"Only a Naval Officer"

KING GEORGE VI (891 pp.)-- John W. Wheeler-Bennett--St. Martin's ($10).

"Poor Bertie," his mother noted in her diary when David proved difficult over "that woman."

Bertie himself, his diary recorded, "broke down & sobbed like a child." The time was 1936, and King Edward VIII (David to his family) was about to abdicate in order to marry Mrs. Simpson. Until that time Bertie, Duke of York, had been happy to play second fiddle to a one-man band. His biographer, Oxford Don John Wheeler-Bennett, records his "agony of apprehension" lest he should become King. When the worst happened ("Led," wrote poor Bertie of himself, "like the proverbial 'sheep to the slaughter' "), and he was indeed King George VI, he said to his cousin: "Dickie, this is absolutely terrible . . .I'm only a Naval Officer, it's the only thing I know about."

His cousin, then Lord Louis Mountbatten, suggested soothingly that there was no more fitting preparation for the throne than British naval training. Cousin Dickie was right. Albert Frederick Arthur George had been virtually ignored by everyone, from his mother, Queen Mary, to his nurse; but his service in the Royal Navy (where he was known as "Johnson") helped to set him up for the onerous business of living in the shadow of his brother's personality. Far from having David's "youthful charm and buoyancy," George was "shy and hesitant" and had a severe stammer. All Bertie had was common sense, religious faith and a Navy sense of duty.

Divinity v. Publicity. He needed these qualities when, on his ascension, he stepped into what he called an "inevitable mess." He learned that for a popular modern monarchy it is not so much divinity as publicity that doth hedge a king, and that for the first time since Queen Victoria's early widowhood, a British king, his mercurial brother, had forfeited the royal immunity from criticism.

But George VI, a man who had the feel of the quarterdeck, would not let the crowd vent its bitterness on the exiled David. They had parted as brothers: "D & I said goodbye, kissed, parted as freemasons & he bowed to me as his King," his diary noted, and he was not going to see him deprived of all honor in his former kingdom. Sir John Reith of the BBC wanted to introduce David in his farewell speech as "Mr. Edward Windsor." On King George's insistence, he became instead His Royal Highness Prince Edward.

In telling such episodes, Biographer Wheeler-Bennett gives little hint that he wrote his history in the shadow of--and partly inside--Buckingham Palace. An acre of Faberge eggshells beset the path of the royal (and official) biographer, but Wheeler-Bennett has manfully covered the field to give a picture of a king and a king's-eye view of his times. Apart from inside stuff such as bits of George's conversations with F.D.R. at Hyde Park (where the lordly Roosevelt called him "young man"), the book offers a highly explicit picture of the functions and limitations of the British monarchy.

King's Trade Unionist. George's meticulously kept memorandums and letters give a levelheaded record of the advice he gave his advisers. He could write a letter to a brother monarch such as the one he drafted to King Victor Emmanuel urging him to keep Italy out of the war, but he could not necessarily mail it. His Cabinet decided not to send it. He could express the opinion that it was wrong to let Gandhi out of jail, but if his Indian Viceroy (Lord Wavell) wanted to free him, there was nothing George could do. One thing he could do directly for his people, and that he did. Londoners will never forget him as the man who stayed on deck throughout the blitz, even though Buckingham Palace was hit nine times during the war.

After V-E day, George wanted to dine with Stalin in Berlin, but Montgomery put his foot down. Monty would not guarantee his safety. But there is probably no truth in the legend (which, of course, an official biographer does not mention) of George's crack about Monty. "Sir," said General Eisenhower, "I have to tell you that I hear Montgomery is after my job." "Relieved to hear it," said George VI. "I thought he wanted mine."

George VI had the feelings of a good trade unionist toward fellow monarchs, even dead ones, and at his own expense ordered the dilapidated sarcophagi of the three Stuart pretenders in the crypt of St. Peter's in Rome to be restored. When the time came for him to die, all men knew it. London might be a shambles, but its chief resident had come through it all with dignity and slim-waisted aplomb. At the end of his reign there were probably more supralapsarians than republicans in the country. He died, beloved within his Commonwealth of Nations and admired outside it, as a king who had turned up trumps. When he was born, 20 monarchs were ruling in Europe. When he died there were seven. U.S. newspapers headlined THE KING IS DEAD. No One was in any doubt as to which king was meant.

The man who had become king despite himself stood at the top of his dangerous and difficult trade. It was difficult to realize that so grand a figure in the world should also have been so good and simple a man.

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