Darling Georgie (31 page)

In the immediate post-war years, despite the financial hardship and unemployment that resulted, the British people knew that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, who had gone through the war with them, had shared their hopes and fears. Now that the war was over they found that the Royal Family was still by their side as the Festival of Britain celebrated the birth of the post-war era.

With the abdication of King Edward VIII, the legacy of sexual need posing as love (ironically passed on by the seemingly asexual King
George V) seemed to have come to an end. King Edward VIII’s brother King George VI showed no interest in sexual philandering. He had no sons to bully, as his father had bullied him, and when the reins of monarchy were handed over to his daughter Princess Elizabeth, on her father’s death in 1952, it seemed reasonable to assume that the pattern of promiscuity introduced by King Edward VII had now ended.

Queen Elizabeth II carries on the tradition emulated by her revered grandfather King George V. Living as he did in the monarchical past, she wears the clothes of an earlier time and, like her grandmother Queen Mary, has not changed her hair-style since her accession. Not for her ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’. She abhors change but, as Princess Elizabeth, had married a man whose fractured upbringing was not dissimilar to that of her father. The Duke of Edinburgh’s father, Prince Andrew of Greece, had abandoned his wife shortly after the family had been helped to escape to France from a revolution in Greece by King George V. The young Prince Philip was brought up by his deaf mother and his four elder sisters. With no father on whom to model himself, Prince Philip relied on naval discipline to bring up his son Prince Charles. Determined, true to form, to ‘make a man of him’ he sent Prince Charles away to a school whose harsh discipline was quite unsuited to his son’s timid personality. The combination of absentee parents (constitutional duties following the death of King George VI took Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip away for months at a time) and a martinet of a father set Prince Charles on a well-trodden royal road.

Encouraged to marry the unhappy, love-seeking Lady Diana Spencer, but refusing to give up his long-standing relationship with a married woman, Prince Charles once again provoked a royal scandal, which was this time brought to the public eye by an intrusive press. When Prince Charles’s wife, by then Princess Diana, publicly retaliated against her husband’s self-declared adultery the monarchy seemed to be in danger of being replaced by a republic. Ironically, it was Princess Diana’s tragic death at the age of thirty-six that made the British people realize that Royalty was a role model for other families only if their indiscretions were
kept well hidden. Having been blamed for hounding the Princess to her death, and now bound to silence, the press called a moratorium and finally allowed the monarchy if not to mend its ways at least to keep quiet about them.

King George V had bestowed upon the House of Windsor a status that was almost destroyed by his son King Edward VIII and later by his great-grandson Prince Charles. Despite having grown up in a broken home and being sent away to boarding schools, Prince William and Prince Harry were dearly and manifestly loved by both their mother and Prince Charles. If left in peace by the media, they might yet inherit the mantle of nobility and dignity left to them by their great-great-grandfather King George V

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The infant Prince George photographed in 1867

The Times Picture Library

Prince Edward and Princess Alexandra with their baby son Prince George and his older brother Prince Eddy, the Duke of Clarence, 1867

The Times Picture Library

Prince George aged fourteen with his mother Princess Alexandra

The Times Picture Library

Prince George (centre) with his brother Prince Eddy, Duke of Clarence, learning to tie knots on the training ship HMS
Britannia