Power and Glory, page 36
† There has been a suggestion by the writer Robert Rhodes James that Churchill, desperate to remain in power to announce the defeat of the Japanese, wished to attend the Potsdam Conference and so toyed with the unconstitutional idea of delaying his resignation as premier for over a week. The influence of the king, via Lascelles, Anthony Eden and the former chief whip David Margesson, led to his changing his mind.
‡ Nor was there any love lost between subject and monarch. In his diaries, Hugh Dalton refers to the ‘inanimate’ monarch, which may either have been a dig at the king’s speaking difficulties or simply a reflection of the contempt that his sovereign displayed towards him, and wrote of how, after the election result, ‘the King hadn’t much to say, but seemed quite resigned’.
* A despairing contemporary note suggests that Bevin ‘sees no alternative to allowing the Duke and Duchess to visit France as proposed’.
* As king, he had witnessed the depressed mining conditions in South Wales in November 1936, and had remarked, ‘these works brought all these people here … something must be done to get them at work again’. His words were not backed up with action.
† Meaning ‘as a bachelor’. The absence of Wallis was unlamented.
* This did not extend to Wallis. Queen Mary wrote to her friend the Countless of Athlone to say, ‘I hope he does not bother me too much about receiving her – as nothing has happened since to alter my views about that unfortunate marriage.’
* See The Windsors at War, Epilogue, for further details.
† The king had written in his diary of 3 August, ‘We discussed many matters of the moment. I find I have to tell him many things.’
‡ In a letter of 23 August, Attlee had referred to the duke’s ‘long and successful administration as Governor of the Bahamas during the war’, perhaps with tongue slightly in cheek.
* In this case, Queen Mary.
† Channon reported that she was ‘always agitated’ during her son’s stay, but that they parted on ‘friendly terms’, with her kissing him goodbye.
* Lascelles called it ‘quite a good letter’, with just an ounce of condescension.
* Although the relationship between the king and Attlee swiftly became an amicable one, the king never came to the head of the Buckingham Palace stairs to meet him for their weekly audiences; a concession only offered to Churchill. He wrote on 22 November of the former premier, who he had invited to dinner, ‘how refreshing to have a friend to talk to for a change’.
* For further details about this, see The Windsors at War, Epilogue.
* It had in fact been discussed as recently as 5 October as to whether the duke might be made ambassador to Argentina – something he requested when he dined with his mother and brother, according to Poklewski – but it was believed that his Nazi connections and the general unsuitability of Wallis made such an appointment impossible.
* Churchill’s wish that Edward head to the United States was tempered with caution. He wrote to George VI, mindful of the drawbacks of an out-of-control duke, to say, ‘there might be serious disadvantages in utterly casting off the Duke of Windsor and his wife from all official contact with Great Britain, and leaving him in a disturbed and distressed state of mind to make his own life in the United States’.
* He was happy for her to accept an honorary bachelor’s degree in music from London University, however, convincing the queen of the idea on 23 May 1945.
* Naturally, Channon also wrote, ‘I deplore such a marriage … he and Princess Elizabeth are too interrelated.’
† She was also conspicuously naïve in sexual matters. One biographer recorded how ‘she caused a mild sensation in a nightclub when she complained loudly that it was very inconsiderate of her boyfriend always to carry his torch in his pocket as it was so uncomfortable when dancing’. History does not recall whether this boyfriend was Prince Philip.
* See The Windsors at War, Chapter Fourteen, for further details of this.
† It was not for nothing that Mountbatten, whose bisexuality was supposedly an open secret among his circle, was nicknamed ‘Mountbottom’, on the grounds that ‘he believed it is better to give than to receive’.
* The morally compromised antagonist of Henry James’s novel Washington Square, who is believed to wish to marry the book’s protagonist, Catherine Sloper, solely for her money.
* Harris himself claimed that he was offered a peerage but refused it in solidarity with the crews of Bomber Command being denied a campaign medal for their service. In any case, he received a baronetcy in 1953, when Churchill became prime minister once again.
* This ‘aide memoire’ stated, among other things, ‘One of the two questions of burning interest to the American press concerning the Duchess and myself at the present time is: WILL BRITAIN GIVE THE DUKE A JOB AND, IF NOT, WHAT ELSE IS HE GOING TO DO?’ Edward suggested that ‘The press reaction to a negative answer would be most uncomfortable for all parties concerned.’
* When the duke eventually received the king’s letter, it was of little surprise. He replied on 10 April that ‘I have sensed for some time that there was little chance of our plan maturing’, and concluded, with the air of a threat, ‘As it is now evident that the British Government has no need of my services and as I have no intention of remaining idle, I must look for a job in whatever sphere and country I can find one suitable to my qualifications.’
* Coats was clearly drawn to members of the royal family, and they to him; in the same entry, Channon mused that ‘he danced six times with the Duchess of Kent … is she in love with him? I have long half-suspected it.’
* On 13 March, Stalin had made what the king called ‘a rude onslaught’ on Churchill, and had called him a warmonger.
* Although a married family man, Bowes-Lyon was said to be promiscuously homosexual, enjoying all-male orgies in which the participants were clad only in football shorts. Perhaps in an attempt to avoid scandal, the king and queen attempted to obtain the governorship of New South Wales for him after the war, but they were unsuccessful; the Australians were therefore spared the spectacle of Bowes-Lyon in his glory.
* The then king had cancelled an appointment to open the new Aberdeen Infirmary in favour of collecting Wallis from the station.
* In private conversation, the queen went further, labelling Philip ‘the Hun’ and bemoaning subsequently that his attitude towards the royal estates was ‘like a Junker’.
* It helped that Attlee had been assured by the Admiralty earlier that month that Philip was ‘in every way above average … in short, he is the type of officer we should not like to lose’.
* As did the king.
* The duke sarcastically commented that ‘It has amused us a good deal for, after all, he wasn’t that cooperative himself during his five-years residence at No. 10 Downing Street.’ He neglected to acknowledge that Churchill might have had other things on his mind over the period between 1940 and 1945.
* Who once commented, in relation to the abdication of Edward VIII, that ‘a statue should be erected to Mrs Simpson in every town in England for the blessing she had bestowed upon the country’.
* The duke was nearly fifty-two.
* The level of this duty led de Courcy to say, ‘I write freely and strongly, because any friend of royal personages who just says Yes ought to be shot.’
* Somewhat remarkably, given what he was suggesting Edward should be preparing himself for, de Courcy stated in the same letter that ‘[the Duke’s] constitutional correctness could not be greater, and his loyalty to the Crown could not be more solid than it is’.
† On the same day, their former friend, and German ambassador to Britain, Joachim von Ribbentrop, was executed at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity; the first Nazi to be so disposed of. He remained unrepentant to the end, commenting, ‘Even with all I know, if in this cell Hitler should come to me and say “Do this!”, I would still do it.’ His last words, to the chaplain officiating at his execution, were ‘I’ll see you again.’
* The words ‘and is really nothing but a bore’ were crossed out after ‘nothing left’ but can still be seen in the manuscript.
* Although Philip was graceful on the evening, writing the queen a letter of thanks for the ‘heartening things’ she said, which ‘[would] keep my spirits up’ in her and her daughters’ absence, he was less sanguine towards Mountbatten. He wrote to him pointedly to say, ‘it is apparent that you like the idea of being General Manager of this little show, and I am rather afraid that [Princess Elizabeth] might not take to the idea quite as docilely as I do’, before remarking, ‘I know what is good for me, but don’t forget that she has not had you as uncle loco parentis, counsellor and friend as long as I have.’
* This was, to an extent, an act. The writer Enid Bagnold, who was in South Africa at the time, described the queen’s progress on the White Train. ‘I waved and she gave one more sickly wave like a dying duck, a sketch of her other waves. She looked as though she would die if she saw just one more woman to wave to.’
* At least not in the published selection to be found in King’s Counsellor.
* The Duke of Windsor, in a letter to the king dated 10 April, remarked, ‘[your visit] must have been interesting if somewhat tiring and tedious in parts. I toured South Africa twenty-two years ago, so I know what one is expected to endure at the hands of that curiously mixed population.’
* He also speculated that ‘[it was said] he died of heart failure but I should not be at all surprised if he was bumped, poor chap’. When the death was announced, many suspected that it was an April Fool’s joke.
* And reputed former lover of Edward’s late younger brother, the Duke of Kent.
* It seems that in exile the duke also inherited something of his younger brother’s flamboyance. Roberts reported how, one evening, ‘the duke, in a plum-coloured velvet evening jacket, went to the grand piano and began to sing. He had a large repertoire, a good voice and was excellent in some German, Lancashire, Scottish and Irish songs.’
* Churchill had commented that ‘I earnestly trust it may be possible to destroy all traces of these German intrigues.’ Had he been prime minister, he may well have done so, or at least tried to.
* See The Windsors at War, Epilogue, for further details.
† And future authorised biographer of George VI.
* Crawfie expressed her surprise and shock at the princess’s appearance – ‘I was horrified to see how thin Lilibet had gone … she had also lost all her pretty colour and looked pale and drawn’ – but noted her ‘sort of inner radiance’, and how, excited by the opportunity of seeing her paramour once more, ‘she had danced a little jig of sheer joy at being home again’.
† A total of five times, including from the South African trip, when it was speculated that a formal notice of engagement would be announced on the princess’s twenty-first birthday in April.
‡ The letter only exists as a draft, raising the possibility that it was neither finished nor sent.
* The Duke of Windsor’s wedding on 3 June 1937 attracted frenzied publicity but was described by one of the (few) attendant guests, Walter Monckton, as ‘a strange wedding for one who had been six months before King of England and Emperor of India and Dominions Beyond the Seas’. See The Windsors at War, Chapter One, for more details.
† Harold Nicolson wrote in his diary that day that ‘everybody is straining to see the bridal pair – irreverently and shamelessly straining’.
* Dalton also objected to the proposed Civil List annual grant of £50,000 to fund Elizabeth and Philip’s joint household. The matter became increasingly heated, until Dalton was – fortuitously enough – forced to resign over an unrelated incident involving the Budget. His successor, Stafford Cripps, was considerably happier to agree to the request, perhaps on the grounds that, as Bevin put it, ‘we ought never to lower the standards of the Monarchy’.
* Channon, attending because he had given an ‘ersatz Fabergé’ gift of a silver box, described the reception on 18 November as ‘crowded’, the presents as ‘some fine but many horrible’ and the bridegroom as ‘dazzling’. The royal family were, he noted, ‘too surrounded to be approachable’.
* Wheeler-Bennett called it ‘one of the largest gatherings of royalty, regnant or exiled, of the century’.
† The king wrote to Queen Mary that ‘it is a great deal to give a man all at once, but I know Philip understands his new responsibilities on his wedding to Lilibet’.
* In a letter of 12 November to her friend Dame Mary Tyrwhitt, Mary suggested that the wedding festivities ‘might prove too great a strain’, and that while she was ‘very disappointed’ to miss the event, ‘November 17 or 18 the Press must announce I have a chill or something of the sort’.
* Diana Cooper remarked to her friend Conrad Russell, after being treated to a performance by Edward while king at Fort Belvedere, ‘It’s clever to have chosen the pipes as one’s “shew off” for which one of us can detect mistakes, or know good from bad artistry?’
* Although a disappointing one; a subsequent letter complained that ‘Although I was able to get Winston to talk a little about 1936, I found him more reticent and cagey than I had expected.’ Beaverbrook, on the other hand, ‘[had] been more than cooperative’, and Monckton was prevailed upon to extract ‘valuable dope’ from various sources – the American slang perhaps reflecting the length of time the duke had spent in the United States.
† The duke’s solicitor, George Allen, was another naysayer, believing that the publication could only cause harm.
‡ Fortunately, Monckton’s memoir can today be found in the Balliol College archives, and was invaluable for the creation of The Crown in Crisis.
* Or ‘a time that will never come’.
† The now fifty-four-year-old duke was spending most of his nocturnal hours in various nightclubs by this stage, often remaining out until dawn. One can only be impressed by his stamina.
* Truman’s re-election, on 2 November 1948, surprised many who had expected the Republican candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, to win. One of those surprised had been Henry Luce, who had printed a picture of Dewey and his staff travelling across San Francisco’s harbour on Life’s cover, with the caption ‘Our Next President Rides by Ferryboat over San Francisco Bay’.
* Katherine and her husband Herman gave Wallis shelter at their villa in Cannes when she needed it during the abdication crisis: see The Crown in Crisis, Chapter Ten, for more details.
* His youngest brother, Prince John, suffered from severe epilepsy and died of a seizure at the age of thirteen.
* Channon wrote on 17 December that ‘I have been asked if I would lend or let my house to them for some months; and I refused.’
* Churchill also wrote a terser and less poetic letter on 2 December, saying, ‘I trust & pray Your Majesty’s progress is good. I think so much of you sir in these days & of all you have done & have still to do for our country in these dangerous & depressing times.’
* It was later occupied by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and Prince Harry claimed it was the venue for an angry altercation between him and his brother, Prince William, that ended with him lying on the floor, his necklace ripped, a cracked dog bowl cutting into in his back.
* He was to be proved correct. Thomas died in 1968, Monckton in 1965, and the duke continued until 1972.
* One of the reasons for Allen’s disenchantment was, as he sighed in the postscript, ‘I see my name is wrongly spelt throughout, which shows a new hand.’
† Helpfully, for the purposes of libel, Baldwin had died in 1947.
* Sir Alec Hardinge, the king’s private secretary at the time of the abdication crisis.
† The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang; a noted opponent of Edward VIII.
* There is some suggestion that several of her letters from this period were either dictated or written by Buthlay.
* He wrote to Monckton on 10 May 1950 to say, of the articles, ‘I have always felt that any outward interference would be a grave error of policy, though I believe it would be legally possible to restrain the publication of certain letters. But anything that could be represented – as it ultimately would be in certain newspapers – as “Palace persecution” would be unwise.’
* The final book merely says ‘she was a smart, attractive woman, with that immediate friendliness American women have.’
* In his biography of the queen mother, Hugo Vickers writes sorrowfully of George VI that ‘he had been known to kick a Corgi across the room at Windsor’. Those of us who have had the misfortune to come into contact with the yapping terrors might feel some sympathy with him.
* Channon described the monarch as ‘bronzed’ and the queen as ‘unfortunately so fat’, but was pleased that both were ‘very gracious and both called me “Chips”’. He later called the king ‘rather red in the face’ and possessed of ‘prominent teeth’, indicating that his characteristically waspish nature had not been tamed by these pleasantries.
