King George VI

George VI became king because his brother abdicated, and spent fifteen years doing a job he had been raised to avoid. He was born in 1895 on the anniversary of Prince Albert's death, which the family regarded as unfortunate, was knock-kneed and made to wear splints, was left-handed and made to write with his right, and developed a stammer at about eight that shaped his public life entirely. He was a serving naval officer at Jutland in 1916, which he referred to afterwards as the one thing nobody could take from him. The speech therapy he undertook with Lionel Logue from 1926 was unorthodox, effective and continued for the rest of his life. His brother's abdication in December 1936 over Wallis Simpson left him a monarchy that had been publicly humiliated and a coronation date already fixed. He took his father's name rather than his own to signal continuity. The reign's central fact was the war. The family stayed in London, Buckingham Palace was bombed nine times, and the queen's remark that she could now look the East End in the face is the one everyone quotes; he visited North Africa, Malta and Normandy, and had a weekly audience with Churchill throughout. He also presided over the loss of India, the founding of the National Health Service and the transition of the empire into the Commonwealth. He died of a coronary thrombosis in 1952 at fifty-six, having been a heavy smoker. The stammer is also why the reign is remembered the way it is. A man who found public speech physically difficult broadcast to the country through six years of war, and the effort was audible, which did more for the monarchy's standing than fluency would have.

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