The death of King George VI caused shock around the world. Although it was known that the King was ill, the severity of his condition wasn’t obvious. He passed away peacefully in his sleep in the early hours of February 6th 1952 and his throne passed, without witness, to his elder daughter who became Queen Elizabeth II.
in the days that followed there were many tributes paid to a man who never expected to rule and who had been a reluctant king. However, his determination to do his duty led to him becoming one of the most loved of all modern monarchs. On the day after he died, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, paid tribute to George VI in a moving speech.
”For fifteen years George VI was King. Never at any moment in all the perplexities at home and abroad, in public or in private, did he fail in his duties. Well does he deserve the farewell salute of all his governments and peoples.,” said Churchill. But the speech contained far more personal anecdotes that underlined the strong relationship between the two men who had shared so much during World War Two.
”Let me tell you another fact,” Churchill said. ”On one of the days when Buckingham Palace was bombed the King had just returned from Windsor. One side of the courtyard was struck, and if the windows opposite out of which he and the Queen were looking had not been, by the mercy of God, open, they would both have been blinded by the broken glass instead of being only hurled back by the explosion. Amid all that was then going on, although I saw the King so often, I never heard of this episode till a long time after. Their Majesties never mentioned it or thought it of more significance than a soldier in their armies would of a shell bursting near him. This seems to me to be a revealing trait in the royal character.”
And the wartime Prime Minister was in no doubt of the role that history would afford to the wartime king. He said ‘‘ His conduct on the Throne may well be a model and a guide to constitutional sovereigns throughout the world today and also in future generations. The last few months of King George’s life, with all the pain and physical stresses that he endured – his life hanging by a thread from day to day, and he all the time cheerful and undaunted, stricken in body but quite undisturbed and even unaffected in spirit – these have made a profound and an enduring impression and should be a help to all.”
But the impact of George VI was perhaps best summed up by one simple sentence from Churchill in his tribute – ‘‘The King was greatly loved by all his peoples.”
