I've been tinkering with writing something about my mother for some while (relax, it's for family consumption, not for this blog), and in the process of looking for evidence I recently dug out a battered copy of a souvenir book that was handed out to local schoolchildren by Hitchin Urban District Council upon the accession to the throne of George VI in 1937. Somewhat heroically, it has somehow made it all the way to 2024.
It has an official council bookplate inscribed with her name; she would have been fourteen at the time, and about to leave school. It's a hardback bound in dark blue cloth, medium octavo in size (6½" x 9¼"), with 56 thick paper pages and 32 black and white "plates": really quite an elaborate production. The title is George VI, King and Emperor, and it contains exactly the sort of royalist and imperialist biographical puff-job you might expect for a newly-minted King. Sit up straight, child, when you read this book!
It's been hanging around the dustier recesses of my bookshelves forever, but it had never occurred to me before to wonder whether this had been a gesture unique to Hitchin, or whether other local authorities had perhaps done something similar? To my surprise, a quick search on the Web showed that copies of the exact same book had actually been distributed by (presumably) pretty much every council in the country to (presumably) pretty much every child in every school under their control. The same book, that is, but suitably localised not only with a bookplate, but also with the gold-blocked arms of the local authority on the front cover, and a tipped-in foreword by some local dignitary on a thinner paper stock. It must have cost an absolute fortune to produce so many thousands of these as giveaways, but I haven't been able to discover who actually paid for this largesse.
Here's a little sample from the Hitchin foreword:
We want you to remember as you read the book that you live and go to school in a town which, from the days of Edward the Confessor, has been a Royal Manor. All through the ages Hitchin has belonged to the Kings and Queens of England. Each little town, and still more each Royal Manor, adds its separate lustre, its particular ray of glory, to the crown of England.
Hmm. We'll pass over the rather parochial use of "England" there, and simply remark that it's hard to imagine that anyone would even have contemplated going to this sort of expense to celebrate the accession of Charles III in 2022. At least, not without the expectation of recovering the costs or, more likely, turning a handsome profit. We live in a very different country now from the Britain of 1937.
Surprisingly, perhaps, not even the British Library seems to have collected anything like a full set of all the local variations of George VI, King and Emperor, although as a former cataloguer I can imagine what went on:
CATALOGUER 1: What! There are hundreds of them! It's the exact same bloody book!
CHIEF CATALOGUER: Oh, no they're not... Look: different cover, different foreword?
CATALOGUER 2: But it will take all of us months to get them done, maybe longer, given everything else we have to do! It's such a waste of time!
CHIEF CATALOGUER: Well, OK, I suppose they are pretty much all the same... Look, do a few, then take the rest to the big bin out the back. But only after it gets dark... And stand to attention as you chuck 'em in!
Of course, despite being the official "spare", Albert/George was never really expected to become King. So you can see why in 1937 it might have seemed important to those who were running the royal PR operation to give the royalist cause a vigorous polish, given the severe tarnishing brought about by the abdication of George's older brother Edward, simply in order to marry an odd-looking and scandal-adjacent American dominatrix divorcee.[1] On reflection, I suppose that event might be seen as marking the start of the tradition of the male Windsors reliably and regularly putting their royal foot in it whenever possible, especially when it comes to, um, relationships.
Under the circumstances, you do have to concede that planting a book stuffed with jolly anecdotes about the emergency-replacement King's former life, travels, charitable works, and family into so many relatively book-free households was quite a good strategy. Summink t' read, ain't it? Nice pitchers, too! And it's clear that this is the not only copy to have survived to the present day, although the dozens for sale on Abebooks and elsewhere are not quite the battered, torn, and heavily-crayoned family heirloom ours has become. It's not exactly a family Bible, but it seems a shame to dump it now.
1. I may be putting my knighthood at risk here, but I'll just quote Wikipedia:
Rumours and innuendo about her circulated in society. The King's mother, Queen Mary, was even told that Simpson might have held some sort of sexual control over Edward, as she had released him from an undefined sexual dysfunction through practices learnt in a Chinese brothel. This view was partially shared by Alan Don, Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who wrote that he suspected the King "is sexually abnormal which may account for the hold Mrs S. has over him". Even Edward VIII's official biographer, Philip Ziegler, noted that: "There must have been some sort of sadomasochistic relationship ... [Edward] relished the contempt and bullying she bestowed on him.
Blimey! Wot about them royals, eh? There's nothing about that in the book... For some reason I am reminded of one of my favourite apocryphal stories. Here it is, as rendered in the Hampshire Advertiser, 17th October 1900:
Mr. F. R. Benson, the celebrated Shakespearian actor and scholar, is, I believe, a Wintonian, and he is also well-known in Southampton. During his recent season at the Lyceum he produced, among other plays, “Anthony and Cleopatra.” It will be remembered in the second act, at the palace of Cleopatra, certain revels are held, which were the ordinary entertainments in the days of Egypt’s Queen, but which are somewhat bacchanalian for the present day. At one of the performances an elderly lady and gentleman sat in the stalls of the Lyceum. They watched the dancing of the gauzy-robed maidens of the East; they saw the slaves swinging the burning censers, and the fair Cleopatra making passionate love to her warrior hero. For some moments they gazed in open-mouthed astonishment. At last the wife turned to her husband, and in tones more in sorrow than anger said “Dear! dear! what a contrast to the home life of our own dear Queen.”
Note that to be a "Wintonian" is not some abdication-worthy inclination, but merely to be someone from Winchester. One of my work colleagues, at carefully chosen moments at very dull meetings, would murmur, "How different, how very different, from the home life of our own dear Queen...", which would infallibly provoke bouts of painfully stifled hilarity. (I know... Sometimes being at "work" was rather more like being at school...)
But, look, I may finally have written a footnote which rivals the post in length!
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