them, and in those days, there were no portraits on them other than kings and queens. Although I knew from watching her coronation on TV that Elizabeth was queen at that point, stamps with her picture on them had not yet arrived in quantity on our side of the ocean. So the portraits on the pictures of stamps printed in the albums, I was informed, were of Victoria, Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII and George VI. There weren't many stamps with Edward VIII and both my brother and sister had all of them, a green 1/2d, a red 1d, a brown 1 1/2d, and a blue 2 1/2d, covering all the pictures in their spaces in the album. I didn't have a lot of curiosity at the time about who the kings and queens were, other than their names and faces. So I didn't question why there weren't many of Edward VIII. My brother and sister may have told me what happened to him, but I don't think it sunk in till I was a little older. I would have been much older when I learned what a stink Edward's love life had caused... Both my brother and sister probably had a brownish-red Australian stamp from 1945 with the portraits of a mustached man and his wife both in uniform, he in a peaked officer's cap and she with an odd smashed-looking woman's military-style cap. I am certain that no one in my family, including my parents could have identified the couple as the brother and sister-in-law of two kings of Great Britain.
Princes at War doesn't cover a lot of new ground. If you've seen any of numerous recent documentaries about Edward VIII you know the kind of things that were said about him and his wife. The same is true about George VI, if you saw or read The King's Speech.
There is material unknown to most Americans about their brothers, Henry Duke of Gloucester, and George Duke of Kent. There isn't a lot of it, and some of it isn't very flattering. Henry, though professional army man, was not known for the sharpness of his intellect. At a critical point of the war when things were going badly and it looked like Winston Churchill was on his way out as Prime Minister, an MP rose in Parliament, and was giving a compelling speech for immediate peace. As the speech progressed Churchill was feeling worse and worse about the future, until the speaker suggested that the Duke of Gloucester be appointed the supreme commander of the empire's armed forced. There was such an outburst of laughter from all sides the whole effect of of the speech was ruined and Churchill's crisis seemed to pass with it. Duke George was the closest to Edward VIII. They shared interests and they liked each other. Like Edward, Duke George loved the 'elite' social circle. He like Henry married married well, and with a few words of caution from King George VI, he gave up the playboy life. Duke George seemed to have gained the king's confidence, being appointed Governor General of Australia during the war. However he died in a somewhat mysterious plane crash before he was scheduled to leave for Australia. As the war was ending, Henry was also made Governor General of Australia, and it was he and his wife who appeared on the stamp I mentioned above.
Probably the only new insight in the book, for us clueless Americans anyway, is the exploration of Edward VIII's personality. Not surprisingly, he was the dominant brother as they were growing up. Much of his difficulty in adult life seemed to stem from his expectation of getting exactly what he wanted. He really didn't want to be king. He like Princess Diana hated the rigamarole of all the ceremonies, and while he could be very charming, he was known to mutter under his breath about people barely out of earshot. He seemed to fall in love with Wallis because she wasn't the typical awestruck woman in his presence. She was demanding and didn't mind telling him exactly what she thought. Edward wasn't all that sorry to give up the throne so he could marry her. But it never seemed to dawn on him that his position as the leader of that generation of the family was also gone as soon as he signed away the kingdom to his brother. The key issue of the abdication, of course, was whether Wallis was an acceptable wife for someone whose position was so tied up with the Church of England. To the end of his life, Edward could not understand why the family was never willing to give Wallis the same recognition which his sisters-in-law had and which he felt was such a trivial thing. King George VI, who wanted it even less than Edward, understood being king as being a duty, which Edward apparently did not. Wallis' personalty was also a giant problem which Edward wanted everyone to overlook. She was so desperate for recognition, that she accepted the flattery and friendship of anyone including Nazis and Nazi sympathizers without too much thought of what kind of people they were, and how they might try to use her connection to Edward. Wallis became more and more suspect in the eyes of the intelligence services of the UK and of the US, making what Edward thought was trivial, totally impossible even beyond the personal feelings of the family.
For new information, Princes at War is a little thin. But as an example of how ego can mess up one's life it's instructive. It does give me, as an American, plenty of reason for wondering why the UK keeps up the very expensive and artificial shell of the institution called the monarchy.
Next week - Leningrad: Siege and Symphony
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