1. ‘All the world loves a lover’: the 1934 royal wedding of Prince George and Princess Marina

More than any previous royal occasion, the 1934 wedding of Prince George, duke of Kent, to the famously glamorous Princess Marina of Greece was a spectacle driven by intimate publicity under the control of a coterie of courtiers, clerics and newsmen who were committed to elevating a ‘family monarchy’ as the emotional centre point of British national life.¹ The palace worked in tandem with the Church and media to orchestrate the wedding as a nation-building exercise designed to create loyal subjects of the crown. Aided by new technologies that transformed how media audiences and royalty interacted with one another, the celebration of royal domesticity engendered popular support for the House of Windsor and strengthened the monarchy’s position at the centre of society in a period characterized by political turbulence at home and abroad.

At the outset the odds appeared to be stacked against the royal couple. Marina and her family had lived as exiles in Paris since 1924, having fled Greece after a series of upheavals which sprung from the First World War led to the abolition of the monarchy and its replacement with a republic. As a relatively unknown princess from a cadet branch of a politically unstable dynasty (that had only existed since 1863), and as a member of the Greek Orthodox Church, Marina could have been presented as an exotic and disruptive figure in the narrative of the domesticated British monarchy. As we shall see, special efforts were made to transform her into a popular figure with characteristics that appealed to public sensibilities. Behind closed doors, doubts also lingered about Prince George’s readiness to step into the limelight as a royal celebrity and representative of his father, King George V. The prince was clever, artistic and handsome but, like his eldest brother, the prince of Wales, he was fond of the fast life. His modern pursuits and tireless pleasure-seeking contrasted with the dutiful characteristics desired of young royals by the monarch and his advisors. In 1916, aged just fourteen, George was enrolled in the Royal Naval cadets at his father’s bidding and went on to spend thirteen unhappy years in the service. Eventually discharged on account of ill-health in 1929, he joined the Foreign Office as a civil servant (the first royal ever to do so), having distinguished himself as a linguist during his time in the navy; and in 1932 he became a factory inspector for the Home Office. These government roles and his attendance at royal civic events around the country increased his media visibility after a secluded time spent in the military but, as his public persona developed, his private life became increasingly tumultuous.² He and his eldest brother had become close friends in the mid 1920s and, living together at St. James’s Palace in central London, regularly frequented the bars and nightclubs beloved of the English society set. The prince’s biographer noted that, by the end of the decade, George had developed an addiction to cocaine and morphine, habits the prince of Wales helped him to overcome through vigilant nursing. He had also embarked on a series of love affairs with women and men, including the playwright and composer Noël Coward. George’s various transgressions threatened to bring the monarchy into disrepute: according to diplomat and journalist Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, around this time courtiers were forced to arrange payment to a young Frenchman in order to recover incriminating love letters George had written to him and which he had used to blackmail the prince.³

Fortunately for the palace, the gentlemanly codes of secrecy that governed the relationships between the royal household and British media in the 1920s and early 1930s ensured that George’s frequent transgressions were kept hidden from public view.⁴ Indeed, it was only with his sudden engagement to Marina in August 1934 that journalists focused their attention on the prince’s private life and then they did so in order to emphasize that the royal romance was a true love match between two young, well-suited, good-looking people: there were no references whatsoever to George’s bisexuality or dalliance with narcotics and, to all intents and purposes, he was, and would remain, a modern Prince Charming. The first part of this chapter picks up the royal couple’s love story following the betrothal and shows how journalists were the initial driving force in creating their public images. Human-interest stories increasingly dominated the news in the late 1920s and early 1930s, with reporters laying bare the personal lives of public figures in order to generate an emotional affinity between media audiences and the famous.⁵ In 1934 the press exposed to the public details which were more intimate about George and Marina’s romance than had been deemed acceptable in the case of earlier royal love stories. The prince and princess also proved more willing than any previous members of the royal family to distinguish themselves as modern celebrities by publicizing an idealized romance which emphasized their compatibility and glamour: they were the first royals to consent to filmed interviews, to wave at crowds and to kiss on camera. Notably, the couple’s publicity strategy enabled journalists to generate the impression that their romance chimed with a new emotional culture centred on true love and personal fulfilment and it helped to divert attention away from Marina’s inauspicious status as an exiled Greek princess.⁶ News editors also framed their coverage of the engagement and wedding with a female audience in mind, forming part of a wider attempt by the media to discursively define modern British womanhood along contours of consumption, beauty and glamour.⁷

The second section focuses on the often fraught negotiations between the royal household, the archbishop of Canterbury and other churchmen and BBC executives as they orchestrated the first royal wedding to be broadcast live by radio to the public. These officials designed the broadcast to highlight the wedding service’s religiosity while trying to appeal to a national listenership. The BBC’s ambitions to broadcast the event accorded with its wider nation-building activities, which included elevating the tastes of its listeners and integrating new female and working-class audiences into the public sphere around the focal-point of the monarchy.⁸ The BBC’s efforts also formed part of a wider media campaign to build what seemed like a well-ordered nation centred on royalty.⁹ At a time when public stability seemed threatened by various internal and external forces, the new media technologies of sound newsreel, photographic close-ups and wireless radio conveyed scenes of a nation united in celebration of George and Marina’s wedding.

The final part of this chapter examines the public reception of the wedding. Radio brought ordinary people closer to royalty than ever before and enabled engaged citizenship by generating a democratic space in which listeners affirmed their loyalty to the crown by joining in nationally shared experiences.¹⁰ Letters written to the organizers of the royal wedding and the British press reveal how the radio broadcast of the event worked to enhance ‘affective integration’ around the focal point of the monarchy: many listeners experienced a strong sense of national belonging as they joined in, and empathized with, the family story at the heart of the occasion.¹¹ Thus, the collaboration between the media, monarchy and Church heightened ordinary people’s awareness of the centrality of the House of Windsor to national public life. Notably, this awareness was shaped by events outside Britain, too: letters reveal that media audiences internalized the imagery of a cheerful nation gathered in emotional communion around the royal wedding by comparing Britain’s festive spirit with the growing disorder that troubled European politics in the early 1930s.

A surprise engagement

Journalists were primarily responsible for generating and maintaining public interest in George and Marina’s engagement and wedding. In the middle of August 1934 George visited Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (Marina’s brother-in-law) at his summer residence on Lake Bohinjsko [Bohinj] and there he met the Greek princess. The two had already known each other for five years and, according to the first press reports on the betrothal, ‘amid the idyllic surroundings of the Slovenian Alps’ their ‘friendship ripened into love’.¹² However, the Daily Mail ‘scooped’ the story of the royal engagement before it was officially announced. A correspondent from the newspaper had confronted George after an opera performance in Salzburg and asked him to confirm the rumour circulated by a Viennese newspaper that he had proposed to Marina. The prince requested that the reporter deny all speculation, stating that ‘there is no truth at all in these rumours’.¹³ The Mail’s revelation appears to have compelled the couple to announce their engagement officially the next day, but, in doing so, they signalled their intention to adopt a more active role than was normal for royalty by engaging with journalists in order to shape their public image. The couple agreed to a series of newspaper and newsreel interviews, as well as a number of staged film and photograph opportunities, in which they emphasized three things: their emotional fulfilment, Marina’s happiness at becoming a British royal and their modern glamour.

In 1923 Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon gave a reporter from the Evening News an ‘exclusive interview’ saying she was ‘so very happy’ following her engagement to Prince Albert, Duke of York. However, her biographer has speculated that she might have received an official warning to resist the advances of the press because after this there were no more interviews.¹⁴ Royal protocol discouraged revelation and George’s original ‘denial’ of his engagement typified this approach. In subsequently breaking with convention, he and Marina exercised caution in choosing whom they talked to. Reuters news agency wrote to George’s equerry, Major H. W. Butler, to complain angrily that the prince had granted an interview to a Yugoslavian newspaper, having told other journalists ‘that it [was] strictly forbidden for him to give interviews for the press’.¹⁵ The couple thus engaged selectively with the media in order to publicize their story. Notably, they did grant an audience to the Daily Express. In what the newspaper described on its front-page as the ‘First Interview with the Royal Lovers’, George was recorded as explaining that the engagement was ‘all very sudden and unexpected’ but that he and Marina were ‘very happy’. The reporter noted that, on his meeting the couple in the Hotel de l’Europe in Salzburg, they had ‘been sharing a joke – and laughing consumedly over it’.¹⁶ First-hand revelations like these seemed to provide authentic insights into the unfolding romance and conveyed the couple’s emotional fulfilment and like-mindedness. Their compatibility was also communicated through large, front-page photographs with captions which highlighted their attractive physical features (Figure 1.1). Marina was described as a ‘tall, beautiful’ and ‘charming blue-eyed brunette’. The prince was similarly ‘tall, blue-eyed and good-looking’ and together they formed the ‘handsomest royal couple in Europe’.¹⁷

Figure 1.1. ‘Prince George engaged to Princess Marina’, Daily Mail, 29 August 1934, p. 9. © The British Library Board.

Romantic self-fulfilment, mutual understanding and sexual attraction became increasingly important to the way the British public viewed heterosexual relationships in this period.¹⁸ The media’s narration of the human drama of the royal engagement reflected these themes and was intended to encourage the public to empathize with the couple. The message that it was a ‘true love match’ also mirrored wider expectations relating to royal romance.¹⁹ After the First World War George V strengthened the British identity of the House of Windsor by breaking with the tradition of dynastic intermarriage and allowing his relatives to marry into the English and Scottish aristocracy. Beginning with Princess Patricia of Connaught’s wedding in 1919, this turn inwards towards so-called ‘commoners’ encouraged the belief that young royals now had the opportunity to select their spouses according to their personal desires. The king’s daughter, Princess Mary, and son, Prince Albert, duke of York, married suitors apparently of their choice in 1922 and 1923.²⁰ Notably, the media’s response to George and Marina’s romance was influenced by two Scandinavian royal love stories from the early 1930s as well. Princes Lennart and Sigvard of Sweden gave up their titles and positions in line to the throne in order to marry commoners of their choosing in 1932 and 1934 respectively. In both cases, British newsreels proclaimed ecstatically that ‘all the world loves a lover’ and emphasized that the princes had ignored King Gustaf V’s express wishes by ‘choosing to obey the dictates of [their] heart[s]’.²¹ These events augmented a royal emotional culture in which love was perceived as the key to happiness and, in the Swedish cases, as more important than duty. British Movietone News accordingly began its first newsreel on George and Marina’s betrothal by declaring that ‘all the world loves a lover, especially a royal lover’.²²

After their stay in Salzburg, the royal couple drove 200 miles by motorcar to the Bled home of Prince Paul. There they allowed British Movietone to record them walking in the gardens of the estate with their hosts and presented a ‘film greeting’ to audiences in Britain (Figure 1.2). As they stood side-by-side in front of the newsreel camera, George spoke first: ‘We have received so many congratulations, we want to thank everyone for all their kindness to us’. The princess then followed suit: ‘I am so very happy and looking forward to come to England [sic]’. This greeting was a remarkable innovation. Never before had British royalty directly addressed the public through the cinema.²³ Although the king had spoken to his subjects over the radio at Christmas for the previous two years, his messages avoided overt emotion and instead focused on social and political issues. Following the introduction of sound newsreels in the late 1920s, George and Marina were now able to record a greeting which provided viewers with what appeared to be informal glimpses into their romance. In reality, of course, these were highly choreographed scenes which most closely resembled a 1920s cinemagazine genre titled ‘The Stars at Home’.²⁴ This film series and others like it humanized famous people by exposing their home lives to public view: popular celebrities and politicians were shown in intimate surroundings engaging in everyday activities like gardening, sport or caring for pets. Given these themes, it was natural that Prince George’s German Shepherd made a brief appearance in his master’s arms as part of the Movietone film.

Figure 1.2. ‘Prince George and Princess Marina Send Greetings Through Movietone’, British Movietone News, 3 September 1934. © AP Archive.

After their trip to Bled, George and Marina parted ways, the prince returning to Britain and the princess to her home in Paris. The French capital had been a safe haven to the Greek royal family in their exile but, rather than dwell on the princess’s turbulent past, the press joined with officials in an attempt to ‘naturalize’ her as a member of the British royal family. On arriving back in her adoptive city, Marina agreed to another series of interviews, this time with newsreel reporters. These interviews formed part of a public relations campaign led by the princess and those close to her in order to play up her romance with George while simultaneously playing down her unfavourable status as an exiled royal. Reiterating the ideas expressed in the Movietone greeting, Marina emphasized how pleased she was to join the House of Windsor: ‘I love Paris, but obviously I am so happy to go to England and to become English’.²⁵ Marina’s father, Prince Nicholas, and Grace Ellison, who was a friend of the Greek royal family, also stressed to interviewers how ‘fond of England’ the princess was, that ‘there [was] nothing political in the marriage’ and that she ‘had always made it clear that she would never marry for anything but love’.²⁶ These authoritative voices minimized concerns about the suitability of the love match based on Marina’s inauspicious family history by highlighting instead the genuine affection which characterized the royal engagement and the princess’s enthusiasm at relinquishing her association with the Greek dynasty in order to become a British royal.

The other theme which Marina emphasized to the newsreel interviewers in Paris was her famous fashion style, discussing at length the plans for her wedding dress and trousseau. Along with the front-page press reports on the couple’s emotional fulfilment, coverage of the royal engagement focused on George and Marina’s glamour and particularly the princess’s dress sense. From the outset, it was presented as a signifier of her modernity:

The way the meaning of ‘chic’ eluded the News of the World’s journalist shows that Marina’s fashion style was highly modern, resisting classification. Royal fashion has long attracted attention and scholars have noted the princess’s distinctive elegance. A new colour – Marina blue – was named after her and she wore the first royal wedding dress in which line and style were more important than decoration.²⁸ The ultimate recognition of this style came in a twenty-six page centrepiece feature in Vogue which reviewed her wedding gown and trousseau.²⁹ By posing for the Vogue photographers and by explaining to the newsreel interviewers in Paris that her wedding dress would be made by a leading British designer, Edward Molyneux, Marina helped to build a media image defined by glamour which carried great appeal as part of a national culture that celebrated female fashion.³⁰ The impact this image had on sections of the public can be detected in the many letters which accompanied gifts of shoes, dresses and other accessories sent to Marina as wedding presents by fashion retailers – each desperate for the princess’s personal endorsement.³¹

With her highly modern style, the princess seemed well-matched in George and this public image of the like-minded lovers was again intended to dispel any lingering concerns regarding their suitability. The pleasure both were reported to take in dancing, art, theatre and cinema marked them out as members of a fashionable social elite renowned for its modernity.³² Moreover, motoring and smoking became key signifiers of modernity between the wars and these activities were enjoyed by George and Marina, as illustrated in front-page photographs published after their engagement: the prince sat at the wheel of a sports car next to the princess; both held a lit cigarette (Figure 1.3).³³ Indeed, George was famed for his love of speed. The News Chronicle characterized him as ‘ultra-modern’, remarking that ‘he is acknowledged as the best car driver in the Royal Family and rivals his brother, the Prince of Wales, as the best dancer’.³⁴ Comparisons like this one, and the news that Edward would act as George’s best man, linked the younger prince to the modern masculinity of his older brother with its thrill-seeking glamour.³⁵ The prince of Wales had come to personify the metropolitan society set and media coverage of George and Marina made it clear that they belonged to this exclusive caste of celebrity too.³⁶ Reports of the couple’s shared interests thus not only evoked the new culture of personal compatibility but also helped to reconfigure the kind of celebrity identity associated with the British royal family.

Figure 1.3. ‘Prince George’s Wedding Plans’, Daily Mirror, 30 August 1934, p. 1. © The British Library Board.

The celebrity of George and Marina differed, however, from that of the prince of Wales in one important respect. As heir to the throne, Edward’s public image was bound to his constitutional position and the British media refrained from presenting the prince of Wales in the same way as the film stars of the period: respectful of the distance between their camera lenses and the prince, they ensured that, in addition to informal images, he was presented in a more dignified manner as befitting a future king and emperor.³⁷ As more minor royals, the same rules did not apply to George and Marina and they broke with royal protocol by courting the media’s attention through more informal displays of public intimacy. This difference was particularly evident when Marina arrived in England from France in mid September en route to Balmoral, where she would discuss her wedding plans with her fiancé and his family. According to the media descriptions of her disembarkation at Folkestone, Marina captivated the crowds who had waited to greet her: ‘From the first moment she was seen – slim, beautiful and exquisitely dressed – excitedly waving a white handkerchief on the upper-deck of the cross-Channel steamer, the Princess enslaved the wildly cheering spectators massed on the pier’.³⁸ The press published large, front-page photographs of the princess smiling and waving to the crowds to emphasize how she had visibly interacted with spectators. These images were accompanied by the message delivered by Marina to reporters that, ‘I shall love your great nation very dearly, and it seems as though your people have already some affection for me’.³⁹ The princess’s eagerness to engage with the public by waving to them was, in fact, exceptional: the waving of an upraised arm or handkerchief was not something commonly associated with British royalty before 1934 and newspapers noted that this innovative gesture contrasted with the bowing traditionally used by the royal family to signal their appreciation of the crowd’s cheers.⁴⁰

At a time when European dictators were popularizing gestural salutes through the new media of film and photography in order to harness the support of their peoples and create visual images of disciplined nations united around the focal point of the leader, Marina’s wave may have similarly intensified the personal connections between members of the public and the royal family.⁴¹ Reporting the princess’s arrival in England, the News Chronicle informed readers that ‘she was soon waving both hands to [the crowd] almost as frantically as they were waving to her’.⁴² According to coverage like this, Marina’s wave brought her closer to the public, who were able to connect with her through new informal codes of etiquette and deportment. Both popular and quality newspapers highlighted this gestural rapport by juxtaposing photographs of the waving princess alongside images of large, excited crowds (Figure 1.4).⁴³ These juxtapositions presented Marina as an exalted celebrity with a mass following. The moment that best captured this imagery was when she and George became the first royals to wave from Buckingham Palace’s balcony following their wedding.⁴⁴ The media coverage of the Armistice celebrations outside the palace in November 1918 had transformed the royal balcony appearance into a ritual of national significance: the public were presented as symbolically united around the focal point of the monarchy.⁴⁵ Marina modernized this ritual to suit the more emotionally expressive 1930s. According to Pathé Gazette, the cheering that greeted the newly-titled duke and duchess of Kent as they emerged onto the balcony with their hands upheld could be heard a mile away and represented ‘a spontaneous demonstration of happy, affectionate, and loyal emotion’.⁴⁶ The many newsreel and press comments in this vein suggested that the more direct, informal modes of communication introduced by George and Marina worked to personalize the relationship between the House of Windsor and the public.

Perhaps even more significant than Marina’s popularization of the royal wave was the way she and George shared the first royal kiss ever caught on camera. When Marina arrived by train from Folkestone at Victoria Station in London she and the prince embraced for a fleeting moment, George kissing her on the cheek. But to judge from press reports it was much more romantic: ‘When Princess Marina stepped from the Folkestone boat train at Victoria yesterday Prince George took her in his arms and kissed her. Then she kissed him. For a moment both seemed to have forgotten everyone else’.⁴⁷ The Daily Express also drew attention to this description by capitalizing and emboldening its text. Despite effusive descriptions like this one, no British newspaper actually published photographs of the kiss. It is possible that this was because pictures would have failed to do justice to the press’s dramatic accounts – George’s peck on Marina’s cheek was hardly the passionate lovers’ greeting. Alternatively, it may have been that editors deemed it too risqué to publish a photograph of the kiss as it would have been the first time that the amorous gesture with its sexual connotations was visually portrayed in relation to royalty. Whatever the reasoning, the newsreels were not as reticent. Gaumont British News presented cinemagoers with the first onscreen royal kiss and this scoop initiated a much bolder approach to the exposure of royal intimacy, dispelling old taboos.⁴⁸ Reporting the second occasion that George welcomed his fiancé to England, a week before the wedding, the press printed front-page photographs of the couple kissing (Figure 1.5). Pathé went so far as to use the kiss as the backdrop to its title sequence, showing the momentary embrace twice in an attempt to attract viewers’ attention.⁴⁹

Figure 1.4. ‘London’s Warm-Hearted Welcome’, Daily Sketch, 17 September 1934, p. 1. © The British Library Board.

Figure 1.5. ‘Royal Lovers’ Greeting’, Daily Mirror, 22 November 1934, p. 1. © The British Library Board.

While the media drew special attention to the new kinds of intimacy which characterized the 1934 royal love story, it is important not to lose sight of George and Marina’s agency in the creation of their public images. The prince seems to have understood Marina’s popular appeal and he wrote to Prince Paul of Yugoslavia to describe spectators’ reactions to her initial arrival in London: ‘Everyone is so delighted with her – the crowd especially – ’cos when she arrived at Victoria Station they expected a dowdy princess – such as unfortunately my family are – but when they saw this lovely chic creature – they could hardly believe it and even the men were interested and shouted “Don’t change – don’t let them change you!”’.⁵⁰ The remark, ‘Don’t let them change you!’, can be read in two ways.⁵¹ On the one hand, it may have been intended to convey criticism of the machinations of a shadowy court and possibly those officials who Labour politician Stafford Cripps had claimed lurked behind the throne earlier in the year. On the other, and in line with Prince George’s interpretation, the comment might have reflected a public concern about the potentially stifling effects that the old-fashioned British monarchy could have on the modern Marina: it certainly seems that the princess’s unique glamour distinguished her from other royal women, including the duchess of York, who were less fashion-conscious. When Princess Alexandra of Denmark first arrived in London in anticipation of her marriage to the prince of Wales in 1863, the media feted her for her distinctive beauty and elegance.⁵² Now, more than seventy years on, Marina, who was a distant relative of Alexandra through the Danish royal line, was similarly celebrated for the personal qualities she brought to British shores and her modern royal style which, according to the unparalleled press and newsreel coverage, had captured the nation’s imagination.⁵³

Figure 1.6. ‘To-day’s Great Abbey Wedding’, Daily Mirror, 26 April 1923, p. 1. © The British Library Board.

George was intent on promoting the popular image which he shared with the princess. During their stay together in London, he and Marina sat for English society photographer Dorothy Wilding. To date, the most informal photographs taken of a royal couple had been those of the Yorks prior to their wedding in 1923: the couple posed next to one another, although there was no physical contact; the duke, dressed in a lounge suit, rested against a table with his arms crossed so that he and his fiancée, who was wearing a dress and a pearl necklace, were positioned at a similar height (Figure 1.6).⁵⁴ Wilding helped to craft much more emotionally expressive scenes between George and Marina which emphasized their modernity and the close bond the couple ostensibly shared. In one of the Wilding photographs, Marina, dressed in a dark, sleek dress, sat in an armchair with George – in pin-striped lounge suit – perched next to her, his arm draped over her shoulder.⁵⁵ However, the most intimate Wilding photograph showed the lovers side-on, George in front, with Marina resting her chin over his shoulder (Figure 1.7). Wilding had recently photographed the Hollywood couple Gertrude Lawrence and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in a similar pose.⁵⁶ The prince and princess’s public personae thus overlapped with both the celebrity of film stars and the society set, as conveyed through the art-deco modern style associated with Wilding’s portraiture in these years.⁵⁷

George gave express permission for the widespread reproduction of the Wilding photographs. The company Raphael Tuck & Sons wrote to the prince’s equerry, Major Butler, asking for George’s approval to produce a series of postcards using the photographs. Desmond Tuck noted that Wilding ‘made it perfectly clear that [the photographs had] not yet been passed for publication, but, with a view to the possibility that they might ultimately be, and in time for the Royal Wedding’, his firm had developed negative reproductions ‘in the hope that His Royal Highness may care to inspect them, and accord his sanction to us, to issue them for sale to the public’.⁵⁸ The granting or withholding of official approval was one of the main ways in which the royal household was able to control the cultural production of the monarchy’s iconography.⁵⁹ Thus Butler’s short reply, that ‘His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent has given his consent to the publication of the enclosed photographs’, conferred legitimacy on Tuck’s souvenir postcards and suggests that George approved of the intimate way in which they presented him and his fiancée.⁶⁰

Figure 1.7. ‘Raphael Tuck & Sons Ltd. announce Real Photo Postcards and Calendars of beautiful photographs by Dorothy Wilding of T.R.H. The Duke and Duchess of Kent’, Illustrated London News, 1 December 1934, p. 947. © The British Library Board.

The prince’s equerry played an active role in shaping George’s and Marina’s public images. He extended permission to the media and London restaurants to publish Wilding’s photographs and he also vetted images to ensure they were appropriate.⁶¹ The printers Valentine and Sons Ltd. wrote to Butler explaining they had received instructions from the postcard distributor Messrs Carreras to supply them with a series of photographic cigarette cards ‘depicting leading British popular personalities’ and that they were ‘particularly anxious’ George and Marina should be included in this series.⁶² This request reveals the extent to which the royal lovers had shot to fame on their engagement, since they were deemed to be sufficiently well-known subjects for inclusion on cigarette cards. More significant, though, was Butler’s reply: ‘You should allow me to see which photographs you intend to use, in case I might be able to suggest to you which ones would be suitable’.⁶³ This approach reveals how courtiers tried to control the visual image of the royal family and should be interpreted in light of the fact that there was a thriving trade in unofficial pictures of royalty. When Tuck originally wrote to Butler requesting permission to publish postcards of the Wilding photographs, he stated that ‘there are, regrettably, on the market, produced by certain other firms, reproductions of HRH Prince George and The Princess Marina, issued, presumably without sanction, and which do anything but justice to the Royal Personages they pretend to portray’.⁶⁴ At the time of Princess Mary’s wedding in 1922 courtiers had banned the commercial reproduction of royal coats of arms for fear of degrading the crown’s image.⁶⁵ But twelve years on the palace adopted a more proactive role in promoting intimate pictures of George and Marina as part of an official royal visual culture which was stimulated by a growing trade in the popular image of royalty and by a mass media committed to bringing royal domesticity closer to the public.

Given George and Marina’s glamour, it is perhaps unsurprising that after the prince was killed in a plane crash in 1942 a female Mass Observation respondent likened him to a Hollywood celebrity: ‘He was so popular – I really think he was the most popular member of the Royal Family. His visit to any factory would create excitement. The girls used to think of him as a film star’.⁶⁶ It is certainly the case that the media reported the couple’s romance to resonate with the popular themes of love, beauty and celebrity which dominated female-targeted news in this period. We should interpret the media’s narration of the 1934 royal engagement and wedding as forming part of an attempt by news editors to achieve this type of audience identification and simultaneously to define modern British womanhood along the contours of emotional fulfilment, fame and fashion.⁶⁷ Marina notably became the first member of the royal family whose style was celebrated by the media for its mass appeal. The Daily Herald published a photograph of ‘hats which Princess Marina liked in Paris being tried on in a London store yesterday’ and informed its readers that ‘ones just like them will soon be on sale’.⁶⁸

The media’s efforts to appeal to the perceived tastes of British women were also evident in the way the press prioritized female journalists’ insights into the royal romance. After its ‘first interview’ with the couple, the Daily Express printed an article by Winifred Loraine titled ‘Princess Marina – As She Really Is’.⁶⁹ This mini-biography focused on Marina’s domesticity, noting that ‘she can cook and make her own dresses’, in order to encourage readers to identify with her. The Daily Mail and Mirror also advertised reports prepared by their ‘special woman correspondent[s]’ – implying that, because of their gender, they offered a unique perspective on the love story.⁷⁰ The News of the World invited the romantic novelist Ruby Ayers to prepare some of its wedding coverage, her articles predictably climaxing in the kind of ‘happy ending’ for which she was renowned.⁷¹ And newsreel companies also employed women specifically to deliver commentaries on the royal romance. One such voiceover preceded British Movietone’s recording of George and Marina’s innovative ‘film greeting’ and the same female reporter went on to provide a number of other commentaries on the romance.⁷² The shift in tone was particularly striking because all the other stories in the same newsreels were narrated by men. These strategies, then, reveal the ways in which news editors sought to tailor their coverage of the royal wedding to the perceived tastes of an expanding female audience. Equally, though, they should be interpreted as evidence of the process by which British women’s interests were discursively defined in terms of love, glamour and consumerism.

Staging a wedding, building a nation

In late 1934, the British faced the challenges of protracted socio-economic dislocation at home and growing aggression from foreign powers which seemed intent on disrupting Europe’s fragile peace.⁷³ The threat that this kind of disorder represented to crowned heads of state was spectacularly demonstrated at the beginning of October by the assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia during a diplomatic mission to France. He had been working towards a pact with the French foreign minister to unite southern Europe against Hitler when he was shot and killed by a Bulgarian revolutionary; the newsreels projected the brutality of the monarch’s death around the world.⁷⁴ The courtiers who surrounded the British throne and oversaw the royal family’s public relations were highly sensitive to these social and political changes. In staging George and Marina’s wedding they saw an opportunity to democratize the House of Windsor’s public image by presenting royal Christian family life as a focal point for national emotional identification. The scale of the media interest in George and Marina’s romance distinguished it from earlier royal love stories and new media channels had helped to create a public image which was more intimate and accessible than ever before. But courtiers understood that democratization via new media existed in tension with the concern that overexposure could damage the reputation of royalty at a time when the crown’s future as the leading symbol which held the nation together was by no means assured. The royal household thus sought to elevate the dignity of the royal wedding while ensuring that the British public could participate in it in innovative ways. This tension played out in the exchanges between courtiers, clerics and newsmen as they choreographed the first royal family event to be broadcast live from Westminster abbey to the nation and the world.

The first meeting at which these different interest groups came together in order to organize the royal wedding took place at the king’s Scottish residence, Balmoral castle. Following their stay in London, George, Marina and the princess’s parents travelled north aboard the Aberdeen express and, when they disembarked at Ballater train station, the royal lovers were given what The Times described as a ‘real Highland welcome’ by the thousands of spectators who had gathered to greet them and who crowded the roads leading to Balmoral.⁷⁵ On reaching the castle the party were met by the Balmoral Highlanders in full ceremonial dress and the king’s piper playing the ‘Hielan‘ Laddie’. Then, clad in tartan country attire, George V and his consort Queen Mary received their son and their Greek guests, posing arm-in-arm for photographers (Figure 1.8). Newspapers stated that these ‘delightfully informal pictures’, which included Prince George in kilt and sporran, showed the royals enjoying a ‘family joke’ (it later emerged that the king was attempting to marshal his relatives into position for the photographers – to the amusement of all involved).⁷⁶ This was the first of several social engagements staged at the monarch’s Scottish home which were widely reported on by the media. As with the extensive coverage that was later devoted to stories about the gold mined for Marina’s wedding ring in North Wales, descriptions of the ‘Ghillies’ Ball’ and the ‘Highland reel’ danced by the prince and princess enhanced the image of a royal family that seemed to value the customs of the Celtic nations, strengthening the idea that all Britain could unite in celebrating the wedding.⁷⁷ Courtiers and the archbishop of Canterbury, who had also journeyed to Balmoral to help plan the marriage, believed the event should have this kind of inclusive appeal and two issues were of particular concern: what role could the Greek Orthodox Church – to which the princess and her family belonged – play as part of a wedding conducted in the Church of England’s ceremonial centre, Westminster abbey? And would the king grant permission to the BBC to broadcast the wedding service from inside the church to listeners across Britain?

Figure 1.8. ‘Princess Marina Joins in Family Joke at Balmoral’, Daily Express, 19 September 1934, p. 20. © The British Library Board.

George V’s private secretary, Sir Clive Wigram, had written to Archbishop Cosmo Lang from Balmoral on 4 September, noting that he was pleased the prelate and royal almoner would meet Marina and her parents as ‘there is a good deal to be arranged’:

This letter revealed two things. First, it showed that George V and Queen Mary were concerned about the way in which royal family occasions were publicly staged and that they trusted Lang (as a long-standing friend and spiritual counsellor) to help them to plan the event.⁷⁹ Second, in referring to Queen Mary’s suggestion that the Greek Orthodox Church bless the marriage in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace, the letter highlighted the potential problems a joint ceremony might create. Historians and royal biographers have presented the queen as an aloof, imperious figure of the Victorian period, but here she revealed a shrewd awareness of the importance of modern public relations in promoting the House of Windsor’s position as a model of Christian family life.⁸⁰ In 1919 Princess Patricia had been the first member of the royal family to marry in Westminster abbey for more than five centuries.⁸¹ The staging of her nuptials and the royal weddings of 1922 and 1923 in the abbey turned these events into spectacles of national significance by increasing the public visibility of royal domesticity. However, this visibility had far-reaching implications. Those close to the throne, including Wigram and the queen, had to consider how to organize royal weddings in order to broaden the monarchy’s popular appeal while maintaining the dignity of crown and Church alike.⁸²

When Lang solicited guidance from colleagues on the matter of the Greek service, Canon J. A. Douglas, general secretary of the Church of England council on foreign relations, was ‘strongly of the opinion that it would be better to hold a separate ceremony so far as the Greek Orthodox Church is concerned’. Douglas agreed with Queen Mary that the Greek service ‘might very well take place in Buckingham Palace’s Chapel, or indeed anywhere in Buckingham Palace, before a small concourse of immediate relatives’.⁸³ His reasoning was rooted in a concern for the monarchy’s dignity as a national symbol and for reverence for the Anglican marriage service:

Douglas’s belief that the public would find Greek marital rituals ‘ridiculous’ and his sensitivity to the opinion of the ‘ordinary Britisher’ reflected a deeper concern within elite circles regarding the need to appeal to the ‘people’ as a specific social formation.⁸⁵ National culture was partly centred on what historians have termed an ‘undemonstrative Protestantism’ in this period; and this is clear from the way Douglas’s suggestion – that British customs were incompatible with Greek religious practices – persuaded the archbishop that the Orthodox ceremony was best kept hidden from public view.⁸⁶ In conversation with the king at Balmoral, Lang presented the case against a joint service by delicately stressing that ‘it would lengthen the proceedings greatly’ and that the ‘Orthodox ceremonies were much too elaborate for a service in the Abbey’.⁸⁷ The queen’s original idea was thus adopted: it was agreed that the Greek service would take place in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace straight after the abbey ceremony and it would ‘only be attended by the respective families, their suites, and any other persons specially invited’.⁸⁸ In this way Lang carefully helped to arrange a wedding which he thought would appeal to the British public’s sensibilities.

The other important matter raised at the meeting between the British and Greek royal families was whether the king would permit the BBC to broadcast the wedding ceremony from Westminster abbey. On learning about the Balmoral family gathering, the controller of programmes at the BBC, Colonel Alan Dawnay, had written to Prince George’s comptroller, Major Ulick Alexander, to propose the idea. Although historians have judged Dawnay’s abilities as the second-in-command at the BBC (under Sir John Reith) unfavourably, his war record and patrician connections meant he was the perfect go-between to communicate with a royal household which largely comprised other ex-military men.⁸⁹ Addressing Alexander as ‘my dear Ulick’ (the two were old friends having both passed through Eton and served in the Coldstream Guards together during the First World War), Dawnay explained that the BBC wanted to broadcast the wedding service, remarking that it would ‘naturally be an occasion of intense interest to listeners everywhere’:

Dawnay’s letter suggests that he viewed the monarchy as a symbol which had the potential to unite the nation and empire in these years. His approach was characteristic of a BBC which sought greater access to royal family events in order to elevate the monarchy’s unifying role while simultaneously cementing its own credentials as an esteemed and internationally significant media institution.⁹¹

The king and Wigram also seem to have understood the importance of the crown’s unifying role. Alexander was able to reply to Dawnay that he had ‘brought up the question about Prince George’s wedding service being broadcast’ and ‘there is not likely to be any objection, provided you have already obtained the permission of the Dean of Westminster to do this’.⁹² Approval from the abbey authorities was, however, slow to arrive. By the time Dawnay wrote to Alexander again to explain that the dean had agreed to the broadcast and that the BBC would now like official royal consent so that it could begin its preparations, newspapers had got wind of the preliminary plans and revealed that radio listeners would be able to participate in the wedding ceremony from their homes.⁹³ Dawnay included a postscript in his letter noting his regret that the press had made a ‘premature announcement to the effect that the ceremony will be broadcast. I can assure you that the leak has not come from here’.⁹⁴ Unfortunately for Dawnay, the leak had come from the BBC. In what was almost certainly a reflection of his managerial incompetence as controller of programmes, Dawnay had earlier instructed his director of outside broadcasts, Gerald Cock, to let the Daily Mail’s columnist, Collie Knox, have the scoop on the BBC’s wedding preparations as soon as permission to broadcast had been acquired from the abbey.⁹⁵

The palace and abbey authorities expressed disappointment with the BBC’s indiscretion and Cock had to work hard to dispel their concerns and regain their trust.⁹⁶ This episode revealed how the organizers of the wedding had to fight to control the release of information about its planning against the pressures exerted on them by reporters hungry for disclosure. Equally, though, this chain of events showed how communications channels linking the BBC to the royal household were complicated by elite codes of etiquette, with the broadcaster negotiating court protocol in its efforts to bring royalty closer to the public.

Luckily for the BBC, George V ultimately gave his official consent to the wedding broadcast ‘provided that the mechanical arrangements in connection with [the] ceremony do not obtrude on the vision’.⁹⁷ This message, written by the king’s assistant private secretary, Sir Frank Mitchell, to the lord chamberlain of the royal household, again revealed a monarch who was anxious to maintain the religious significance of the service. The message was relayed to Sir Edward Knapp-Fisher, the receiver general of Westminster abbey.⁹⁸ These three men were intimately involved in maintaining the dignity of the wedding ceremony in the presence of the new form of media. Cock had to assure Knapp-Fisher that the BBC did not want to broadcast a commentary over the wedding service but, rather, that commentator Howard Marshall would describe to listeners ‘scenes outside the Abbey’. Cock also stressed that the BBC’s technical plans would enable ‘a perfect reproduction of the entire service’ and that no equipment would ‘be visible to those in the Abbey, with the single exception of a fine wire and one microphone’.⁹⁹ Knapp-Fisher and the lord chamberlain were happy with these arrangements and it seems that the microphone placement in the abbey had the desired impact.¹⁰⁰ Writing to Cock after the wedding ceremony, the Sunday Dispatch’s radio correspondent, J. G. Reekie, told him: ‘I listened in from my sick bed and was amazed. I don’t know where the “mikes” were placed, but you certainly found the right places for them!’¹⁰¹

Figure 1.9. ‘“I Will” – Vow that Thrilled the World’, Daily Mirror, 30 November 1934, p. 1. © The British Library Board.

Knapp-Fisher also helped to control the media’s access to the marriage ceremony. As with the royal weddings of the 1920s, courtiers arranged the distribution of press and photography passes to the abbey through the chairman of the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association: Lord George Riddell in 1922/23 and Sir Thomas McAra in 1934.¹⁰² However, the patrician connections which linked the palace and abbey authorities to the offices of The Times meant that newspaper received special consideration. Not only did the royal household entrust The Times with taking the official photographs of George and Marina’s wedding service but the assistant editor of the paper, Robert Barrington-Ward, was also able to ask Knapp-Fisher informally if he could reserve seats for two of his reporters in the abbey.¹⁰³ The reply revealed the privileges extended to The Times: ‘My dear Robin, the Press arrangements are in the hands of Mr Frank Mitchell of Buckingham Palace, but I should like to say that if a member of your Staff would like a roving commission in the Abbey, he would certainly be at liberty to have it. I need hardly say that Court dress would be essential for the perambulating man’.¹⁰⁴ The gentlemanly codes of conduct which characterized the men’s relationship meant that Knapp-Fisher trusted The Times to maintain discretion and dignity in its coverage of the royal wedding. Indeed, the photographs of George and Marina taken by The Times during the service, which were subsequently distributed to other media organizations, followed the respectful, distant style of those taken at the royal weddings of the early 1920s. The couple can be seen standing in the aisle facing Archbishop Lang with their backs to the viewer (Figure 1.9). By refraining from presenting close-up photographs of their facial expressions, which would inevitably have highlighted the human emotion of the scenes, these images sought to preserve the sanctity of the pact the couple were making in front of God’s representative.¹⁰⁵

The dean of Westminster, William Foxley Norris, helped Knapp-Fisher to regulate media access to the wedding service. Courtiers were particularly concerned with controlling the royal family’s visual image and the idea of making a newsreel film of the wedding ceremony was out of the question. But this did not prevent newsreel companies from making unofficial advances to the abbey authorities requesting access to film the marriage service – all of which were subsequently rebuffed by the dean or receiver general.¹⁰⁶ There was also consternation among palace and abbey officials about the potential recording of the BBC broadcast of the service. For the previous two years, the gramophone company HMV had produced records of the king’s Christmas broadcasts. On learning that HMV planned to make a recording of the royal wedding ceremony, Wigram urgently wrote to Foxley Norris asking him if he could stop it.¹⁰⁷ While this issue was amicably resolved by HMV withdrawing, Universal News recorded the section of the royal wedding broadcast in which George and Marina exchanged their marriage vows and played this audio over still photographs of the ceremony in its newsreel coverage of the event, presenting it as the ‘biggest scoop for years’.¹⁰⁸ This recording contradicted the express wishes of Knapp-Fisher, who had earlier rejected applications from other newsreel companies to record the radio transmission; and Foxley Norris wrote to the editor of Universal News threatening legal action if he did not oversee the deletion of the offending soundtrack from newsreels which had been distributed to cinemas.¹⁰⁹

In this way, then, the royal household and Church of England worked in tandem to try to ensure the dignity of the wedding was maintained, and not undermined, by media organizations which stood to gain commercially from exposés. Although Universal News’s scoop was indicative of an underhand culture of disclosure, most media organizations proved ready to toe the official line and help to popularize a respectful image of a family monarchy as the emotional centre-point of British national life. Back at Broadcasting House, Gerald Cock and his team were making arrangements for a wedding broadcast which would communicate the impression that the nation had gathered to celebrate George and Marina’s marriage. Earlier in the summer, the Oxford-educated Howard Marshall had achieved distinction as one of Britain’s most recognizable wireless commentators with his ball-by-ball descriptions of the cricket test match series between England and Australia.¹¹⁰ Marshall’s recently acquired fame and background, with his low, dulcet tones and assured manner, made him the perfect choice to voice the royal wedding broadcast.¹¹¹ His royal wedding commentary was notable for the way it addressed listeners as active participants in the celebrations. A good example of this can be discerned in his closing lines after the marriage: ‘It has been a great occasion, and now, as we take our leave of the Royal couple, I’m sure you will all join with me in wishing long life and all happiness to the Duke and Duchess of Kent’.¹¹² The words highlighted show how Marshall used an inclusive, personalized rhetoric to encourage his audience to feel as though they were participating in the event along with those who had gathered in London to celebrate the royal wedding.

The early 1930s were also notable for the BBC’s experimentation with listener identification: the broadcaster tried to reach out to expanding female and working-class audiences through human-interest stories that appealed to the emotions.¹¹³ The BBC’s coverage of the royal wedding is a good case in point. An internal circulating memo shows that Cock’s team wanted to juxtapose Marshall’s commentary, with its ‘privileged’ perspective, alongside a ‘Cockney’s impressions from the crowd’ as part of an evening bulletin on the royal nuptials.¹¹⁴ The memo included the suggestion that ‘this second speaker might be a woman’. This identification of a female, working-class voice from London as a desirable feature of the coverage should again be attributed to the way in which elite institutions including the monarchy, Church and BBC sought to engage in new ways with what they perceived as ‘ordinary’ people in these years. Indeed, it was between the wars that the Cockney was transformed by the media into an archetype of national working-class identity.¹¹⁵ The idea that the second speaker might also be female mirrored the way the media sought to tailor its coverage of the royal wedding to the perceived tastes of women. As plans for the broadcast developed, news editor Ralph Murray took special precautions to ensure a suitable candidate provided this novel perspective:

This passage, which suggested that special care was needed to prepare for contact with working-class people, shows just how innovative the desire to reflect the ‘crowd mentality’ was. These negotiations also seem to point to the BBC’s concern that the working-class voice should support the broadcaster’s official interpretation of the royal wedding. The BBC thus saw the 1934 royal wedding as a suitable moment to explore popular opinion in order to enhance the vision of a nation united around the crown. This early example of a vox-pop interview sought to shed light on a particular version of popular opinion and anticipated Mass Observation’s ethnographic intervention into national life at George VI’s coronation in 1937. Royal events can thus be seen to have exerted a democratizing influence on British society by stimulating explorations of wider public attitudes.¹¹⁷

The BBC also worked to generate an image of the British nation gathered around the focal point of the marriage through its technical arrangements for the wedding broadcast. BBC editorial policy for the programme specified that listeners should be able to appreciate ‘crowd noises and general effects’: the engineer faded up the peal of the abbey bells and the sounds made by spectators in order to help immerse those listening in the events as they unfolded.¹¹⁸ Indeed, one of the very few complaints levelled at the BBC by some listeners after the wedding was that Marshall’s commentary had at times been ‘too continuous to allow crowd effects etc. to stir the imagination’.¹¹⁹ This suggests that the audience wanted to engage vicariously in the event and expected to hear sounds that would help to achieve this effect. Newsreel film editors similarly understood the importance of crowd noises to the experience of their viewers and amplified the sounds of cheering which attended scenes along the procession route and outside Buckingham Palace in order to achieve symbolic auditory exaltation of the royals.¹²⁰

The British media’s emphasis on the crowds which assembled in London for the royal wedding had a deeper significance in the troubled context of the early 1930s. Before the event, news headlines reported that one million people were expected to travel to the capital from other parts of the country aboard specially chartered overnight rail services, boosting the transport industry and injecting £15 million into the tourism and hospitality sectors.¹²¹ The Daily Express presented the wedding as a more direct stimulus for trade, claiming that ‘hundreds will marry on November 29th’ (the same day as the royal couple) as part of a ‘love boom week’.¹²² While the most damaging effects of the interwar economic crisis had passed by late 1934, the media clearly envisioned the royal wedding as having a positive effect on the nation’s finances by bringing people together from the furthest corners of Britain. The royal household also took precautionary measures to maintain the idea that the wedding would benefit the economy. Marina had asked Edward Molyneux to create her wedding outfits in Paris, but this led to a dispute with courtiers because royal ladies were expected to set an example to the population by ‘Buying British’ to support the economy. In complying with this obligation, Molyneux designed her a wedding dress that would be made in London and a trousseau that would be made in Paris out of British materials. This proved a fitting entente cordiale, but newspapers went to special lengths to stress that British tailors would benefit from Marina’s fashion choices.¹²³

The media narrative that the British public’s ‘great invasion’ of London for the wedding strengthened national ties was made even more explicitly by newspapers which claimed that the event witnessed the temporary easing of social distinctions and class animosities. Reports focused on the good-natured crowds and the degree to which people of different backgrounds had gathered together on the procession route the night before wedding day:

Likening the mood on the procession route to the public response to the Armistice in 1918, the writer Geraint Goodwin described a unique moment of cohesion which, he suggested, transcended social tensions. The same sentiment can be detected in newspaper reports which presented the wedding as ‘the day that made the nation happier’ and as a ‘public event not, for once, depressing – as so much “news” is in these troubled times’.¹²⁵

It is significant that there were very few dissenting media voices which offered alternative interpretations of the 1934 royal wedding. Naturally, the loudest criticism of the event came from the communist Daily Worker, which consistently stressed to its readership the economic disparity that separated the privileged lives of the royal family from those of the unemployed labourers who lived in Britain’s depressed industrial communities. Typical was the Worker’s front-page coverage on royal wedding day, which claimed that the House of Windsor contributed nothing to society yet received handsome state-sponsored benefits through their civil-list payments.¹²⁶ The headline, ‘Out-Of-Work Princess Signs on for Dole’, conveyed this message, as did the front-page cartoon, ‘Joy-Day in the Royal Rabbit-warren’, which took another swipe at Marina by suggesting to readers that ‘royal parasites’ were welcomed in Britain, whereas they had been expelled by nations like Soviet Russia and Greece (Fig. 1.10). Interestingly, the accompanying front-page article also presented monarchy as a business operation that had specialized in exploiting ‘the masses’:

Figure 1.10. ‘Out-Of-Work Princess Signs on for Dole’, Daily Worker, 29 November 1934, p. 1. © The British Library Board.

The Daily Worker’s royal wedding-day leader column reiterated this message by noting how ‘bitter thoughts and feelings will be uppermost in the minds of the workers to-day, as they reflect upon the pomp, luxury and wealth that is being poured out upon two representatives of Royalty, who never in their lives have done one useful thing’.¹²⁷ The Sunday newspaper Reynolds’s Illustrated News, which had been a strong advocate of republicanism in the nineteenth century, also presented mixed coverage of the royal wedding. While most of its content concerned British party politics, it contained some celebratory reports on the marriage, as well as readers’ letters that challenged the official narrative of royal wedding day – most notably arguing that ‘privileged people’ would benefit from the provision of expensive seats along the marital procession route, while ‘ordinary people’ would have to watch through periscopes at the back of the crowds.¹²⁸ It is worth keeping in mind that the circulation of both these newspapers was low. Official estimates put the Daily Worker’s daily circulation in this period at only 15,000, whereas the popular London dailies – the Mirror, Express, Mail, Herald and News Chronicle – sold in millions.¹²⁹ Perhaps the most notable outcome of the Daily Worker’s critical coverage of the royal wedding was that the Home Office instigated a police investigation in to its proprietor, A. L. Morton, and cartoonist, W. D. Rowney (known by the pen name ‘Maro’), and raised the possibility that criminal proceedings could be brought against both men for the way they sought to undermine the monarchy. These concerns persisted into 1935 and were renewed at the time of George V’s silver jubilee following another flurry of critical articles and cartoons. However, ultimately the Home Office decided against prosecution, believing that apart from a small minority of communists, the nation was ‘undivided in its devotion to the Crown’ and it was therefore unnecessary to draw additional attention to what one official referred to as the ‘scurrilous rubbish’ of the Daily Worker.¹³⁰

The mainstream media reproduced the image of a British people united around the monarchy through the dissemination of large photographs of the London crowds. While this was not a novel phenomenon, the pictures evoked a vision of a multitude of loyal subjects who had gathered to revere royalty.¹³¹ What was new, though, was the way newsreel cameras captured scenes of surging spectators as they overcame the police cordon on the procession route outside Buckingham Palace, running towards the palace gates as if drawn to the royal family by magnetism.¹³² Equally, in 1934, for the first time, the royal household permitted photographers and cameramen access to Buckingham Palace’s roof, enabling them to capture vast panoramas of the crowds below.¹³³ Tens of thousands of faces could be seen in these images, with the geometric layout of the Mall and Victoria memorial helping to convey the orderly nature of the assembled masses. Newspapers and newsreels juxtaposed these images with scenes of the royal family standing on the balcony, the bride and groom waving to the crowds.¹³⁴ This juxtaposition was particularly striking in the Daily Sketch, which pictured Marina waving – the handkerchief she held aloft was imperfectly photographed and blurred to emphasize her special gestural rapport with the public (Figure 1.11). In this way the media worked with courtiers to create images of a loyal citizenry united around the family monarchy, enhancing the interwar narrative of the well-ordered British public sphere.¹³⁵

Figure 1.11. ‘The Bride Waves, the Crowd Cheers’, Daily Sketch, 30 November 1934, p. 25. © The British Library Board.

Archbishop Lang also projected an image of a people united in their emotional connections to the House of Windsor in his royal wedding address, which he delivered to those who had gathered in Westminster abbey and to radio listeners across Britain and the world:

In his opening sentences Lang reinvigorated the idea of a national family monarchy – proposed by Bagehot almost seventy years previously – modernizing the imagery of a nation joined together around the House of Windsor by stressing how new mass-communication technologies had enabled listeners to join in, and empathize with, a royal wedding. Lang encouraged his listeners to internalize the idea that the royal family were at the centre of British society and that they symbolized a Christian model of domesticity with which the nation identified. In so doing, he helped to recalibrate British citizenship through a language which stressed personal devotion to the family monarchy.

The ‘Listener’s Wedding’

Writing to the archbishop of Canterbury two days after the wedding, George V recorded his pleasure at the way the event had been popularly received:

While this letter reveals the king’s confidence in Ramsay MacDonald’s National Government, it also suggests that officials had staged the royal wedding to help ease some of the social and political strains that afflicted British public life in late 1934. George V thanked the archbishop for his help in arranging the wedding, emphasized how they had ‘done [their] best’ to bring the nation together and stated how pleased he was with the dignity and simplicity of the abbey ceremony. Some social elites and ordinary members of the public shared the king’s sentiment that the wedding had helped to unite Britain. Lang noted that he received many letters congratulating him on his role in the wedding and some of the correspondence he kept revealed the ways in which different sections of society had come together to celebrate the marriage.¹³⁸ Charles Wyndham described listening to the broadcast from ‘an island in Parliament Square’, said that he had ‘heard perfectly’ and that ‘every word was followed most reverently by the vast crowd’. He stated that the ‘climax’ was Lang’s address, which had been met with awe – ‘you could have heard a pin drop’ – and he remarked that, when the archbishop had finished, ‘nobody said anything for a moment and then I heard three or 4 young artisan or clerk sort of men behind me agreeing that it was “very nice – very nice indeed”’.¹³⁹ It is entirely possible that Wyndham invented these details or that the people he claimed to have observed publicly articulated opinions under the pressures of what they deemed to be socially appropriate, thus conforming to the dominant royalist interpretation of the event. But, taken at face value, his letter implied that the different classes of people who gathered in central London to hear the broadcast over loudspeaker systems were captivated by the ceremony and, in particular, Lang’s address.

Elma Paget, wife of the retired bishop of Chester, similarly wrote to Lang to share with him some of the comments made by her lodgers on hearing the royal wedding broadcast:

If Paget’s words are reliable, then it would seem that the broadcast had a strong emotional impact on audiences as they listened to the wedding and that Lang rose to the occasion by combining the ‘grand’ with the ‘homely’ in his address on the family monarchy. Indeed, this idea was echoed in a letter written to Lang by Sir Samuel Hoare. He had been present in the abbey alongside Viscount Hailsham and both men agreed that ‘it could not have been better. You held the balance so well between the ceremonial and the intimate’.¹⁴¹ Thus, the archbishop’s expert command of his audiences’ feelings, both in Westminster and across the airwaves, evoked powerful responses from his listeners as they empathized with the ‘ordinary’ family story at the heart of the event.

This blending of the intimate with the dignified was a theme noted by radio listeners who wrote to Gerald Cock in order to congratulate the BBC. W. V. Towlett from Kent suggested that ‘the pomp and splendour of the occasion, the perfect choral accompaniment and the beautiful simplicity of the Archbishop’s address must have made a deep impression on many homes and recalled the “beautiful” side of life which is all too rare’.¹⁴² E. G. from Ilford, Essex, used similar language in extending to Cock their ‘heartiest congratulations on effecting a most magnificent broadcast. The simple beauty of the service was enhanced thereby’.¹⁴³ Meanwhile, Annie Maudsley from Southport was among several writers who emphasized the lucidity with which the service was broadcast. She explained that she had listened in on her portable ‘Pye’ wireless set and that ‘the wedding service came through perfectly. Every word distinct. I don’t think I should have heard so well had I been in the Abbey itself … it was just wonderful and would give millions of people the greatest pleasure’.¹⁴⁴ The clarity with which the service was transmitted by radio thus enabled an intimate, immersive audience experience as captured in words such as ‘beautiful’, ‘deep’ and, the phrase of another listener from Bristol, that ‘every word of the Bride’s and Groom’s responses was perfectly audible’.¹⁴⁵

The broadcast of the royal wedding also generated temporal concurrence – the sharing of time among a people – which worked imaginatively to unite listeners as part of a national community.¹⁴⁶ Letter writers conveyed this sense of participation in their descriptions of the ‘millions of people’ and ‘many homes’ that joined in with the wedding. The broadcast therefore seems to have enhanced affective integration around the focal point of the monarchy, with members of the public emotionally identifying with the royal family and with a national collective as they participated in the wedding together. The language of an imagined collective which joined around the wedding broadcast also manifested itself in letters written by ordinary people to George and Marina themselves. Addressing the princess after the event, ex-serviceman Arthur Thompson from Westcliffe-on-Sea intimated that the broadcast had had a socially unifying effect on British people, bringing them together through a shared emotional identification with the lovers: ‘I am sure you will not think me rude in writing you like this but I was so impressed when listening to your wedding on the wireless that I simply had to express my feelings. I am simply one of millions of my countrymen who joined in welcoming and wishing you wishes which came not only by cheering but from the Heart’.¹⁴⁷ Thompson articulated a strong empathy which, he emphasized, linked him intimately from his heart to the princess and he believed that he shared this feeling with his fellow Britons. Seventy-nine-year-old Reverend William Waldren from Lingfield, Surrey, expressed similar sentiments in his letter to the prince: ‘We were all brightened and cheered in hearing the lovely Service by wireless from the Abbey and full of good hopes and joy for your sake – no Service I can remember seemed so exactly what it should be as this one; it was in the truest sense Divine’.¹⁴⁸ Waldren described his experience of the royal wedding in terms of its uplifting spiritual appeal but also remarked that the BBC’s broadcast had evoked in him and those with whom he listened feelings of hope and joy for George and Marina.

The press loudly championed the idea that the broadcast had brought media audiences together. Headlines echoed Lang’s address, proclaiming it the ‘Listener’s Wedding’ and the ‘Wedding Service All the World Attended’.¹⁴⁹ As already discussed, many reports on the event presented the monarchy as the symbol which united Britain at a time of national and international instability. It is significant that the press also made a point of highlighting how people had gathered across the country to listen to the BBC broadcast together. Whereas children benefitted from a school holiday to mark the royal wedding, it was a normal working day for the rest of the population. However, this did not preclude groups assembling to hear the broadcast. The Manchester Guardian described how, for example, people had gone to Manchester’s shops and restaurants to listen together:

The use of public listening venues like shops, as was the case here, prefigured the more intimate reception of the 1937 coronation broadcast, which most people heard in their own homes, or in the homes of friends or family.¹⁵¹

A number of letters written by readers to the press after the wedding also drew attention to the international situation in their interpretation of the event. In the weeks leading up to the marriage, newspapers were not only overwhelmed with stories on royal wedding minutiae, but also by articles on the growing unrest which characterized European politics. Along with the assassination of the king of Yugoslavia, journalists were particularly exercised by German rearmament and the threat which Hitler’s dictatorship represented to the Continent’s fragile peace.¹⁵² It seems the chasm that separated Britain’s ostensibly joyful mood as it prepared for the royal wedding and Europe’s tumultuous politics in late 1934 helped to crystallize an image of a British people uniquely united through their emotional connections to monarchy. A letter from J. C. Fullton of London was printed by the Daily Mirror in its readers’ correspondence section under the title ‘Hailing the Throne’ the day after the royal nuptials: ‘This week thousands have seen the nation “hailing” our Royal Family. What a blessing that we have a Throne to salute, instead of being obliged to “hail” some humbugging dictator!’¹⁵³ This positive appraisal of the monarchy contrasted its national symbolic importance to that of dictatorship at a time when Hitler was making disingenuous claims about building a ‘peace army’.¹⁵⁴ The next day there followed a plethora of other letters from readers in London on the topic of the crown. P. F. Ryley stated that ‘the great advantage of monarchy to any country is that the throne stands above Party. No newly raised-up Dictator, however able, can possibly command the respect due to Kingship’. Ryley opined that ‘in this century we may well see a revival of monarchy, which appeared to be dying, even in England, at the end of the eighteenth century’ – suggesting that the wedding had helped to revitalize the royal family’s popular appeal. Meanwhile, ‘S. T.’ pithily described two opposing political systems: ‘A dictatorship obviously doesn’t go with a monarchy. If proof is wanted – look at the Dictator-run countries of Europe today’.¹⁵⁵ The crown’s symbolism of political freedom and neutrality thus contrasted with the ‘vulgarities of fascism’ in this period.¹⁵⁶ Equally, it seems from letters written to newspapers and the stage-managers of the 1934 royal wedding that mass media coverage of royal events like George and Marina’s romance and marriage had the effect of emphasizing the integrative, stabilizing role that the monarchy had on British national life – and that this contrasted vividly to the political uncertainty that reigned in Europe.

Conclusion

George and Marina’s royal wedding had important consequences beyond 1934. Most significantly, their romance helped to shape official and popular responses to the public announcement in December 1936 that Edward VIII wanted to marry the American socialite Wallis Simpson. It was unthinkable to the clergy – and particularly Cosmo Lang, who had stressed the indissoluble nature of marriage during George and Marina’s wedding ceremony only two years earlier – that the new king (who was, after all, supreme governor of the Church of England) should be permitted to marry a woman who had been divorced twice. This view was generally shared by Britain’s political and media elite and, together with the archbishop, they convinced the king that his regal status was compromised by his choice of wife and that he should abdicate.¹⁵⁷

Under George V, the British monarchy adhered to Bagehot’s idea that the royal family should act as ‘the head of our morality’.¹⁵⁸ Despite George and Marina’s complicated backstories, the 1934 royal wedding was celebrated as the most spectacular episode in a series of events that emphasized the domesticity and Christian fidelity of the House of Windsor. With the help of a forward-thinking BBC and that more traditional organ of societal authority, the Church of England, the royal household carefully orchestrated the marriage to enhance the national appeal of the family monarchy among media audiences, while maintaining the dignity of the crown. Edward VIII’s decision to marry Wallis Simpson two years later scandalized the establishment precisely because it threatened the domestic ideal that royalty had publicly elevated in the years preceding his short reign: the moral template for monarchy diligently promoted at the time of George and Marina’s romance was endangered by Edward’s transgression. However, as we shall see, the king’s abdication and the succession of his younger brother as George VI ultimately reinforced the moral principles that the House of Windsor championed in the 1930s, with the new monarch’s moral probity and happy family life echoing those of his father and contrasting with his older brother’s decadent, irreligious and childless lifestyle.¹⁵⁹

Letters written to Edward VIII by his subjects at the time of the abdication crisis, however, reveal another way in which George and Marina’s romance had a lasting effect on public life. More than ever before, their relationship was celebrated as a love match. The couple had worked with the British media to publicize a story that drew attention to their happiness and which resonated with the new emotional cultures of personal fulfilment and compatibility. Many of the letters Edward VIII received in December 1936 which encouraged him to follow his heart and marry the woman he loved revealed their authors’ strong identification with the kind of modern romance embodied by George and Marina in 1934.¹⁶⁰ Female letter writers were particularly drawn to this embryonic form of ‘companionate love’ with its emphasis on emotional satisfaction; and it seems likely that the female-targeted media coverage of the 1934 romance strengthened some women’s imaginative investment in royal love stories. We might, therefore, interpret the 1934 romance as double-edged in its significance. On the one hand, the family monarchy assumed a truly national presence and established a virtuous domestic model for later generations of royalty to follow. On the other hand, the growing emphasis on personal fulfilment rendered the family-centred formula untenable when individual royals sought to pursue love outside the confines of Christian marriage – as in the cases of Edward VIII and, later, Princess Margaret in the 1950s and Prince Charles in the 1980s.

The 1934 royal romance had a wider political significance as well. The public was enabled through new mass media to empathize with royalty in powerful ways; and in the context of the 1930s – with the re-emergence of nationalistic politics on the Continent and the persistence of socio-economic disorder at home – the imagery of a British people united around the monarchy left an indelible impression on many who tuned in to listen to the royal wedding. Marina, in particular, was responsible for pioneering a modern and more direct relationship between royalty and the public through the use of mass media. She was motivated by a personal concern to distance herself from her past as an exiled Greek royal and she possessed a shrewd understanding of how elite institutions could democratize their public image. The princess and her inner circle drew attention to her desire to marry for love as part of a wider effort to play down her foreign origins and associations with the pre-1914 tradition of dynastic intermarriage. Meanwhile, the orchestrators of the wedding promoted its British character and this seems to have resonated with some members of the public, who wrote to the press describing how the event had strengthened their belief in the nation’s constitutional system, often favourably contrasting it with European authoritarianism. George and Marina’s love story unfolded at a time of growing uncertainty about the future of Britain’s royal democracy and, as the next chapter on the king’s Christmas broadcasts demonstrates, after 1934 the image of a nation uniquely united around the House of Windsor was promoted by the royal household and compliant mass media with greater urgency and fervour than ever before. The 1935 silver jubilee was the next stepping-stone that placed royal intimacy on a pedestal in order to bind together a nation of diverse peoples who could empathize with the protagonists of the family monarchy.

___________

1 Historians have not examined the 1934 royal wedding in any detail. Rather, royal biographers have been left to retell sentimentalized accounts of the event: e.g., G. Ellison, The Authorised Life Story of Princess Marina (London, 1934); S. Watson, Marina: the Story of a Princess (London, 1997).

2 E.g., ‘Royal “movie” fan’, Pathé Gazette, 16 March 1929; ‘Royal brothers arrive in Peru’, British Movietone Gazette, 2 March 1931; ‘Prince George visits pit disaster scene’, British Movietone News, 23 Nov. 1933.

3 C. Warwick, George and Marina: Duke and Duchess of Kent (London, 1988), pp. 63–72. See also L. Pickett et al., The War of the Windsors: a Century of Unconstitutional Monarchy (Edinburgh, 2002), pp. 54–8.

4 M. Houlbrook, Prince of Tricksters: the Incredible True Story of Netley Lucas, Gentleman Crook (Chicago, Ill., 2016), pp. 226–7.

5 A. Bingham and M. Conboy, Tabloid Century: the Popular Press in Britain, 1896 to the Present (Oxford, 2015), pp. 97–130.

6 C. Langhamer, The English in Love: the Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution (Oxford, 2013), pp. 1–19; F. Mort, ‘Love in a cold climate: letters, public opinion and monarchy in the 1936 abdication crisis’, Twentieth Century British Hist., xxv (2014), 30–62.

7 I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘The body and consumer culture’, in Women in Twentieth-Century Britain: Social, Cultural and Political Change, ed. I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska (Harlow, 2001), pp. 183–97.

8 M. Andrews, ‘Homes both sides of the microphone: wireless and domestic space in interwar Britain’, Women’s Hist. Rev., xxi (2012), 605–21, at pp. 606–7; E. Colpus, ‘The week’s good cause: mass culture and cultures of philanthropy at the interwar BBC’, Twentieth Century British Hist., xxii (2011), 305–29, at pp. 321–2; D. LeMahieu, A Culture for Democracy: Mass Communication and the Cultivated Mind in Britain Between the Wars (Oxford, 1998), pp. 179–80.

9 J. Lawrence, Electing Our Masters: the Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair (Oxford, 2009), pp. 97, 116–29.

10 I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Royal death and living memorials: the funerals and commemoration of George V and George VI, 1936–52’, Hist. Research, lxxxix (2015), 158–75.

11 For the term ‘affective integration’, see J. Perry, ‘Christmas as Nazi holiday: colonising the Christmas mood’, in Life and Times in Nazi Germany, ed. L. Pine (London, 2016), pp. 263–89, at p. 264.

12 Daily Mail, 29 Aug. 1934, p. 5; Daily Mirror, 29 Aug. 1934, p. 1; News of the World, 2 Sept. 1934, p. 10.

13 Daily Mail, 27 Aug. 1934, p. 11.

14 W. Shawcross, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother: the Official Biography (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 154–5. See also Daily Mirror, 17 Jan. 1923, p. 19.

15 RA, GDKH/WED/A01, H. D. Harrison to H. W. Butler, 3 Sept. 1934.

16 Daily Express, 30 Aug. 1934, p. 1.

17 Daily Express, 29 Aug. 1934, p. 1; News of the World, 2 Sept. 1934, p. 10.

18 Langhamer, The English in Love, pp. 1–19.

19 Daily Mail, 30 Aug. 1934, p. 11; Daily Mirror, 30 Aug. 1934, p. 3.

20 Daily Mirror, 24 Nov. 1921, p. 3; 26 Apr. 1923, p. 7; 27 Apr. 1923, p. 2. See also C. Warwick, Two Centuries of Royal Weddings (Worthing, 1980), pp. 36–48; and J. Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, 1867–1953 (London, 1959), pp. 518–19.

21 ‘A royal romance’, Pathé Super Sound Gazette, 16 March 1931 and ‘All the world loves a lover’, Pathé Super Sound Gazette, 12 March 1934; ‘Prince chooses love’, British Paramount News, 29 Feb. 1932; and ‘Love before rank’, British Paramount News, 12 March 1934.

22 ‘Royal romance’, British Movietone News, 30 Aug. 1934. Pathé Gazette first used the phrase ‘all the world loves a lover’ in relation to the duke of York’s engagement in 1923: ‘All the world loves a lover’, 29 Jan. 1923.

23 ‘Prince George and Princess Marina send greetings through Movietone’, British Movietone News, 3 Sept. 1934.

24 E.g., ‘Stars at home – Miss Nellie Wallace’, Eve and Everybody’s Film Review, 3 Nov. 1921; and ‘Stars at home – Matheson Lang’, Eve and Everybody’s Film Review, 29 Sept. 1921.
See also ‘Mr Bonar Law: our new premier’, Gaumont Graphic, 23 Oct. 1922.

25 ‘The bride to be: Princess Marina goes shopping in Paris’, Pathé Super Sound Gazette, 17 Sept. 1934; ‘France: Princess Marina of Greece talks about her wedding plans’, British Paramount News, 17 Sept. 1934.

26 Daily Mirror, 30 Aug. 1934, p. 3; Daily Mail, 29 Aug. 1934, p. 5.

27 News of the World, 2 Sept. 1934, p. 10.

28 C. McDowell, A Hundred Years of Royal Style (London, 1985), p. 76.

29 Vogue, 28 Nov. 1934, pp. 74–99.

30 G. Howell, In Vogue: Sixty Years of Celebrities and Fashion from British Vogue (London, 1978), p. 107.

31 RA, GDKH/WED/C: e.g., the present of waterproof coats with a letter from Samuel Bros. of Manchester, sent to the private secretary of Princess Marina, 15 Nov. 1934; and the present of shoes and handbag with a letter from Mrs R. G. Scudamore of Brown Inc. to U. Alexander, 23 Nov. 1934.

32 Daily Herald, 29 Aug. 1934, p. 1; Daily Express, 29 Aug. 1934, p. 2; Daily Telegraph, 29 Aug. 1934, p. 11.

33 Daily Mirror, 30 Aug. 1934, p. 1; Daily Express, 30 Aug. 1934, p. 1; P. Tinkler and C. Warsh, ‘Feminine modernity in interwar Britain and North America: corsets, cars, and cigarettes’, Jour. Women’s Hist., xx (2008), 113–43.

34 News Chronicle, 29 Aug. 1934, p. 2; 30 Aug. 1934, p. 4. On speed, technology and modernity, see B. Rieger, ‘“Fast couples”: technology, gender and modernity in Britain and Germany during the nineteen-thirties’, Hist. Research, lxxvi (2003), 364–88.

35 Daily Mirror, 22 Sept. 1934, p. 1.

36 R. McKibbin, Classes and Cultures: England 1918–1951 (Oxford, 1998), p. 32.

37 F. Mort, ‘On tour with the prince: monarchy, imperial politics and publicity in the Prince of Wales’s dominion tours 1919–1920’, Twentieth Century British Hist., xxix (2018), 25–57.

38 Daily Mirror, 17 Sept. 1934, p. 1.

39 Daily Herald, 17 Sept. 1934, p. 1; Daily Express, 17 Sept. 1934, p. 1; Daily Mirror, 17 Sept. 1934, p. 1.

40 Daily Sketch, 26 Nov. 1934, p. 12. The article was titled ‘Why Princess Waves’.

41 M. Winkler, The Roman Salute: Cinema, History, Ideology (Columbus, Oh., 2009), pp. 88–121.

42 News Chronicle, 17 Sept. 1934, p. 1.

43 Daily Sketch, 17 Sept. 1934, p. 1; The Times, 17 Sept. 1934, p. 16; Daily Mirror, 17 Sept. 1934, pp. 14–5.

44 News Chronicle, 30 Nov. 1934, p. 1. Comparable photographs and newsreels from the royal weddings of the 1920s show that the couples did not wave.

45 ‘The Day: Ours’, Pictorial News, 14 Nov. 1918; ‘Germany Signs the Armistice’, Gaumont Graphic, 14 Nov. 1918. See also D. Cannadine, ‘The context, performance and meaning of ritual: the British monarchy and the “invention of tradition”, c. 1820–1977’, in The Invention of Tradition, ed. E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 101–64, at pp. 128 and 140–1.

46 ‘The Royal Wedding’, Pathé Gazette, 3 Dec. 1934.

47 Daily Express, 17 Sept. 1934, p. 1. See also Daily Sketch, 17 Sept. 1934, p. 3; Daily Mirror, 17 Sept. 1934, p. 3.

48 ‘Princess Marina at Victoria Station and Ballater’, Gaumont British News, 20 Sept. 1934.

49 Daily Mirror, 22 Nov. 1934, p. 1; News Chronicle, 22 Nov. 1934, p. 1; ‘Royal Reception to Princess Marina’, Pathé Super Sound Gazette, 22 Nov. 1934.

50 Quoted in Watson, Marina, p. 101.

51 This author’s italics.

52 J. Plunkett, Queen Victoria: First Media Monarchy (Oxford, 2003), pp. 51–2.

53 For comparisons of the two royal brides, see the Daily Mail, 30 Aug. 1934, p. 11; H. Normanton, ‘Our Danish royal bride’, The Queen, 12 Dec. 1934, p. 13.

54 Daily Mirror, 26 Apr. 1923, p. 1. For the original, see NPG x130935, Vandyk, Jan. 1923.

55 NPG x35653, Dorothy Wilding, Oct. 1934; also NPG x33897, Wilding, Oct. 1934; NPG x46512, Wilding, Oct. 1934.

56 NPG x33887, Wilding, Oct. 1934; NPG x46508, Wilding, Oct. 1934.

57 V. Williams, Women Photographers: the Other Observers 1900 to the Present (London, 1986), p. 152.

58 RA, GDKH/WED/A01, D. A. Tuck to H. W. Butler, 7 Nov. 1934.

59 Houlbrook, Prince of Tricksters, pp. 260–2.

60 RA, GDKH/WED/A01, H. W. Butler to D. A. Tuck, 8 Nov. 1934.

61 RA, GDKH/WED/A01, the editor of The Wireless Press to the palace press officer, 2 Nov. 1934 and reply containing assent on 6 Nov. 1934. For press reproductions of Wilding’s photographs, see Daily Mirror, 29 Nov. 1934, p. 1; Daily Express, 20 Nov. 1934, p. 8. The file LMA, 4364/02/022 contains over 20 different hotel invitations and menus which used Wilding’s photographs to promote commercial events.

62 RA, GDKH/WED/A01, D. S. Valentine to H. W. Butler, 2 Nov. 1934.

63 RA, GDKH/WED/A01, H. W. Butler to D. S. Valentine, 6 Nov. 1934.

64 RA, GDKH/WED/A01, D. A. Tuck to H. W. Butler, 7 Nov. 1934.

65 RA, LC/LCO/SPECIAL, Wedding 1922 File 19, F. S. Osgood to B. M. Shiffers, 1 Feb. 1922.

66 MOA, File Report 1392.

67 C. Grandy, Heroes and Happy Endings: Class, Gender, and Nation in Popular Film and Fiction in Interwar Britain (Manchester, 2014), pp. 133–76; A. Bingham, Gender, Modernity and the Popular Press in Interwar Britain (Oxford, 2004); pp. 78–81.

68 Daily Herald, 18 Sept. 1934, p. 6; Bolton Evening News, 29 Nov. 1934, p. 2.

69 Daily Express, 31 Aug. 1934, p. 3.

70 Daily Mail, 28 Nov. 1934, p. 5; Daily Mirror, 30 Nov. 1934, p. 30. See A. Bingham, Family Newspapers? Sex, Private Life and the British Popular Press, 1918–1978 (Oxford, 2009), pp. 25–6 on the marginalization of female journalists’ voices in this period.

71 News of the World, 25 Nov. 1934, p. 12; 2 Dec. 1934, pp. 12–3.

72 ‘Princess Marina greeted in Britain’, British Movietone News, 22 Nov. 1934; and ‘Ready for the royal wedding’, British Movietone News, 26 Nov. 1934.

73 R. Overy, The Morbid Age: Britain and the Crisis of Civilization (London, 2010), pp. 181–6; J. Gardiner, The Thirties: an Intimate History (London, 2011), pp. 147–87 and 432–7; M. Ceadel, ‘The first British referendum: the peace ballot, 1934–5’, Eng. Hist. Rev., xcv (1980), 810–39.

74 E.g., ‘Assassination’, Gaumont British News, 11 Oct. 1934.

75 The Times, 18 Sept. 1934, p. 12.

76 Daily Express, 19 Sept. 1934, p. 20; The Times, 19 Sept. 1934, p. 14; The Times, 25 Sept. 1934, p. 16.

77 Daily Mail, 20 Sept. 1934, p. 12; ‘Ballater – Princess Marina greeted in Scotland’, British Movietone News, 20 Sept. 1934; ‘Welsh gold for Princess Marina’s ring’, Gaumont British News, 8 Oct. 1934.

78 LPL, Lang 129, fo. 311, C. Wigram to C. G. Lang, 4 Sept. 1934.

79 R. Beaken, Cosmo Lang: Archbishop in War and Crisis (London, 2012), esp. ch. 4 and 5.

80 B. Pimlott, The Queen: Elizabeth II and the Monarchy (London, 2002), pp. 25, 192; Gardiner, The Thirties, pp. 458 and 527; Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, pp. 467–9.

81 Daily Mirror, 28 Jan. 1919, p. 5; 28 Feb. 1919, p. 1. Courtiers made sure Patricia of Connaught was visible to spectators and cameramen on her wedding day, using carriages with enlarged windows in the procession to the abbey and an open-top landau on the return to Buckingham Palace.

82 Wigram had helped to orchestrate the royal weddings of the 1920s, advising on the staging of carriage processions and on the suitability of royal ostentation at a time of industrial unrest. See RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/35056/B/4, Memo from C. Wigram to undisclosed recipient, 29 Jan. 1922; and RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/35056/B/7, Memo from C. Wigram to Lord Chamberlain, 23 Feb. 1922. Queen Mary had intervened in the preparations for her daughter Princess Mary’s wedding in 1922 after the dean of Westminster had expressed concern that the ladies in attendance would not be wearing head-coverings in the abbey. He thought that the royal wedding should be used to set an example to the rest of the nation against ‘eccentric and emancipated “feminists” [who had] in the last few years been trying to attend Church bare-headed’. Queen Mary suggested that ‘small close-fitting caps’ be worn with evening dress in order to maintain the ‘reverence’ of the event (RA, PS/ PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/35056/B/4, Dean of Westminster to the State Chamberlain, 27 Jan. 1922); and Queen Mary to Lord Stamfordham, undated.

83 LPL, Lang 129, fos. 314–19, A. C. Don to C. G. Lang, 17 Sept. 1934.

84 LPL, Lang 129, fos. 314–19, A. C. Don to C. G. Lang, 17 Sept. 1934.

85 Houlbrook, Prince of Tricksters, p. 227.

86 M. Grimley, ‘The religion of Englishness: puritanism, providentialism, and “national character”, 1918–1945’, Jour. Brit. Stud., xlvi (2007), 884–906, at p. 885; J. Wolffe, God and Greater Britain: Religion and National Life in Britain and Ireland 1843–1945 (London, 1994), pp. 5–19.

87 LPL, Lang 129, fos. 320–4.

88 LPL, Lang 129, fos. 320–4.

89 A. Briggs, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom (5 vols., Oxford, 1965–95), ii. 411; Houlbrook, Prince of Tricksters, pp. 226–7.

90 BBCWA, R34/862/1, A. Dawnay to U. Alexander, 14 Sept. 1934.

91 T. Hajkowski, The BBC and National Identity in Britain, 1922–53 (Manchester, 2010), pp. 83–92; S. Potter, Broadcasting Empire: the BBC and the British World, 1922–1970 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 59–64.

92 BBCWA, R34/862/1, U. Alexander to A. Dawnay, 24 Sept. 1934.

93 Daily Mail, 10 Oct. 1934, p. 11.

94 BBCWA, R34/862/1, A. Dawnay to U. Alexander, 10 Oct. 1934.

95 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, BBC Internal Circulating Memo, G. Cock to A. Dawnay, 10 Oct. 1934.

96 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, H. Marshall to G. Cock, undated, and reply, 12 Oct. 1934; BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, G. Cock to E. Knapp-Fisher, 12 Oct. 1934; RA, LC/LCO/SPECIAL, Wedding 1934 File 14, Memo, Lord Chamberlain to F. Mitchell, 16 Oct. 1934.

97 RA, LC/LCO/SPECIAL, Wedding 1934 File 14, Memo, F. Mitchell to the Lord Chamberlain, 17 Oct. 1934.

98 WAL, WAM/OC/2/3, ‘Broadcasting and Filming’, Lord Chamberlain to E. Knapp-Fisher, 18 Oct. 1934.

99 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, G. Cock to E. Knapp-Fisher, 13 Oct. 1934 (Cock’s emphasis).

100 WAL, WAM/OC/2/3, ‘Broadcasting and Filming’, E. Knapp-Fisher to the Lord Chamberlain, 19 Oct. 1934.

101 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, J. G. Reekie to G. Cock, 5 Dec. 1934.

102 RA, LC/LCO/SPECIAL, Wedding 1922 File 6, Lord Riddell to the State Chamberlain, 6 Jan. 1922; RA, LC/LCO/SPECIAL, Wedding 1934 File 14, F. Mitchell to T. McAra, 26 Nov. 1934.

103 RA, LC/LCO/SPECIAL, Wedding 1934 File 14, Lord Chamberlain to F. Mitchell, 18 Oct. 1934; WAL, WAM/OC/2/3, ‘Press’, R. Barrington-Ward to E. Knapp-Fisher, 18 Oct. 1934.

104 WAL, WAM/OC/2/3, ‘Press’, E. Knapp-Fisher to R. Barrington-Ward, 19 Oct. 1934.

105 The Times, 30 Nov. 1934, p. 22. For reproductions of the photograph in other newspapers, see Daily Mirror, 30 Nov. 1934, pp. 1 and 26; Daily Express, 30 Nov. 1934, p. 24.

106 WAL, WAM/OC/2/3, ‘Press’, B. B. Saveall, news editor of British Movietone News, to W. Foxley Norris, 27 Sept. 1934, and reply, 10 Oct. 1934; R. S. Howard, editor of Gaumont British News, to E. Knapp-Fisher, 19 Nov. 1934, and reply, 19 Nov. 1934. See also letter from W. Foxley Norris to E. Knapp-Fisher, 5 Oct. 1934.

107 WAL, WAM/OC/2/3, ‘Broadcasting and Filming’, C. Wigram to W. Foxley Norris, 19 Nov. 1934.

108 WAL, WAM/OC/2/3, ‘Broadcasting and Filming’, advertisement for the Universal News newsreel in the Daily Film Renter, 1 Dec. 1934.

109 WAL, WAM/OC/2/3, ‘Broadcasting and Filming’, H. W. Bishop of Gaumont British News to E. Knapp-Fisher, 1 Dec. 1934; W. Foxley Norris to C. R. Snape, editor of Universal News, 1 Dec. 1934.

110 Briggs, History of Broadcasting, ii. 112.

111 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, H. Marshall to L. Schuster, 1 Oct. 1934. For an example of Marshall’s style, see <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbKHU8QdeBs> [accessed 30 May 2018].

112 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, H. Marshall to L. Schuster, undated (this author’s italics).

113 Colpus, ‘The Week’s Good Cause’, pp. 321–4. See also Andrews, ‘Homes Both Sides’, pp. 606–8.

114 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, Internal Circulating Memo, Mr. Adam to Mr. Coatman, 11 Oct. 1947.

115 G. Stedman Jones, ‘The “Cockney” and the Nation’, in Metropolis: Histories and Representations since 1800, ed. D. Feldman and G. Stedman Jones (London, 1989), pp. 272–324.

116 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, Memo, R. Murray to the News Editor, 25 Oct. 1934.

117 J. Moran, ‘Vox populi?: the recorded voice and twentieth-century British history’, Twentieth Century British Hist., xxv (2014), 461–83, at pp. 463–5.

118 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, Confidential: ‘Royal Wedding, 29 Nov. 1934’.

119 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, Anonymous handwritten memorandum: ‘Royal Wedding November 29th 1934 – Criticism of Howard Marshall – Compiled from Listeners Letters’. None of the letters that criticized Marshall has survived. However, correspondence that has survived suggests the majority of letters received from listeners praised both the BBC and the commentator for their handling of the royal wedding broadcast (e.g., J. Reith to H. Marshall, 11 Dec. 1934).

120 ‘The royal wedding’, Pathé Super Sound Gazette, 29 Nov. 1934; ‘The duke of Kent weds Princess Marina’, British Paramount News, 3 Dec. 1934.

121 Sunday Pictorial, 25 Nov. 1934, p. 1; Daily Express, 26 Nov. 1934, p. 3.

122 Daily Express, 3 Nov. 1934, p. 3.

123 E. Ehrman, ‘Broken traditions: 1930–55’, in The London Look: Fashion From Street to Catwalk, ed. C. Breward, E. Ehrman and C. Evans (London, 2004), pp. 97–117. Also see Daily Sketch, 29 Nov. 1934, p. 14; Daily Telegraph, 15 Sept. 1934, p. 8; Daily Mirror, 20 Nov. 1934, p. 1.

124 Daily Sketch, 30 Nov. 1934, p. 2.

125 News of the World, 2 Dec. 1934, p. 12; Daily Mirror, 17 Sept. 1934, p. 11. See also the cartoon ‘Further Back, There!’, Daily Express, 29 Nov. 1934, p. 17.

126 Daily Worker, 29 Nov. 1934, p. 1. See also 22 Nov. 1934, p. 2; 30 Nov. 1934, pp. 1 and 4; 1 Dec. 1934, p. 6.

127 Daily Worker, 29 Nov. 1934, p. 2.

128 Reynolds’s Illustrated News, 25 Nov. 1934, pp. 1 and 8.

129 Bingham, Family Newspapers?, p. 19; TNA, HO 45/25480 – Anonymous memorandum, 28 June 1935.

130 TNA, HO 45/25480 – Letter from anon to Lord Trenchard, 21 Aug. 1935.

131 On the 19th-century popularization of crowd-centred imagery, see Plunkett, Queen Victoria, pp. 17, 43 and 60–7.

132 E.g., ‘The royal wedding’, British Movietone News, 29 Nov. 1934; ‘The royal wedding’, Pathé Super Sound Gazette, 29 Nov. 1934.

133 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55340, ‘Press and Photography’, F. Mitchell to the Deputy Master of the Household, 8 Nov. 1934.

134 For these kinds of juxtaposition, see ‘The royal wedding’, British Movietone News, 29 Nov. 1934; ‘The duke of Kent weds Princess Marina’, British Paramount News, 3 Dec. 1934; Daily Sketch, 30 Nov. 1934, p. 25; Daily Mirror, 30 Nov. 1934, p. 16.

135 Lawrence, Electing Our Masters, pp. 120–27. For comparable examples in a Japanese context, see T. Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan (London, 1996), pp. 226–8.

136 LPL, Lang 191, fos. 157–9, Draft of royal wedding address. See also The Church Times, 30 Nov. 1934, p. 598.

137 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 21–2, King George V to C. G. Lang, 1 Dec. 1934 (the king’s emphasis).

138 LPL, Lang 191, fo. 172, Lang, note to self, 4 Dec. 1934.

139 LPL, Lang 191, fo. 162r–v, C. Wyndham to C. G. Lang, 29 Aug. 1934.

140 LPL, Lang 191, fo. 171, E. K. Paget to C. G. Lang, 4 Dec. 1934. The BBC repeated its recording of the royal wedding broadcast on the evening of 29 Nov. 1934.

141 LPL, Lang 191, fo. 164, S. Hoare to C. G. Lang, 30 Nov. 1934.

142 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, W. V. Towlett to G. Cock, 30 Nov. 1934.

143 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, E. G. to G. Cock, undated.

144 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, A. M. Maudsley to G. Cock, 2 Dec. 1934.

145 BBCWA, R30/3/644/1, A. M. Maudsley to G. Cock, 2 Dec. 1934. See also letters from W. H. Parr (2 Dec. 1934) and J. L. Abraham (1 Dec. 1934) to G. Cock.

146 Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy, p. 28. See also B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983), pp. 22–4.

147 RA, GDKH/WED/C, A. R. Thompson to Princess Marina, 5 Dec. 1934.

148 RA, GDKH/WED/C, W. Waldren to Prince George, 7 Dec. 1934.

149 Manchester Guardian, 30 Nov. 1934, p. 13; News Chronicle, 30 Nov. 1934, p. 1; Daily Mirror, 30 Nov. 1934, pp. 1 and 7.

150 Manchester Guardian, 30 Nov. 1934, p. 13.

151 See ch. 3.

152 News Chronicle, 28 Nov. 1934, p. 1; Daily Express, 28 Nov. 1934, p. 1; Daily Mirror, 10 Oct. 1934, p. 12; The Times, 10 Oct. 1934, p. 16.

153 Daily Mirror, 30 Nov. 1934, p. 13.

154 Daily Express, 29 Nov. 1934, p. 10.

155 Daily Mirror, 1 Dec. 1934, p. 11.

156 J. Parry, ‘Whig monarchy, whig nation: crown politics and representativeness, 1800– 2000’, in The Monarchy and the British Nation, 1780 to the Present, ed. A. Olechnowicz, (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 47–75, at pp. 55–6.

157 Beaken, Cosmo Lang, pp. 86–142; M. Aitken, The Abdication of King Edward VIII: a Vivid Day-by-Day Record of the Crisis as Seen by an Insider (London, 1966), pp. 95–105; P. Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Leadership and National Values (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 326–9; J. E. Wrench, Geoffrey Dawson and Our Times (London, 1955), pp. 336–57.

158 W. Bagehot, The English Constitution (London, 1867), p. 79 (original italics).

159 Mort, ‘Love in a cold climate’, p. 61; B. Baxter, Destiny Called to Them (Oxford, 1939), pp. 8–12.

160 S. Williams, The People’s King: the True Story of the Abdication (London, 2003), p. xix; Mort, ‘Love in a cold climate’, p. 46 and, on women who wrote to Edward VIII, pp. 39–51.