2. ‘A man we understand’: King George V’s radio broadcasts

In the early 1930s the British monarchy popularized a more intimate media image by means of innovative technologies that enabled members of the public to express new kinds of emotional identification with the main actors of the House of Windsor. The crown was motivated partly by a desire to generate a deeper and wider royalism among the population at a time when traditional social hierarchies were threatened by democratic change; and partly by a desire to position itself as a focal point of stability in a nation and empire convulsed by economic and political developments that were transforming the international order. The leading figure in the monarchy’s public relations campaign was King George V, who, by this point, had entered the final stage of his life. Ascending the throne in 1910 against the backdrop of the constitutional stand-off between the House of Lords and House of Commons, his twenty-six-year reign was punctuated by a series of dramatic events during which the monarchy demonstrated remarkable flexibility in adjusting its role to suit the times. George V’s tenure as king was defined by his highly publicized leadership of the nation and empire during the First World War; his (privately grudging) adaptation to constitutional reform; the philanthropic interest he and his consort, Queen Mary, exhibited in the lives of their most vulnerable subjects; his adherence to a Victorian code of duty; and his advocacy of Christian family values.¹ When, in 1932, he became the first British sovereign to use radio to broadcast a special Christmas greeting to his people, he did so in order to crystallize in the minds of listeners the major themes and episodes that had shaped his reign. However, the new medium also provided him with a platform to address current concerns and a chance to forge stronger emotional bonds with his subjects in a turbulent period. In 1928, aged sixty-three, the king had almost died from septicaemia and, never fully recovering his physical strength, he reduced his public activities, making way for his adult children to assume more prominent roles as his representatives. But events beyond his control compelled him to intervene in party politics again, testing the limits of his constitutional powers when he controversially facilitated the formation of a National Government in order to help steady the nation’s finances in 1931. In the same year the monarchy’s new relationship with the dominions was enshrined in the Statute of Westminster, which recognized their legislative autonomy while affirming their common allegiance to the crown. Meanwhile, far-reaching political and economic instability in Europe threatened to undo the fragile peace that had existed on the Continent since 1918. Thus, George V took to the microphone to emphasize the need for national and imperial unity and to urge his subjects to work together so that they might better weather the ongoing global depression and prepare for uncertain times ahead.

According to royal biographer Harold Nicolson, George V’s broadcasts helped to earn him the love and respect of his subjects. Writing about how the public enthusiastically celebrated the king’s silver jubilee in May 1935, Nicolson suggested that George V was like a ‘friend whom they had known all their adult lives’: his radio messages had transformed an ‘unreal and incredible personage’ into a ‘human voice – intimate and paternal – speaking to them in their own living-rooms, speaking to them from a box on the table between the sewing machine and the mug’.² Although we should be wary of the official biographer’s hagiography, it is clear from Nicolson’s personal diaries that he was genuinely moved by the monarch’s recorded voice.³ His recognition of George V’s talents at the microphone is all the more notable given that the biographer was often privately scathing about the king’s reactionary character and limited personal interests, which outside his royal role mainly comprised shooting and stamp-collecting.⁴ This chapter examines how George V’s radio messages did indeed work to strengthen the emotional bonds that connected him to some members of the British public, with the new technology of broadcasting enabling affective integration around the focal point of the House of Windsor’s domesticity. The archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang, became royal speechwriter in 1934 and introduced a new emotional register into the king’s broadcasts in order to popularize an image of George V in which his personal life and ambitions became closely entwined with the private lives and aims of his subjects. Letters written to the monarch and school essays written about him after his death in January 1936 show that Lang’s personalization of royal public language intensified the imagined relationships some listeners forged with the king and his family. In a period marked by growing concerns about the prospect of another world war, the archbishop worked in tandem with the BBC and other media outlets to project George V as the empathetic, stabilizing force at the centre of imperial politics.

Philip Williamson has offered the fullest analysis of how royal public language changed during George V’s reign, identifying how it became ‘less elevated’ and increasingly focused on a ‘well recognized vocabulary and set of messages’, which included constitutional progress, social cohesion, religiosity, empire and the self-denying sacrifice made by royal persons in the course of their national duty. Williamson noted that Lang scripted George V’s 1934 and 1935 Christmas messages, as well as the king’s silver jubilee broadcast, but he did not discuss how the archbishop transformed the emotional register of the monarch’s public language.⁵ Paddy Scannell and David Cardiff, meanwhile, recognized that the ‘stiff and formal’ style of George V’s early broadcasts yielded to a more ‘simple, direct and personal’ mode of address to listeners who were, in turn, presented ‘as individuals and friends’ in his later messages. The king ‘spoke of his own family as familiar [to listeners] … of [his] personal feelings [and] of spontaneous bonds of affection which linked himself and his family to his people’. Significantly, though, Scannell and Cardiff did not identify Lang’s key influence and they incorrectly suggested that the monarch’s final broadcast on Christmas Day 1935 was ‘the first fully to deploy an interpersonal style’.⁶ Moreover, they did not attempt to explain how the changes that Lang in fact introduced in 1934 worked to redefine the king’s relationship with members of the public, nor how the archbishop created an emotional template for royal public language that has endured to the present day.

This chapter uses a range of evidence to examine how George V’s messages evolved between 1932 and 1935 to incorporate an emotional language which intensified the affective connections that some listeners forged with him. Sources include the royal household’s correspondence with the British poet and writer Rudyard Kipling, who penned the first two Christmas broadcasts and who was responsible for introducing some of the features that Lang developed in the messages he subsequently wrote.⁷ The archbishop’s original drafts of the broadcasts he prepared, which are located in his papers at Lambeth Palace Library, not only reveal that he sought to strengthen the imagined bonds that connected monarch and subjects, but also show that the palace responded positively to his innovations.⁸ Handwritten annotations on the typed originals and the accompanying correspondence with the king’s private secretary, Sir Clive Wigram, show that Lang sent his drafts to Buckingham Palace, where they were revised and then returned to him. We can therefore detect from the drafts and revisions that the archbishop and royal household worked together to promote a more intimate vision of kingship by personalizing the language used by the monarch to address his people.

This chapter also draws on a rare surviving collection of forty letters written by members of the British public to the king or his private secretary in relation to the 1934 Christmas message – the first broadcast drafted by Lang.⁹ Seven were sent in anticipation of the monarch’s broadcast, the rest written in response to it and they are housed in the Royal Archives.¹⁰ It would be wrong to generalize about national attitudes based on such a small sample of letters composed by devoted royalists, most of whom wrote to the king in order to express their admiration for him. But for the period before the advent of Mass Observation in 1937 there are very few personal testimonies like these, which have survived the last eighty years and help to reveal how ordinary people heard and responded to the monarch’s radio messages. It is particularly difficult to locate discordant voices in the archive that run counter to the positive responses contained in these letters. Contrary to what the mainstream media would have had us believe at the time, it is unlikely that the public was unanimously united in adulation of George V and his family. While the worst effects of the interwar economic slump had passed by the mid 1930s, the last years of the king’s reign were characterized by the same widescale working-class poverty, industrial disputes and challenges to the political status quo which had defined British society between the wars. And yet popular opposition, ambivalence or indifference to the monarchy have not left a deep impression on the historical record.¹¹ In the absence of other sources, be they positive or negative, the letters in the Royal Archives help to illuminate how some listeners internalized Lang’s royal public language and forged strong emotional connections with George V.¹² Their very existence and intimate tone testify to the impact of radio as a ‘conversational’ medium that evoked personal feelings and direct, powerful responses from audiences – a phenomenon witnessed on both sides of the Atlantic during the 1930s.¹³ This was the case in December 1936 at the time of the abdication crisis, as noted by Frank Mort in his analysis of the letters written by members of the public to Edward VIII.¹⁴ A gendered divide characterized the emotional registers used by men and women to appeal to the king in 1936, with women generally writing more expressive letters that conveyed a deep personal empathy with the monarch.¹⁵ Women tended to be more effusive in the way they addressed George V in 1934 as well, although men also drew on a wide-ranging emotional vocabulary to articulate their devotion to the king. Letter-writing was a relatively private and anonymous means by which correspondents could reach out to the monarch in the role of confidant in order to express deeply held beliefs, hopes and anxieties. At the same time, the letters to George V were epistolary performances of loyalty composed under a kind of ‘social sanction’ (to use Tom Harrisson’s phrase) rooted in deferential politeness.

This chapter also examines a selection of school essays written in 1937 which provide glimpses into how some British children and young adults developed an understanding of George V’s popular reputation and the role of the monarchy in society. The essay-writers were male, working- or middle class, went to schools in the north of England and formed a specific emotional community with ‘their own particular values, modes of feeling and ways to express those feelings’.¹⁶ Their essays offer us insight into royalist identities ‘in the process of formation’ by revealing how boys made sense (and were encouraged to make sense) of the monarchy in the context of the classroom environment in the disorientating period that followed George V’s death, the abdication of his first son and the succession of his second son.¹⁷ Notably, many of the boys described George V in highly personal terms and several acknowledged the important role that broadcasting played in popularizing an intimate public image of the monarch which enabled them to identify with him.

This chapter offers a contextualized reading of the draft radio messages written by Lang for George V and compares his presentation of the king with the reception of the monarch’s public image as articulated in the letters written by members of the public to the sovereign. Lang made four key changes to the emotional register of royal public language, each of which is addressed here in turn along with the way the innovations resonated with listeners’ feelings. First of all, Lang drew attention to the king’s family and home in order to emphasize that George V and his people shared a common association with the House of Windsor’s domesticity. The 1930s were marked by a widening gulf between public and private modes of self-fashioning and the archbishop’s focus on George V’s domestic life presented the king’s subjects with more intimate insights into his personal world, encouraging them to empathize with him.¹⁸ Second, Lang seems to have intensified the relationship between George V and some of his people through a simpler, more sympathetic public language which witnessed listeners expressing loyalty to the king through emotional identification with a familiar, compassionate monarch. This also relates to the archbishop’s third modification. Lang built on a theme from Kipling’s earlier royal broadcasts to stress that George V and his people were united through a mutual affection rooted in the monarch’s concern for his people’s welfare. The archbishop’s intimate style deepened this bond and drew on an older Victorian language of service to emphasize that the burdens of royal duty impinged on the king’s personal life.¹⁹ Lang’s words evoked sympathy from listeners for a sovereign who seemed committed to the welfare of his subjects and bore as his own their suffering at a time of widespread socio-economic distress.

Fourth and finally, the emotional language Lang introduced to royal broadcasts also infused Britain’s imperial ties with powerful affective meaning. Supporting the BBC’s aims to present Christmas as a time of imperial reunion, the first broadcast the archbishop wrote for George V forcefully projected the empire as a family of nations and was the culminating message in a carefully orchestrated relay of seasonal greetings from British and imperial representatives. Since the nineteenth century, a cult of monarchy had underpinned the empire with the sovereign recognized as head of the imperial state. The crown manifested its power through a symbolic system of governance based on hierarchical ceremonial display as powerfully demonstrated during royal tours led by the monarch or members of his or her family.²⁰ Following the enactment of the Statue of Westminster, George V’s broadcasts sought to enhance the crown’s role as the personal link that bound diverse peoples together. The king characterized the empire as a peaceful group of nations committed to upholding international order at a time of global uncertainty; and this imagery of an imperial stabilizing force was echoed in letters written to him in 1934. Furthermore, this pacific imagery was augmented by the monarch’s focus on children in his messages: he publicized a kind, grandfatherly persona to encourage child listeners to become the future citizens of empire. Thus, the final part of this chapter turns to the aforementioned school essays in order to explore how this public image continued to resonate after George V’s death and worked to shape royalist identities beyond his last broadcast.

‘This personal link’

Historians have tended to assume that BBC radio, as with new types of visual media, increased the monarchy’s popularity by substituting the ‘magic of distance’ with the ‘magic of familiarity’.²¹ While broadcasting certainly brought the monarchy closer to the public, the way royal voices were projected across the airwaves and internalized by listeners requires further examination. In his recent analysis of the public response to the abdication crisis, Mort identified how British people favoured radio as a more reliable medium of communication over ‘the rumour mill of press journalism’ after the news broke that Edward VIII might abandon the throne. Mort attributed this privileging of wireless as a source of information to its ‘stronger resonances of authenticity’ and the way speakers communicated directly with listeners.²²

Politicians who used radio as a medium for campaigning between the wars benefitted from the direct channel it provided to the electorate and the sense of verisimilitude it conveyed. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin was the undisputed master of the airwaves in Britain: heeding the advice of BBC director-general, John Reith, the Conservative leader pioneered a new kind of studio talk ‘delivered as though he was sitting in the living room with his listeners’, which added ‘to his established image of being an honest and sincere figure without artifice or trickery’.²³ Indeed, many voters who wrote to Baldwin expressed a trust in him that sprung from the feeling he had spoken to them personally as individuals.²⁴ Across the Atlantic, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was using radio to similar effect in his famous ‘fireside chats’, which helped him to create a politically conscious American public that supported his New Deal social programme. Roosevelt’s broadcasts infused his listeners’ personal space and identities with a sense of national meaning and belonging, creating what Jason Loviglio has termed an ‘intimate public’.²⁵

Between 1932 and 1935, the emotional register of George V’s broadcasts evolved as part of a royal public relations exercise that sought to project a media image of the monarch that was authentic, relatable and would work to create an ‘intimate public’ comprising listeners who identified with the king and his ambitions to unite his people. It took several years of persuasion from Reith and courtiers to convince the king to deliver a broadcast and, when at last he agreed, journalists welcomed the news, stressing that it would be the first time that he would speak ‘directly’ to his people, noting as well that he possessed ‘one of the best “wireless voices” in the world’.²⁶ Thus, before he even opened his mouth, the sovereign’s words were ascribed great significance and his voice presented as uniquely engaging in tone and unmediated in its immediacy, the Daily Express going so far as to refer to the message as a ‘heart-to-heart Christmas talk’.²⁷

The novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote George V’s 1932 and 1933 Christmas messages. Kipling was a seasoned royal speechwriter who had previously prepared a number of messages for the king and other members of the royal family, including the prince of Wales; and he readily consented to Sir Clive Wigram’s invitation to prepare the first Christmas broadcast for the monarch.²⁸ In both the 1932 and 1933 messages, Kipling projected an image of a monarch in open conversation with his subjects, explaining to them how they would overcome the socio-economic problems of these years while reassuring them that, through goodwill and co-operation, Britain and the empire would prevail over their troubles. For example, in his 1932 broadcast George V told listeners that ‘the work to which we are all equally bound is to arrive at a reasoned tranquillity within our borders, to regain prosperity without self-seeking and to carry with us those whom the burden of past years has disheartened or overborne’.²⁹ Kipling’s elaborate phrasing conveyed gravitas and moral seriousness through the monarch, with the press afterwards praising his ‘grave and measured delivery’ and his ‘beautifully modulated English’.³⁰ However, the poet’s messages were, if anything, too ornate and the style of the 1933 broadcast in particular was convoluted and complex. The first two broadcasts also lacked the deep emotional register which Cosmo Lang would incorporate into the later messages.

In drafting the king’s 1934 Christmas broadcast, the first important change the archbishop introduced to George V’s public language was to include in it references to other members of the royal family. He initiated this focus on family through an allusion to Prince George and Princess Marina’s recent wedding, the king describing how ‘the Queen and I were deeply moved’ by the public’s response ‘a month ago at the marriage of our dear son and daughter’.³¹ Lang thus opened up an empathetic channel between the monarch and his listeners – the king clearly articulating his and the queen’s feelings – and he elevated royal domesticity as a shared point of reference that united George V and his people. This went down well with some listeners. For example, forty-four-year-old Elizabeth Johns, who lived in Cardiff, listened to the broadcast at home and wrote a letter to both monarchs to express her gratitude for the message and her pleasure at the way the king had referred to the newlyweds:

The king’s reference to George and Marina had evoked from Johns personal identification with the royal family’s relationships. This kind of empathy was echoed by Herbert Humphrey, a florist and greengrocer from Wokingham who, writing ‘on behalf of [his] wife, family, and friends’, stated that ‘it was most pleasing to us all to hear your loving remarks respecting Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Kent’.³³ Here Humphrey articulated an affective affinity with the king which he felt he shared with those closest to him; and this sense of a mutual connection to royal domesticity was present in many letters that described family groups gathered in emotional communion around radio sets.

Lang’s focus on other members of the royal family in George V’s messages thus presented listeners with more intimate access to the king’s home life; and his 1935 broadcasts, both of which were drafted by the archbishop, strengthened the image of a British people united around royal domesticity. In his silver jubilee message, George V poignantly conveyed his and Queen Mary’s thanks to the public for their continuing support; he referred to the prince of Wales as ‘my dear son’ when praising the latter’s recent philanthropic work; and, in his subsequent Christmas broadcast, he described how the ‘personal link’ that connected him to his subjects was partly based on a mutual appreciation of family life with its ‘common joys and sorrows’.³⁴ A new family-centred culture was emerging in interwar Britain which placed special emphasis on the personal fulfilment that could be achieved in the domestic sphere.³⁵ Although this culture did not take on a truly national and classless character until after the Second World War, the values espoused by George V closely paralleled this focus on home and family.³⁶ And, given that he delivered four out of five of his broadcasts to coincide with the period immediately after lunchtime on the one day in the calendar year when families came together to celebrate their kinship, the monarch’s words were clearly intended for a listenership that was emotionally primed to approve of his vocal celebration of British domesticity.³⁷

Whoever at Buckingham Palace was reading and revising Lang’s drafts – be it a courtier or the king himself – responded positively to the archbishop’s emphasis on family and deliberately edited the messages to accentuate this focus. The 1935 Christmas message was returned to Lang at Lambeth with the following revisions:

The intimacy of the king’s references to the marriage of his son, Prince Henry, and the death of his ‘beloved sister’, Princess Victoria, was enhanced by the substitution of the word ‘my’ into Lang’s original draft message, generating a stronger impression of affective attachment to the family members discussed. Similarly, the substitution of ‘me’ for ‘King’ and the inclusion of the word ‘my’ in front of ‘People’ increased the depth of meaning ascribed by George V to the ‘personal link’ between him and his listeners, all of whom he singled out using the word ‘you’ in the last sentence to try momentarily to bind them to him in acknowledgement of a national culture of domesticity exemplified by the House of Windsor.

The closing lines of the 1935 broadcast also reinforced the idea of collective domesticity. For the first time, the monarch extended festive greetings to listeners from his entire household, which created a vision of a royal family grouped around him: ‘Once again as I close I send to you all, and not least to the children who may be listening to me, my truest Christmas wishes, and those of my dear wife, my children and grandchildren who are with me today. I add a heartfelt prayer that, wherever you are, God may bless and keep you always’.³⁹ Here, Lang’s words elevated George V’s persona as paterfamilias of the House of Windsor and symbolically conflated his position as constitutional sovereign with his role as husband, father and grandfather. We might conjecture, based on letters written to George V in 1934, that the king’s greeting on behalf of his family members intensified the emotional bonds that some members of the public forged with royalty. Several listeners wrote to the royal household before the king’s 1934 broadcast expressing a desire to hear the voices of other members of the royal family. Ernest Jenkins of South Croydon was typical in his appeal:

Jenkins believed that the power of the royal voice lay in its ability to strengthen the relationship between the monarchy and British and imperial subjects. His desire for a more personal contact with royalty was similarly articulated in letters written to the king’s private secretary requesting that the daughters of the duke and duchess of York, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, be allowed to broadcast, as well as in letters written to British newspapers and the BBC.⁴¹

Official correspondence shows that the king – and only the king – would speak for his family at Christmas time; other members of the House of Windsor would remain silent. A letter written by Queen Mary’s private secretary, Harry Verney, to the controller of programmes at the BBC, Colonel Alan Dawnay, after the monarch had received a letter from a member of the public imploring her to broadcast reveals the palace’s stance on this issue: ‘[T]his is a matter about which The Queen feels very strongly, and, strictly between you and me, I may say that nothing will ever induce Her Majesty to broadcast’.⁴² Almost a year on, Clive Wigram clarified the palace’s policy in a private letter to the editor of The Times, Geoffrey Dawson, who had forwarded to him a similar request for the queen to speak: ‘I am afraid this idea is quite impracticable, and broadcasts at Christmas must be confined to the King (who speaks for the Queen as well). Otherwise we should be receiving requests for messages from all the Members of the Royal Family, including Princess Marina!’⁴³

We might speculate, then, that Lang’s inclusion of a Christmas greeting from the king’s closest relatives at the end of the 1935 message was intended to satiate the public appetite for a more personal contact with Queen Mary and the rest of the royal family. Since the mid nineteenth century, new sorts of royal media, such as photographs, had enabled members of the public to ‘consume’ monarchy in new ways and offered collectors a close emotional proximity to royalty. We might interpret the desire to ‘consume’ the voices of the king and his family as a natural extension of this earlier culture, with the new technology of radio enabling a more intimate identification with the House of Windsor among listeners.

Kipling had included in George V’s first Christmas broadcast a reference to how the monarch spoke ‘from my home and from my heart to you all’ and this phrase was welcomed by newspapers like the Daily Mirror for the way it enhanced the impression that the king was speaking ‘personally’ from the ‘privacy of his Sandringham Home’ to listeners.⁴⁴ Indeed, it seems probable that this was the royal household’s intention. Having secured Kipling’s agreement to write the 1932 message, Wigram wrote to thank him on behalf of his sovereign, noting how ‘it is a wonderful innovation for the King to be able to speak to practically the whole of his Empire from his fireside in his country home’.⁴⁵ The imagery conjured by the courtier of George V delivering his message from a comfortable domestic setting was a powerful one and was incorporated by Kipling into the broadcast. However, the writer’s broadcast the following year made no allusion to the king’s domesticity and so it was left to Lang, who understood that Christmas was a time of home-centred celebrations, to revive the appealing image of the king talking from his own fireside to listeners in the 1934 message: ‘As I sit in my own home I am thinking of the great multitudes who are listening to my voice whether they be in British homes or in far off regions of the world’.⁴⁶ These words projected a vision of George V sitting at Sandringham quietly contemplating his relationship with his people, who were similarly gathered in their homes, and the same imagery would notably reappear in both of the king’s 1935 broadcasts.

Lang’s emphasis on home life corresponded with wider shifts in British radio culture that were designed to create stronger resonances of verisimilitude. Accomplished broadcasters like Stanley Baldwin developed rhetorical styles that drew on the language of listeners’ homes in order to connect with them.⁴⁷ The BBC’s broadcasting gardener, C. H. Middleton, better known as ‘Mr. Middleton’, was also celebrated for his ability to convey a familiar tone across the airwaves, regularly referring to his domestic surroundings in order to link an imagined vision of his home with the physical space of his listeners’ dwellings.⁴⁸ At a time when the British increasingly viewed the private sphere of home as an important locus for self-fulfilment, domestic imagery seemed to offer listeners access to the inner world of the speaker and Lang’s vision of British households joined around the domesticity of the king was positively received by letter writers who commented on the ‘homely’ register of the king’s messages.⁴⁹

Courtiers increasingly discerned an advantage in promoting the image of the king at home as well. In 1932, they opposed the idea that the BBC publish a photograph of the microphone through which the king would speak. Ten days before George V was due to deliver his first message, his assistant private secretary, Sir Alexander Hardinge, wrote to the head of outside broadcasts, Gerald Cock, to explain that, while the sovereign did not mind the BBC photographing ‘the apparatus in position in the room where the King will broadcast on Christmas Day’, the picture must be ‘retained for the private use of the BBC only, and … not given to the Press in any form’.⁵⁰ Just two years later, however, the palace relaxed its stance at the request of Geoffrey Dawson, who had written to Wigram to explain that The Times was planning a special Christmas issue and he was ‘very anxious that the frontispiece should be a photograph of the King at the microphone’. Dawson emphasized that the special issue went ‘almost entirely overseas, is bought by some 70,000 people all over the British Empire … and is of course seen and read by many thousands more. I feel that it would be an immense pleasure to them to have such a portrait of their Sovereign before them when they listen to his Christmas message’. He also explained that, because of time constraints, the king would need to sit for the photograph well before Christmas and suggested to Wigram that it would be better to take the picture at Sandringham (as opposed to Buckingham Palace) as it would ‘be a little more “actual”’. He concluded his letter determinedly stating, ‘I would not ask if I did not think it to the interest, not only of The Times, but of the Monarchy’.⁵¹

Dawson’s royalist sentiments and his belief that the picture would bring George V into closer contact with his imperial subjects appear to have won the day and Wigram was pleased to report back that the king had agreed to the newspaper editor’s wishes. Plans were then formulated for a staff photographer from The Times to go to Sandringham on a Sunday in mid October when, according to Wigram, ‘the King would not be in shooting clothes’ and to photograph the monarch in the room ‘in which he generally gives the Broadcast Message’.⁵² Wigram also asked that the man from The Times bring a microphone with him – presumably to help to maintain the illusion that the photograph showed the king speaking live to his people. Like Dawson, the king’s private secretary was anxious to convey ‘actuality’ through the photograph, his proposals revealing his concern to elevate the king’s public image as an ‘ordinary man’ speaking from his home on Christmas day; a picture of him in shooting dress with its elite connotations would not do. And The Times photographer staged the scene so that it communicated this domestic vision: the king was seated at his desk dressed in a lounge suit with the microphones in front of him and in the background was a fireplace (Figure 2.1). The photograph thus provided its viewers with a familiar representation of the monarch’s domesticity that complemented the portrayals of his home life in his broadcasts and in press reports.⁵³

Wigram ended his original letter to Dawson by remarking that ‘in the event of this photograph being taken, I presume that it will be special for the “Times” and not distributed to other papers?’⁵⁴ However, George V later sanctioned the reproduction of the image as a collectible and other news editors seem to have interpreted this as enabling them to publish the image freely as part of their coverage of the 1934 Christmas broadcast.⁵⁵ Hence, whereas the king had taken exception to the publication of photographs of the microphone through which he spoke in 1932, just two years later he was prepared to pose in front of the apparatus for the camera. This shift in attitude should not only be attributed to Dawson’s request, but also to the way in which the royal household and Cosmo Lang constructed an intimate image of a king who seemed happy to communicate with his subjects in an attempt to unite them around a shared idea of British home life.

Figure 2.1. George V at the microphone. Taken by a photographer from The Times in October 1934 (RCIN 630629). Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019.

‘My dear friends’

Lang’s second major innovation as royal speechwriter was to create a more informal relationship between the sovereign and his audience. He began by implementing a simpler, more cheerful rhetoric than was used by Kipling. The opening line of the 1934 Christmas broadcast established the upbeat tone of this emotional register: ‘On this Christmas Day I send to all my people everywhere my Christmas greeting’.⁵⁶ This was the first time the king had begun a message by directly greeting his listeners; in previous years, he had reserved his festive wishes for the end of his broadcasts. Some listeners responded positively to this informal tone. Walter Lawrence, who was sixty-eight and from Hull, remarked in his letter to George V that he had welcomed the monarch’s ‘Kind Greeting on the wireless’.⁵⁷ Similarly, Mrs E. Tomlinson, from Heckington in Lincolnshire, told the king that his broadcast ‘must have found a corner in the hearts of all who read and heard it. So full of good cheer and affection’.⁵⁸ She then continued: ‘I dare not have presumed to express my feelings, but, that being a widow of 90 years, I might not have another opportunity’. These comments suggest that the king’s friendly words could evoke intimate responses from even the most reserved listeners.

Under Lang’s authorship, George V also referred to his listeners in a much more familiar way. In the 1934 message, the archbishop had the king describe his people in Britain and the empire as ‘members of one Family’ – an important point to which this chapter will return.⁵⁹ It suffices to say for now that in presenting the monarch as ‘Head of this great and widespread Family’, Lang elevated an image of George V as a symbolic father to his peoples. The archbishop reproduced this affectionate tone in the silver jubilee broadcast, with the king addressing his listeners as ‘my very dear people’.⁶⁰ Lang’s draft of the Christmas message he composed later that year shows that he included the same phrase in its opening line as well: ‘I wish you all, my dear People, a happy Christmas’. However, once again the royal household returned his draft with revisions. This time the word ‘people’ was replaced with the word ‘friends’ and so, broadcasting on 25 December 1935, the king began his message by delivering his festive greetings to an audience who he affably characterized as ‘my dear friends’.⁶¹ Following Lang’s lead, the palace clearly seems to have discerned value in promoting the public image of the familiar sovereign and, significantly, this particular version of royal informality – with the monarch referring to his or her subjects as ‘friends’ – has never been repeated.

Lang also personalized George V’s public language by enhancing its sympathetic and inclusive qualities. In 1932, Wigram had written to Kipling that ‘the King was wondering whether it would be possible for you to bring in a sentence [to the broadcast] that would apply to the sick and suffering and the blind, as I understand special arrangements will be made, both at home and overseas, for them to listen to His Majesty’s message’.⁶² It is unclear whether such arrangements were made, but the resulting sentence delivered by George V ‘to those cut off from fuller life by blindness, sickness, or infirmity’ projected to listeners an image of a compassionate king which resonated with his and the monarchy’s long-standing association with philanthropic causes both in Britain and the empire.⁶³ Kipling also used the words ‘our’ and ‘we’ in his messages in order to align the king’s aims with his listeners’ feelings. For example, in 1932 George V stated that ‘it may be that our future will lay upon us more than one stern test. Our past will have taught us how to meet it unshaken’.⁶⁴ Lang’s royal public language drew more readily on personal pronouns in order to accentuate both the image of the sympathetic king, keenly interested in the welfare of his people, and the sense of a shared national experience. The archbishop created a rhetorical framework that oscillated between a highly personal register, in which George V regularly referred to himself in the first-person, and an active register that emphasized how, working together, king and people could alleviate the widespread socio-economic distress of these years and ensure Britain and the empire’s future prosperity.⁶⁵

Lang first deployed this framework in the 1934 Christmas message to enhance the sense of purpose that underpinned his vision of a family of British and imperial peoples who cared for one another:

This passage shows how the archbishop’s personal language punctuated George V’s broadcasts by instilling in them a greater sense of purpose between the monarch and his people through collective action. Just as President Roosevelt had created politically conscious American listeners by outlining to them how they could support his New Deal programme in his fireside chats, so George V sought to convey to his subjects his concern for them and his desire that they unite in working with, and for, one another.

Many of the letters written to the king after he delivered his 1934 broadcast reveal this positive vision at work. George Pontifect from Sheen in South West London thanked the monarch for the ‘inspiring message which you delivered to-day. The younger generation, to which I belong, has to face to-day hard times but we are enabled to do so with equanimity with such a ruler as you at our head’.⁶⁷ This letter shows that the king’s words evoked from listeners like Pontifect an optimism about the future despite the socio-economic problems many were experiencing in the early 1930s. Another man from London, John Wm. Cooper, articulated similar sentiments:

Cooper described how the king’s broadcast had brought him reassurance and hope. We might also interpret the emphasis that he placed on the simplicity of the king’s words as evidence of the power of Lang’s more informal language in conveying a sincere and caring image of the king to listeners.

Other writers described how the king’s sympathetic words had a highly personal effect on them while noting that they felt part of a larger emotional community centred on the monarchy because of the broadcast. In her letter to the king, Lilian E. Roberts, who wrote from a convalescent home in Exmouth, Devon, extended her thanks to him ‘from the Soul for your pretty Xmas broadcast with its loving and thoughtful words of cheer for this happy season!’. She explained how she was ‘ only one of Their Majestys Big Family – needing like others in the army of suffering – more strength – but when on Xmas day I heard the King’s Speech – he sounded just like a dear kind Father to us all and the voice very, very clear indeed.’⁶⁹ In this personal letter, Roberts described how the king’s broadcast had had an inspiring effect on her at a time when she was ill and how the Christmas message had made her feel part of a larger family of listeners headed by a paternalistic monarch. A Mr. Saunders from Bampton in North Devon similarly wrote to George V to express his thanks ‘for the uplifting help [the broadcast] gave me. For reasons of health, I am entirely alone this day; but I no longer feel lonely or unhappy after being made aware that I belong to one family of which Your Majesty is the Head. I humbly thank you from the bottom of my heart for the kind message and help’.⁷⁰ These words testify to the powerful effect that radio had in encouraging listeners to conceive of themselves as part of an imagined emotional community simultaneously linked around the focal point of the monarchy. Moreover, this sense of affective integration seems to have been acutely felt by those who listened alone to the king’s broadcast or lacked actual relatives with whom to celebrate the Christmas festival.

Lang’s royal public language thus worked on at least two levels: it not only resonated with some families who listened together on Christmas Day and empathized with the monarch’s references to his own relatives or his home life; its kind-hearted, informal character also appealed to vulnerable people who were in need of sympathy. It is significant that the archbishop’s personalized rhetoric also received widespread acclaim in the British press. As already indicated, newspapers like the Express and Mirror interpreted Rudyard Kipling’s broadcasts as creating a unique link between the monarch and his people. The personal emphasis continued to inform the press coverage of Lang’s messages, with newspapers stressing the intimate way in which George V characterized his audience. For example, the day after he had delivered his silver jubilee broadcast, the Express presented as its front-page headline the king’s reference to listeners as ‘my very dear people’ (Figure 2.2).⁷¹ Similarly, the Mirror précised George V’s 1935 Christmas message with the words ‘my dear friends’.⁷² In this way the press helped to immortalize the image of the kind, personable sovereign, their reports shaped by the rising influence of human-interest journalism which sought to nurture an affective affinity between media audiences and the public figures they read about in newspapers, watched in the cinema and listened to on the radio.⁷³

Figure 2.2. ‘My Very Dear People’, Daily Express, 7 May 1935, p. 1. © The British Library Board.

‘I dedicate myself anew’

The archbishop’s third modification consolidated the personal connection between the king and his subjects. As already discussed, in Lang’s messages George V spoke symbolically of a ‘personal link’ that united him and his people and was partly based on a shared culture of domesticity exemplified by the House of Windsor. Kipling avoided references to the king’s personal life in the earlier broadcasts, but he did note that the monarch’s relationship with his people was rooted in a bond of mutual support. For example, in the 1932 message George V stated that his ‘life’s aim’ had ‘been to serve’ his people in order to improve their lives; and that their ‘loyalty’ and ‘confidence’ in him had been his ‘abundant reward’ for this service.⁷⁴ The king explained to listeners that he had committed himself to their welfare and that their trust in his leadership sustained him in this role. Lang’s intimate public language invigorated this concept, with the monarch describing in unprecedented terms the deep mutual affection that linked him to his people.

Lang’s innovation was particularly noticeable in the silver jubilee broadcast he prepared for the king. It was much more contemplative in tone than the Kipling messages and produced an image of George V reflecting on his relationship with his listeners:

The highly introspective register in the opening lines of this broadcast conjured a vision of the king ruminating on his mood at the end of the jubilee celebrations. Although the monarch’s allusion to the sentiment in his ‘heart’ had precursors in earlier messages, his rhetorical interrogation of his feelings was unprecedented and conveyed to listeners an image of a king who was able to share his deepest emotions. Then, declaring that he could not put into words his ‘thoughts and feelings’, implying that he was overwhelmed, he declared, in Lang’s most direct and intimate linguistic flourish to date, his gratitude to his subjects for the loyalty and, extraordinarily, the love which they had supposedly shown him and Queen Mary during their reign together. Kipling had originally characterized the bond between king and people as one based on the ‘public’s loyalty’ and ‘confidence’ in their monarch. Lang remodelled this bond as one founded on ‘love’ and it was fitting that, having stressed that the relationship between king and subjects relied on the latter’s provision of emotional sustenance for the former, George V stated that he would continue, so long as he was able, to fulfil his end of this social contract, rededicating himself to the service of his people.

The idea of a British monarch sacrificing himself in return for his people’s love was not new. The royal proclamation of accession and the coronation oath, which dated back more than three centuries, included phrases which emphasized that the sovereign could expect to receive his subjects’ affection in return for dutiful service on their behalf.⁷⁶ And, as we know, Victorian notions of duty and service were defining features of George V’s reign.⁷⁷ What was new, though, was the way the king publicly spoke of this relationship at a time when the lexicons of affection and self-sacrifice had much deeper personal resonances. Martin Francis has suggested that emotional self-restraint was key to elite male deportment in the middle decades of the twentieth century: as a man, to reveal one’s feelings was to expose weakness.⁷⁸ But George V transgressed this boundary through his emotionally candid broadcasts, remodelling the image of king as a benign, loving figure whose own self-fulfilment was inhibited by his onerous position. Furthermore, this period was notable for the emergence of new understandings of the self which, above all else, prioritized personal enrichment.⁷⁹ Yet, here was a king who seemed ready to put his people’s welfare ahead of his own happiness and who told his subjects in no uncertain terms how their reciprocal love for him was compensation enough for his dedication to their care.

Lang combined this potent mix of royal self-sacrifice and popular emotional sustenance for the first time in the 1934 Christmas broadcast, with George V elaborating on the burdens of kingship: ‘May I add very simply and sincerely that if I may be regarded as in some true sense the Head of this great and widespread Family, sharing its life and sustained by its affection, this will be a full reward for the long and sometimes anxious labours of my Reign of well nigh five and twenty years’.⁸⁰ Perhaps unsurprisingly, the monarch’s words met with powerful responses from some listeners. John Crawley of Swaffham in Norfolk thanked the king for his message and wished him ‘God’s blessing in the great office to which He has called you in such difficult times as the present’.⁸¹ Meanwhile, a vicar who ministered in the parish of Heaton Park in Newcastle-on-Tyne expressed a similar concern for George V in his letter to the king’s private secretary:

The vicar’s words reveal that Lang’s sentence on the ‘anxious labours’ of George V’s reign had a sudden effect on some listeners. He expressed sympathy for the king ‘for the great responsibilities which are his’ and sent up a prayer in the hope that God’s blessing would fortify the monarch in his role. Indeed, several religiously inspired letter writers articulated similar sentiments to the king when they emphasized that they hoped God would support him in his work.⁸³

We should interpret letters like these in light of the religious content of the king’s messages – he concluded each one of his broadcasts by delivering God’s blessing to listeners – and also against the backdrop of the Christmas festival with its underlying symbolism of self-sacrifice.⁸⁴ Mrs Mary Munday from Hanworth in Middlesex captured the essence of this divine imagery in her letter to George V and, despite some awkward punctuation, it shows how Lang’s royal public language awakened in her sympathy for the monarch:

Munday’s fulsome letter, with its constant underlining of words, drew on the religious imagery of the ‘cross of life’ and the burdens it imposed on king and subjects alike. She described how George V’s ‘understanding’ and ‘patience’ had ‘won through’ despite ‘times very anxious for you’ and she empathized with him and the royal family in expressing her hope that 1935 would prove a happy year for them all. The letter thus reveals how Lang’s emphasis on the arduous nature of royal life, and specifically the idea that the monarch’s function was to serve his people, resonated with some listeners, who articulated sympathy for, and gratitude to, the king.

In his last ever broadcast on Christmas Day 1935, George V publicly reflected on the difficulties of his role for a final time:

The king’s implicit reference to the burdens of his office, for which he implored God’s help, and his restatement of the ‘love’ that connected his people to him once again envisaged a bond linking monarch to subjects that was based on mutual support. By reinvoking the word ‘love’, Lang normalized this highly expressive vocabulary – encouraging listeners to conceive of the king in very personal terms and to envision themselves as part of a community joined together in their collective affection for him. Lang also projected this image in the oration he delivered as part of the jubilee service of commemoration on 6 May 1935 in St. Paul’s cathedral when he described George V as ‘a man [his subjects] could understand, respect, and trust’ and celebrated the king’s ‘unaffected friendliness’ – both of which were phrases that the press highlighted in their coverage of the event.⁸⁷

A number of George V’s listeners focused in on the king’s voice in order to make sense of the burdens imposed on him by his high station. Herbert Humphrey from Wokingham noted in his letter that he and his family ‘hope and trust the great strain [of the 1934 broadcast] did not inconvenience your Majesty in any way whatsoever? It was a source of thankfulness that we noticed your Majesty’s voice was much stronger and also clearer than last year’.⁸⁸ Similarly, Harold G. Carlile from Fulham in West London wrote that ‘my wife and family join me in begging you to accept our thanks for your wonderful words today. More welcome, still, to us all was the evidence, in your voice, of your great strength and better health’.⁸⁹ Letters like these demonstrate that some listeners paid close attention to the way the king spoke to them and reveal that the varying power of his voice encouraged audiences to empathize with him. Harold Nicolson thought George V had a ‘wonderful voice – strong, emphatic, vibrant, with undertones of sentiment, devoid of all condescension, artifice or pose’.⁹⁰ Listening back to the king’s broadcasts, it is instantly apparent that he did indeed deliver his messages in a measured and rhythmical way, speaking slowly and with precision to listeners. The king’s other biographer, Kenneth Rose, described his accent as that of an Edwardian country gentleman.⁹¹ While his accent would have definitely conveyed his elite status to listeners, his upper-class tones do not seem to have been deemed out-of-touch in the way that those of his granddaughter Elizabeth were twenty years on.⁹² Rather, he possessed a very human radio voice: afflicted by a bronchial cough, it was gruff in character, which commentators suggested enhanced its appeal. In 1932 The Spectator celebrated how the king’s cough had interrupted the flow of his first broadcast: ‘A King who reads a message into a microphone from a manuscript may be just a King. A King who coughs is a fellow human being’.⁹³ It seems likely from the letters written to George V that his coughing, which was repeated in both 1935 messages, added to the sense of spontaneity and personality he communicated over the airwaves. Moreover, in his final two broadcasts, the monarch spoke in quieter, slower tones, conjuring a vision of a more elderly gentleman in thoughtful conversation with his listeners.

‘This great family’

It was partly the growing prominence of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini’s voices in British news reports that gave rise in the early 1930s to public concerns over whether the League of Nations could secure a lasting peace.⁹⁴ Some people clearly looked to more traditional authority figures like George V to take a lead in the movement for peace rather than place their trust in the new internationalist League. Before he delivered his Christmas broadcast in 1934, the king received several letters from members of the public suggesting that he include a new feature in his message – such as a two-minute silence or an appeal to foreign heads of state – in order to highlight his desire to secure international harmony.⁹⁵ Although these ideas were not adopted, the letters indicate that George V was perceived by some of his people as having a powerful global influence. Lang promoted this aspect of the king’s persona by strengthening the vision of an imperial family linked around the focal point of the monarch in order to remodel the empire as a peaceful group of nations committed to upholding order at a time of growing uncertainty.

As the king’s speechwriter, Kipling had tried to communicate through the first two Christmas broadcasts a moment of imperial union in order to strengthen the connections between Britain and its empire. The bonds that linked the motherland to the dominions had been weakened with their change in status to self-governing ‘autonomous communities’, as established by the Statute of Westminster in 1931. Equally, the economic tensions that sprung from the global depression and the resistance of colonial independence movements added to the strain on Britain’s imperial ties.⁹⁶ Kipling’s vision of unity accorded with the BBC’s own aims to present Christmas as a celebration of empire reunion and built on an older tradition that saw the festival as a time when British families remembered relatives who had settled overseas in the colonies and dominions.⁹⁷ The BBC launched its new empire service in October 1932 and, working with the public broadcasting authorities in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, sought to use radio programming to promote an inclusive (although generally white Anglo-centric) idea of empire that had the monarchy at its core.⁹⁸ Notably, the controller of programmes at the BBC, Alan Dawnay, described George V’s broadcasts as the ‘essential climax and the most important part’ of his organization’s empire-themed Christmas activities.⁹⁹

In the 1933 message Kipling characterized the empire using the metaphor of ‘family’ for the first time: George V told his listeners that it was his ‘privilege to speak directly to all the members of our world-wide family’ and that the empire formed a ‘family council’ that worked together ‘for the benefit of the family’.¹⁰⁰ Writing to the speechwriter after the monarch had spoken, Clive Wigram suggested that ‘the Dominions will be delighted at being taken into the “Family Council” – a very happy term’.¹⁰¹ The private secretary clearly approved of the domestic image conjured by Kipling’s words, although the vision of a family of different British peoples connected around the focal point of the crown was not entirely novel. At the start of the nineteenth century George III’s golden jubilee was celebrated for its inclusive qualities and the monarch described as the ‘Father of his People’, who were, in turn, presented as ‘one great family’.¹⁰² Crucially, on taking over from Kipling, Lang drew on the poet’s example and put the theme of kinship unambiguously at the centre of the 1934 Christmas broadcast to popularize the idea that the empire was a family group.¹⁰³ The archbishop sent the first draft of the message to Wigram for official approval on 10 December and the courtier replied the next day: ‘His Majesty … wishes his warmest thanks conveyed to you for all the personal trouble and thought you have bestowed upon it. The King has read your draft through once and is quite delighted with your main theme of the Family, of which His Majesty is the Head’.¹⁰⁴

Wigram’s response reveals that Lang had, following Kipling’s lead, remodelled George V’s public image to present him as head of an international family of nations. The symbolism pleased the monarch and was immediately converted into a courtly conventional wisdom. The private secretary told Lang that ‘when the King has a little more time he will go carefully into each sentence, and I know you will not mind if His Majesty wishes them shortened a little, as when speaking through the microphone the King prefers short sentences’.¹⁰⁵ However, the archbishop’s draft remained almost entirely unchanged and George V referred to the empire as a family seven separate times as part of the 1934 Christmas message. Lang thus softened the image of the British empire by infusing it with a powerful domestic imagery which was more broadly characteristic of his intimate vision of kingship. Moreover, he reaffirmed this vision of empire in the messages he wrote for George V in 1935, with the king notably describing how the imperial spirit contrasted with the increasingly worrying situation on the Continent: ‘In Europe and many parts of the world anxieties surround us. It is good to think that our own family of peoples is at peace in itself and united in one desire to be at peace with other nations – the friend of all, the enemy of none’.¹⁰⁶

Despite the internal and external pressures that were being exerted on the empire, the image of a united family of peoples was welcomed by some listeners who wrote to George V after his 1934 broadcast to explain how his words had brought them comfort and confidence on Christmas Day.¹⁰⁷ The letters suggest that listeners took the king’s words to heart, with many reiterating almost verbatim the image of empire crafted by Lang. Typical was Chas Geary’s letter, which he wrote to George V from his home in Leeds:

Geary’s belief that he spoke for ‘countless thousands’ was a recurrent theme in the letters written to George V, which suggests that radio worked to wed some listeners to the concept of an international emotional community which was uniquely integrated around the focal point of the king.¹⁰⁹ T. E. Bailey, a toy and electrical shop owner from Pewsey in Wiltshire, articulated a similar sentiment:

Letters like this one suggest that Lang’s royal public language strengthened the monarchy’s role as the link that bound disparate peoples together and show that the image of an imperial stabilizing force led by George V resonated with some listeners at a time of international uncertainty.

The metaphor of the imperial family was rapidly popularized and would notably take on even greater significance as the old empire disintegrated and was subsequently reimagined as the New Commonwealth after 1945.¹¹¹ Lang’s influential role in promoting this theme is discernible from the press’s response to the king’s 1934 Christmas message. In an editorial titled ‘One great family’, the Mirror stated that the broadcast ‘became a symbol not only of the Christmas spirit of individual family happiness, but of a worldwide Imperial fraternity’.¹¹² Meanwhile, an editorial in The Times, with its strong associations with empire, drew special attention to the way ‘the head of the family’ had spoken to the ‘members of the British family … from his own home’.¹¹³

Wigram wrote to Lang again in January 1935 to convey George V’s gratitude for the draft, noting that it had been ‘acclaimed the most moving message that the King has delivered by wireless to his People’.¹¹⁴ As well as receiving very positive reviews in national newspapers for its focus on family, the 1934 Christmas message was also commended in readers’ correspondence published by the press, some of which characterized the king as the ‘father of an empire family’.¹¹⁵ The intimate rhetoric devised by Lang seems to have invigorated the emotional bond that connected some listeners to the king, as seen in several of the letters addressed to George V which also used the word ‘father’ to describe their relationships to him, despite the fact that he avoided using this word to characterize his link to his people.¹¹⁶ Indeed, the royal household amended Lang’s 1935 Christmas message to moderate an explicit reference to the king as a paternal figure. The archbishop’s draft included the line ‘my words will be very simple but spoken from the heart (like the words of the father of a family speaking to his children) on this family festival of Christmas’.¹¹⁷ The palace’s excision of Lang’s original depiction of George V as ‘the father of a family speaking to his children’ suggests it was deemed too direct and, possibly, cloying in its description of the king’s paternal qualities. It may also have been interpreted as condescending in its presentation of the subjective connection between king and people and was replaced with the allusion to the ‘family festival’, which gave more imaginative space to listeners to interpret his words for themselves. Instead, it was left to other commentators to highlight the king’s paternal qualities – as was the case when Lang described George V as ‘the Father of his people’ during the sermon he delivered in honour of the king at the St. Paul’s cathedral jubilee service, which was broadcast live to the nation and empire.¹¹⁸

A programme of relayed spoken greetings from across the empire preceded the king’s 1934 Christmas broadcast. These ‘ordinary’ voices were used by the BBC to augment an image of an imperial race united around the sovereign’s headship. A Daily Mirror editorial noted that the voices ‘clarified and accentuated’ the meaning of empire: ‘When the obscure shepherd in a Cotswold village can greet the loneliest settler far across the seas, when a Canadian fisherman can tell us of his life, when loyal voices reach us from Britons in the Dominions and natives in South Africa, the meaning of unity has a direct and personal appeal’.¹¹⁹ These chains of greeting between imperial subjects had begun before the king’s 1932 Christmas broadcast and, in 1933, incorporated salutations from specially selected ‘ordinary’ voices from around the empire for the first time, under the title ‘Absent Friends’.¹²⁰ From 1934 the annual imperial relays were also designed to evoke images of the family culture supposedly shared by listeners in different parts of the empire in an effort to awaken in them a more personalized connection to the monarch. Referring again to the Cotswold shepherd who spoke as part of the 1934 broadcast, the Daily Mail remarked that his contribution to the relay was particularly ‘moving’ because, speaking in a ‘typically homely way’, he appealed to his long-lost brother in New Zealand to contact him if, at that point, he was listening to his voice.¹²¹ The broadcast thus assumed greater poignancy around the informal vision of an actual family reunion, the shepherd then heralding the sovereign’s message by wishing listeners a happy Christmas and bestowing the empire’s blessing on his monarch. Notably, the symbolism of this relay of greetings was not lost on listeners either. Hastwell Grayson, a farmer from Great Milton in Oxfordshire, included the following in his letter to the royal household: ‘The Christmas Broadcast marked a new era. The fisherman, the shepherd and the toll collector were at the microphone, officialdom was silent. The innovation met with universal applause. The broadcast culminated with His Majesty’s speech on the family at home and abroad, the individual family and the family which makes the Empire’.¹²² Grayson was clearly impressed by the BBC’s broadcast and the way the voices of ordinary people humanized the bonds of empire. His reference to the silence of officialdom also suggests he found it refreshing that high politics was deliberately kept out of this moment of imperial fraternity.

The BBC built on Lang’s 1934 vision of empire in titling its relay of greetings for the king’s final Christmas message in 1935 ‘This great family’. BBC editorial files specified that ‘the idea of the programme is to show the Christmas spirit in families all over the world, and to show how the whole Empire is linked together as one family by its loyalty to the King’.¹²³ These documents also reveal the special lengths to which broadcasters went in locating ‘representative types’ of voices to reflect different regional and national cultures. For example, the contribution from Sheffield would come from an ‘industrial family’, while a farmer would deliver Scotland’s greeting. The people selected were also to be ‘either a family or some group of people brought together by Christmas’ and should have real ‘relatives or friends’ living in the empire.¹²⁴ The BBC thought that, when juxtaposed, the effect of this range of voices and dialects would be ‘very pointed’.¹²⁵ Voices were thus heard from the home nations, the dominions and India, including from a family in Ottawa and a children’s hospital in Aberdare, Wales; and the final segment came from two children in London calling their grandfather, who lived in New Zealand.¹²⁶

The family-centred image conjured by the BBC’s Christmas relays softened the popular vision of British imperialism in the 1930s, tempering the empire’s militaristic legacy while distracting from ongoing violent disputes between colonial independence movements and the British authorities.¹²⁷ The scene of two children calling their grandfather was one of the most explicit references to the way in which empire seemed to be built on family connections that stretched over the entire world. This peaceful vision of British imperialism was also evident in George V’s discussion of the personal bond which, he claimed, linked him to the empire’s children. Back in 1923 the king and Queen Mary had recorded for gramophone an ‘Empire Day message to the boys and girls of the British empire’; and in so doing had positioned themselves as familiar, symbolic figureheads which connected the motherland to young people in the dominions and colonies.¹²⁸ Beginning with his first Christmas message in 1932, George V ended each of his broadcasts either by making an individual reference to his child listeners or by delivering special festive wishes to the young people listening to him. Notably, in relation to Kipling’s 1933 Christmas broadcast, Wigram wrote to tell the novelist that ‘the little touch at the end about the children will be appreciated’ – the courtier clearly valuing how the speechwriter’s words would cultivate emotional bonds between the king and younger listeners.¹²⁹ The monarch’s mention of children in the last lines of his 1934 broadcast inspired some of them to write to him. The Lewis children from Ridgeway, near Sheffield, wrote to inform George V how ‘we three sisters have just been listening in to your Christmas greetings and we wish to thank you very much for the special message for the children’.¹³⁰ Similarly, Phoebe Cooper from West Worthing wrote that ‘as the youngest member of a simple family party, I want to thank your Majesty for Your message to the Empire this afternoon, and to send to You our loyal greetings’.¹³¹

In his silver jubilee message George V’s caring persona was communicated through a direct appeal to his young listeners:

Addressing his audience in the most direct register that Lang fashioned as royal speechwriter, the king presented himself as a senior relative to those children listening to him, emphasizing his personal connection to them in order to encourage them to take on active roles in the life of the empire. This message accorded with other royal attempts to promote ‘good citizenship’ between the wars, but the intimate nature of the jubilee appeal reveals how the king sought to integrate his subjects into the public sphere through the emotional bonds they forged with him.¹³³

Importantly, a backdrop of escalating political tension in Europe enabled George V to present the empire as a pacific entity. Interpreting the 1934 Christmas broadcast as a ‘peace message’, the Daily Mail drew special attention to the king’s statement that ‘the clouds are lifting … I am convinced that if we meet our anxieties in the spirit of one family we shall overcome them’.¹³⁴ The article also acknowledged that the pope and Nazi leaders had made similar ‘fervent appeals in special Christmas messages that the spirit of peace might prevail throughout the world’. In this context of international disquiet, George V’s later broadcasts, along with the BBC’s imperial relays which preceded them, were celebrated by journalists for the way they characterized the empire as an international, stabilizing force made up of a peaceful community of peoples united by a common culture and kinship.¹³⁵ The king’s image as the father figure who held this community together not only came to define the final years of his reign but also the way the British were encouraged to see themselves as a nation, which may help to explain why the public’s grief appears to have been so profound when he died on 20 January 1936.¹³⁶

‘The World’s Perfect Gentleman’

The Mass Observation archive houses 512 school essays titled ‘The finest person who ever lived’, which were written in late 1937 by working- and middle-class boys aged eight to eighteen at schools in Westhoughton, near Bolton, Lancashire and Middlesbrough in north-east England. Either under instruction or of their own volition, forty-six schoolboys wrote about George V, detailing the various characteristics they thought made him an especially ‘fine’ person and, in so doing, revealed some of the emotional contours along which young royalist identities were formed. The king was the second most popular choice after Jesus, on whom eighty essays were written, while Lord Nelson and Sir Francis Drake were the third and fourth most popular respectively.¹³⁷ Although there is no evidence available that sheds light on the conditions in which the essays were composed or what guidance the schoolboys received from their teachers, the large number of figures discussed suggests the boys were given some degree of choice in selecting whom they wrote about. Without knowing what kind of pedagogy took place in preparation for this exercise, we have to assume that the compositions revealed royalist identities under construction in response to social experiences inside and outside the classroom.¹³⁸ One of the major experiences that would certainly have shaped how the schoolboys wrote about the old king was the strange eighteen-month period that followed his death, with his charismatic eldest son relinquishing the throne to pursue true love only to be replaced by his second son who, as we shall see in the next chapter, was not a popular figure. The essay writers emphasized three positive characteristics in presenting George V as a particularly ‘fine’ figure and, in so doing, might have been nostalgically pointing to the qualities they thought he had embodied and were worth celebrating, knowing full well that neither of his successors had successfully carried forward their father’s version of kingship.¹³⁹ The first of these qualities was the monarch’s selfless dedication to serving his people irrespective of their social background: the boys expressed great admiration for the king’s egalitarian character and described his relationship with his people as one rooted in intimacy. The second theme on which the essay writers focused was how George V’s broadcasts had brought him closer to his subjects in Britain and the empire, crystallizing his personal link to them. Finally, the boys discussed George V’s moral virtues as a family man. His domestic life impressed them and, at a time when private life was deemed to play a crucial role in the formation of a person’s character, the king’s ostensible love of family encouraged the schoolboys to empathize with him.¹⁴⁰

The themes of selflessness and service prevailed in the essays written on the two most widely chosen figures – Jesus Christ and George V. Many of the eighty essays written about Jesus discussed his self-sacrifice on behalf of his Christian followers, while over three quarters of the forty-six essays on the king focused on his caring reputation and the way he had tried in his lifetime to improve the lives of his people. While it is entirely possible that teachers instructed the boys to think in altruistic terms when writing their essays, this emphasis on the monarch’s selflessness could also be revealing of the popular impact the royal public language of service had in the 1930s:

This teenage schoolboy’s portrayal of George V was typical in the way it characterized his selfless behaviour using superlatives and hyperbole. The gentlemanly traits that the writer admired included the sovereign’s ‘quiet dignity’ and readiness to interact with ‘common people’ in spite of their ‘humble dwellings’. This image of the egalitarian monarch was not only projected through broadcasts in which he referred to his subjects as ‘dear friends’, but also harked back to the king’s personal interactions with working-class people during his and the queen’s tours of Britain’s industrial communities before, during and after the First World War.¹⁴² One boy, aged thirteen, commented that the monarch ‘was more like ourselves rather than a King for you generally find that the kings of other countries mix very little with their fellow men’.¹⁴³ By involving himself in the lives of the poor, George V thus seems to have fashioned a reputation as a uniquely unassuming, compassionate ruler. A fifteen-year-old boy described in similar terms the monarch’s affection for his people: ‘He was popular with all classes of English because when he did a thing it was in the service of England. A king is looked upon as the Head of his country and the father of his people. George V was each of these and a great part of his time was spent among poor people in slum districts’.¹⁴⁴

However, it was not just the king’s interaction with working-class people that underpinned his ‘service’. He was renowned for the way he had ‘mingled freely with soldiers’ and taken an interest in their lives during the First World War. More than half of the forty-six school essays written on George V similarly remarked that he had spent time visiting soldiers on the Western Front and initiating philanthropic schemes to aid ex-servicemen. This suggests that the legacy of the war and the king’s symbolic leadership during those years, as well as his association with veterans after the conflict, endured as a key part of his reputation after his death.¹⁴⁵ Similarly, more than half the essays noted the monarch’s charitable work on behalf of poor and sick people who were, of course, a key constituency whom he had singled out in all his broadcasts.¹⁴⁶ The middle- and working-class statuses of the schoolboys may well have shaped their approval of this patrician version of philanthropy and their positive identification with the king’s charitable work.

While the king’s ability to convey personal care for his subjects through his actions marked him out as an especially ‘fine’ person, the emotional expression he projected through his radio messages seems to have augmented this compassionate image. One fifteen-year-old quoted George V’s last broadcast to portray the king’s close link to listeners: ‘He did not treat his subjects as people who were there to be taxed or not worth bothering oneself about but when he broadcast for the last time on Christmas Day 1935 he opened his speech with the words “My dear friends”. He was a true Christian treating every man to whom he spoke as a personal friend’.¹⁴⁷ The boy’s quotation in his essay of the monarch’s exact opening words from his 1935 Christmas message reveals the powerful effect that the directness and familiarity of this kind of address had on some listeners: he was more a ‘personal friend’ than an imposing and aloof ruler. The extract also shows that the boy was comfortable describing the old king using highly personalized terms which highlighted an amity between monarch and subjects. A pupil from the same school noted the levelling effect of George V’s broadcasts when he wrote that ‘during his talks over the wireless on Christmas Day [the king] used to address us as “Fellow Countrymen”’; while another boy remarked that one of the ways the king ‘showed himself to be a kind man who loved his subjects’ was when he wished them ‘all the best of Christmas [sic]’ in his wireless broadcasts.¹⁴⁸ It seems quite possible that Cosmo Lang’s accentuation of the emotional expression contained in George V’s broadcasts helped to shape how these boys perceived the king by encouraging them to develop personal imagined relationships with him. It was certainly the case that the radio messages highlighted the king’s close association with the empire. More than a quarter of all the boys mentioned George V’s interest in the empire, with one fourteen-year-old boy noting that he admired the monarch’s ‘persistent struggle for peace which was shown by his talks to the people of his empire every Christmas’.¹⁴⁹

One schoolboy in particular noted the important role of radio in enhancing the king’s familiar image. He stated that ‘it was at the latter part of his reign that people took more notice of him … for, on his annual Christmas Day broadcast, millions of people, the wide world over, would listen with reverence and true sincerity. It was an act which made itself felt in the very hearts of the people’.¹⁵⁰ This description suggested that broadcasting had enabled a community of reverent subjects ‘the wide world over’ to forge new kinds of personal connections with the king. In a similar vein, a fifth of all the essays written about George V used the word ‘love’ to characterize the bond between king and people – the same word the monarch himself had used in his final two broadcasts. The highly personal imagery created when the boys used this affective language was typified by a fourteen-year-old in his account of how, ‘when they heard of [the king’s] death people were heartbroken because they each loved him as a brother’.¹⁵¹ This description is one of several which illuminate the intimate register of the language used by adolescent schoolboys to convey their attachment to the king, as well as the way they thought they formed part of a larger affective community linked together by their emotional connections with the monarch.

The final aspect of the king’s public image discussed in the boys’ essays related to his happy Christian home life. Essays written on other individuals help to reveal the importance of domesticity in shaping the ‘fine’ qualities ascribed to public figures. One fifteen-year-old who weighed up the attributes of different men, including Jesus, Sir Francis Drake and Lord Nelson, wrote of the latter that ‘in spite of his bravery and brilliant commanding power … his home life was always a tragedy to me. His lust for fame, even at the expense of his wife, seems to give him a blacker character’.¹⁵² This boy’s belief that a virtuous home life was key to defining an individual’s qualities, with private virtue superseding public action, reflected the growing importance that the British public attached to the domestic sphere as the main locus where personal identities were formed and self-fulfilment found in the 1930s. In essays on the king, his marriage to Queen Mary was noted as an important aspect of his public image. Two fourteen-year-old boys wrote that she ‘was a great help to him in many ways’ and that ‘during his reign he was helped by a faithful queen’.¹⁵³ Equally, a twelve-year-old stated that ‘one of the most happy moments of [the king’s] life was when he celebrated his Silver Jubilee with Queen Mary’, which again shows that George V’s domesticity was closely entwined with his popular appeal.¹⁵⁴

A seventeen-year-old who chose to write about Jesus Christ also reflected on the importance of private life to a ‘fine’ character:

This schoolboy hinted that the exposure of a person’s private life was important to determining their ‘inner’ self. This analysis corresponded closely to the increasingly popular belief that it was in the private sphere of the home where people’s real identities were developed and expressed. In light of essays like this one, it would seem that George V’s candid descriptions of his family life and the publicity surrounding the domesticity of the House of Windsor helped to create a personal image of the king with which members of the public could identify. Indeed, one thirteen-year-old boy articulated a knowledge of George V’s loving home life when he noted that ‘in his own family [the king] was extremely kind to his children and his grandchildren’.¹⁵⁶ The royalist identities that the school essay writers were thus forming in relation to the old monarch coalesced around some of the features that had, in time, come to define the monarch’s reign but which he also highlighted in his final broadcasts: his close reciprocal relationship with his people; his sense of duty to serve them and improve their lives; his readiness to communicate with them in new ways; and his love of home and family. As we shall see in the next chapter, both his successors struggled to embody all of these characteristics simultaneously and, it seems, to achieve a popularity comparable to that of their father. The disparity in public affection that separated George VI from his father might have been articulated by a fourteen-year-old boy who chose to write about George V as the ‘finest person who ever lived’ when he stated that he hoped the new king would one day ‘be as well loved’ as his father:

Conclusion

Writing in his own hand to Lang five days after he had delivered his final radio broadcast to his people, George V thanked the archbishop ‘for all the trouble’ he had gone to in drafting the message: ‘Everyone said it was the best I have done yet. What more could be said in its praise? I suppose it does give pleasure, but it is rather an effort for one. No doubt it brings me into close touch with my peoples all over the world and that of course I am very keen about’.¹⁵⁸ This chapter has examined how the archbishop sought to bring his monarch into closer contact with British people at home and abroad through a more intimate royal public language that heightened the affective affinity between radio listeners and the king. At a time when popular broadcasters were using more personal modes of address to connect to audiences who increasingly perceived private life as the most important site for emotional fulfilment, Lang transformed George V’s broadcasts by presenting listeners with what seemed like privileged access to the personal thoughts, feelings and domestic setting of their king. Notably, the archbishop also set out to soften the empire’s reputation by infusing the imagined links between monarch and imperial subjects with new emotional meaning, recasting Britain’s imperial culture through family-centred, pacific imagery.

It seems highly likely that the positive press coverage of George V’s broadcasts, combined with the letters of appreciation written by members of the public to the king like those examined here, had an affirmative effect on royal officials, confirming to them that the monarch’s broadcasts were having an emotional impact on listeners. This ‘positive feedback loop’ can help explain the consolidation in the register of the public language projected by the monarchy in the mid 1930s, with courtiers revising Lang’s 1935 drafts to accentuate their personal qualities in order to popularize the sovereign’s intimate image. The letters that British subjects wrote to their king suggest that the archbishop’s royal public language helped to foster public support for the monarchy by encouraging listeners to conceive of themselves as part of a national emotional community linked together by the simultaneity of radio broadcasting around the focal point of George V as head of a real and imagined family. His last Christmas broadcast also maintained the idea of mutual affection and care between sovereign and subjects, while his reference to the ‘personal link between me and my people’ augmented the image of a relationship in which he was sustained in his burdensome role (‘may God help him!’) by his people’s devotion and, most notably, their ‘love’.

Lang’s emphasis on the burdens of kingship and the self-sacrifice made by the sovereign while enacting his or her duties has endured as one of the most resilient components of the House of Windsor’s public relations strategy through to the present day. The archbishop created a template for royal public language that simultaneously championed the personal gratification associated with home and family at a time when this mattered more than ever before, but which equally stressed that royalty was forced to forgo the pleasures of ordinary life in executing their public service. Lang’s messages took on powerful meaning in 1930s Britain precisely because of the way a new popular culture of self-fulfilment contrasted with the royal commitment to duty ahead of personal happiness. The idea that the royal family suffer for their station – that they are unable to live ordinary private lives without relinquishing their positions – has been linked to late twentieth-century figures like Princess Diana and her sons. However, it is clear that this idea has a longer, subtler history, specific to the period between the wars, which witnessed the emergence of a culture of family-centred self-enrichment ahead of all else.

___________

1 F. Prochaska, Royal Bounty: the Making of a Welfare Monarchy (New Haven, Conn., 1995), pp. 169–212; P. Williamson, ‘The monarchy and public values, 1900–1953’, in The Monarchy and the British Nation 1780 to the Present, ed. A. Olechnowicz (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 223–57; H. Jones, ‘The nature of kingship in First World War Britain’, in The Windsor Dynasty 1910 to the Present: ‘Long to Reign Over Us’?, ed. M. Glencross, J. Rowbottom and M. D. Kandiah (Basingstoke, 2016), pp. 195–216.

2 H. Nicolson, King George the Fifth: His Life and Reign (London, 1952), pp. 524–6. For other contemporaries’ thoughts on the public’s strong emotional attachment to George V, see K. Martin, The Magic of Monarchy (London, 1937), pp. 13–4; and LPL, MS2826, Diary of Revd. Dr. A. C. Don, 10 May 1935.

3 Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters, i: the Later Years, 1945–62,ed. N. Nicolson (3 vols., London, 1968), p. 208. On the problems with official royal biography, see D. Cannadine, ‘From biography to history: writing the modern British monarchy’, Hist. Research, lxxvii (2004), 289–312, at pp. 294–8.

4 Nicolson, Harold Nicolson, iii. 144 and 174.

5 Williamson, ‘Monarchy and public values’, esp. pp. 228–32.

6 P. P. Scannell, and D. Cardiff, A Social History of British Broadcasting, i: 1922–1939, Serving the Nation (Oxford, 1991), pp. 282–3.

7 This correspondence can be located in Kipling’s papers at TK, SxMs-38/2/2/2/1/2/2/5/1, King George V Christmas Broadcast, 1932; SxMs-38/2/2/2/1/2/2/5/3, King George V Christmas Broadcast, 1933.

8 Cosmo Lang’s royal drafts and the accompanying correspondence with the royal household can be found at LPL, Lang 318.

9 All 40 letters can be found in RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357.

10 As with Lang’s draft messages, these letters have received no scholarly attention until now.

11 We know that the British media marginalized public criticism of the royal family in the first 4 decades of the 20th century out of respect for the crown, with the abdication crisis in 1936 acting as a key turning point. The absence of other oppositional voices in the historical records might also be explained by the collection and preservation policies of repositories like the Royal Archives and Lambeth Palace Library, where positive, adulatory letters from the public that commended the behaviour of the royals and the elites that surrounded them seem to have been routinely kept (possibly because the original recipients kept them), while negative correspondence has not tended to survive.

12 The sample of letters is fairly evenly split between male and female writers. Twenty letters were written by men, 18 by women and 2 by married couples together. Of these, 6 were addressed to the king’s private secretary, 5 of which were sent in anticipation of the 1934 broadcast.

13 J. Loviglio, Radio’s Intimate Public: Network Broadcasting and Mass-Mediated Democracy (Minneapolis, Minn., and London, 2005), pp. xiv–xvi; J. Lawrence, Electing Our Masters: the Hustings in British Politics from Hogarth to Blair (Oxford, 2009), pp. 96–9.

14 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, at pp. 38–9 and 51–2.

15 See also J. V. Gottlieb, ‘Guilty Women’, Foreign Policy, and Appeasement in Inter-War Britain (Basingstoke, 2015), p. 186.

16 B. H. Rosenwein, Generations of Feeling: a History of Emotions, 600–1700 (Cambridge, 2016), p. 3.

17 H. Barron and C. Langhamer, ‘Children, class, and the search for security: writing the future in 1930s Britain’, Twentieth Century British Hist., xxviii (2017), 367–89.

18 C. Langhamer, The English in Love: the Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution (Oxford, 2013), esp. at pp. 1–19; L. King, Family Men: Fatherhood and Masculinity in Britain, 1914–1960 (Oxford, 2015), pp. 5–7.

19 M. D. Kandiah et al., ‘The ultimate Windsor ceremonials: coronations and investitures’, in Glencross, Rowbottom and Kandiah, The Windsor Dynasty, pp. 59–86, at pp. 73–5.

20 D. Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (Oxford, 2002), esp. at pp. 21–2 and ch. 8; C. Kaul, ‘Monarchical display and the politics of empire: princes of Wales and India, 1870–1920s’, Twentieth Century British Hist., xvii (2006), 464–88.

21 T. Hajkowski, The BBC and National Identity in Britain, 1922–53 (Manchester, 2010), p. 84. See also J. Richards, ‘The monarchy and film, 1900–2006’, in Olechnowicz, The Monarchy and the British Nation, pp. 258–79, at p. 258.

22 Mort, ‘Love in a cold climate’, pp. 56–9.

23 S. Ball, Portrait of a Party: the Conservative Party in Britain 1918–1945 (Oxford, 2013), p. 101.

24 Lawrence, Electing Our Masters, pp. 96–9. See also P. Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative Leadership and National Values (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 83–5; S. Nicholas, ‘The construction of a national identity: Stanley Baldwin, ‘Englishness’ and the mass media in inter-war Britain’, in The Conservatives and British Society, ed. M. Francis and I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska (Cardiff, 1996), pp. 127–46, at pp. 135–40.

25 Loviglio, Radio’s Intimate Public, pp. xiv–xvi and ch.1.

26 Daily Express, 25 Nov. 1932, p. 1; Daily Mail, 25 Nov. 1932, p. 11. For the king’s initial reluctance to broadcast, see K. Rose, King George V (London, 1983), p. 393.

27 Daily Express, 25 Nov. 1932, p. 1.

28 TK, SxMs-38/2/2/2/1/2/2/5/1, C. Wigram to R. Kipling, 25 Nov. 1932. For speeches written by Kipling for the prince of Wales, see SxMs-38/2/2/2/1/2/2/5/10–11.

29 Quoted in T. Fleming, Voices Out of the Air: the Royal Christmas Broadcasts, 1932–1981 (London, 1981), p. 11.

30 Daily Mirror, 27 Nov. 1933, p. 5; Daily Express, 27 Nov. 1933, p. 15.

31 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 23–31.

32 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, E. Johns to King George V and Queen Mary, undated.

33 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, H. Humphrey to King George V, 26 Dec. 1934.

34 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 33–6 and fos. 40–3. Notably, the king’s intimate silver jubilee broadcast coincided with the release of reports on his and the queen’s home life, including that they called each other by the pet names ‘Georgie’ and ‘May’ (Daily Express, 3 May 1935, p. 6).

35 Langhamer, The English in Love, esp. pp. 1–19; King, Family Men, pp. 5–7; M. Johnes, Christmas and the British: a Modern History (London, 2016), pp. 41–2.

36 C. Langhamer, ‘The meanings of home in postwar Britain’, Jour. Contemp. Hist., xl (2005), 341–62; J. Finch and P. Summerfield, ‘Social reconstruction and the emergence of companionate marriage, 1945–1959’, in Marriage, Domestic Life and Social Change: Writings for Jacqueline Burgoyne, ed. D. Clark (London, 1991), pp. 7–32; S. Szreter and K. Fisher, Sex Before the Sexual Revolution: Intimate Life in England, 1918–1963 (Cambridge, 2010), p. 29.

37 Johnes, Christmas and the British, pp. 41–72. See also Daily Mail, 24 Dec. 1932, p. 8.

38 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 40–3 (the palace’s substitutions appear in bold, with Lang’s original words in brackets).

39 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 40–3.

40 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, E. Jenkins to C. Wigram, 9 Nov. 1934. For other letters which expressed a desire to hear other members of the royal family speak, including the queen and the princesses, see those written by J. Abbot (to C. Wigram, 13 Dec. 1934), H. Grayson (to C. Wigram, 7 Jan. 1935), M. E. King (to C. Wigram, 1 Jan. 1935), E. Newcombe (to King George V, 1 Dec. 1934) and G. A. Whittle (to C. Wigram, 6 Dec. 1934) in the Royal Archives.

41 E.g., Daily Mail, 1 Oct. 1934, p. 14; BBCWA, R34/862/1, L. B. Hyde to J. Reith, 22 Nov. 1933.

42 BBCWA, R34/862/1, H. Verney to A. Dawnay, 2 Dec. 1933.

43 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, C. Wigram to G. Dawson, 28 Sept. 1934.

44 Daily Mirror, 27 Dec. 1932, pp. 3 and 11.

45 TK, SxMs-38/2/2/2/1/2/2/5/1, C. Wigram to R. Kipling, 29 Nov. 1932.

46 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 23–31.

47 D. Cardiff, ‘The serious and the popular: aspects of the evolution of style in radio talk 1928–1939’, in Media Culture and Identity: a Critical Reader, ed. R. Collins (London, 1986), pp. 228–41, at pp. 229–30.

48 M. Andrews, ‘Homes both sides of the microphone: wireless and domestic space in inter-war Britain’, Women’s History Review, xxi (2012), 605–21, at p. 616.

49 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, T. E. Bailey to King George V, 25 Dec. 1934; M. Waters to King George V, 25 Dec. 1934.

50 BBCWA, R30, A. Hardinge to G. Cock, 14 Dec. 1932; also see reply from Cock to Hardinge, 23 Jan. 1933.

51 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, G. Dawson to C. Wigram, 21 Sept. 1934 (Dawson’s emphasis).

52 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, C. Wigram to G. Dawson, 24 Sept. 1934.

53 E.g., Daily Mirror, 27 Dec. 1932, pp. 3 and 11; The Times, 27 Dec. 1935, p. 7.

54 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, C. Wigram to G. Dawson, 24 Sept. 1934.

55 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, C. Wigram to G. Dawson, 8 Nov. 1934. For examples of press reproductions of the image, see Daily Mirror, 24 Dec. 1934, p. 17 and Daily Mirror, 27 Dec. 1935, p. 5.

56 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 23–31.

57 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, W. Lawrence to King George V, 26 Dec. 1934.

58 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, E. Tomlinson to King George V, undated.

59 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 23–31.

60 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 33–6 and fos. 40–3.

61 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 40–3.

62 TK, SxMs-38/2/2/2/1/2/2/5/1, C. Wigram to R. Kipling, 16 Dec. 1932.

63 Prochaska, Royal Bounty, pp. 169–212.

64 Quoted in Fleming, Voices Out of the Air, p. 11 (this author’s italics).

65 For an overview of the socio-economic context of this period, see P. Williamson, National Crisis and National Government: British Politics, the Economy and Empire, 1926–1932 (Cambridge, 1992).

66 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 23–31 (this author’s italics).

67 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, G. Pontifect to King George V, 25 Dec. 1934.

68 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, J. W. Cooper to King George V, 25 Dec. 1934.

69 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, L. E. Roberts to King George V and Queen Mary, undated (original emphasis).

70 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, G. Saunders to King George V, 25 Dec. 1934.

71 Daily Express, 7 May 1935, p. 1. For comparable coverage, see Daily Mail, 7 May 1935, p. 13.

72 Daily Mirror, 27 Dec. 1935, p. 5.

73 L. Beers, ‘A model MP? Ellen Wilkinson, gender, politics and celebrity culture in interwar Britain’, Cult. and Soc. History, x (2013), 231–50, at pp. 238–41.

74 Quoted in Fleming, Voices Out of the Air, p. 11.

75 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 33–6.

76 I. Bradley, God Save the Queen: the Spiritual Dimension of Monarchy (London, 2002), ch. 4 and 6.

77 Williamson, ‘Monarchy and public values’, pp. 252–5; Glencross, Rowbottom and Kandiah, ‘Ultimate Windsor ceremonials’, pp. 53–5; Jones, ‘The nature of kingship’.

78 M. Francis, ‘Tears, tantrums, and bared teeth: the emotional economy of three Conservative prime ministers, 1951–1963’, Jour. Brit. Stud., xli (2002), 354–87, at pp. 357–9.

79 Mort, ‘Love in a cold climate’, pp. 52–3. Also see C. Langhamer, ‘Love and courtship in mid-twentieth-century England’, Hist. Jour., l (2007), 173–96; J. Gardiner, The Thirties: an Intimate History (London, 2011), pp. 453–77.

80 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 23–31.

81 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, J. Crawley to King George V, 25 Dec. 1934.

82 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, E. King to C. Wigram, 25 Dec. 1934.

83 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357. See the letters written by the anonymous husband and wife from Sunderland, W. Bishop, M. Etienne, Mr. and Mrs. Perkins, L. Roberts, S. Scott, M. Waters, R. Wells and L. Wilson.

84 Johnes, Christmas and the British, pp. 114–23.

85 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, M. A. Munday to King George V, 26 Dec. 1934 (original emphasis and capital letters).

86 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 40–3.

87 Daily Mirror, 7 May 1935, p. 7. See also Daily Express, 7 May 1935, p. 2; Daily Mail, 7 May 1935, p. 13.

88 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, H. Humphrey to King George V, 26 Dec. 1934

89 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, H. G. Carlile to King George V, 25 Dec. 1934.

90 Nicolson, King George, p. 526.

91 Rose, King George V, p. 394.

92 B. Pimlott, The Queen: Elizabeth II and the Monarchy (London, 2002), p. 282.

93 Quoted in Fleming, Voices Out of the Air, p. 9.

94 M. Ceadel, Semi-Detached Idealists: the British Peace Movement and International Relations, 1854–1945 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 307–25.

95 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357. See, e.g., the letters written by S. Drury-Lowe and K. M. Wood. The BBC’s director of outside broadcasts, Gerald Cock, also seems to have toyed briefly with the idea that George V’s 1935 Christmas message could take another form, with personal tributes to the king by the heads of governments of foreign countries in what the broadcaster thought would be ‘a great gesture of international amity’. See, e.g., BBCWA, R34/299/1/1a, BBC Internal Circulating Memo from G. Cock, 13 Dec. 1934.

96 S. Potter, Broadcasting Empire: the BBC and the British World, 1922–1970 (Oxford, 2012), pp. 59–64. See also M. Connelly, Christmas: a History (London, 2012), pp. 55–64, 118–57.

97 Connelly, Christmas, pp. 118–21.

98 Potter, Broadcasting Empire, pp. 55–64.

99 BBCWA, R34/862/1, A. Dawnay to C. Wigram, 13 July 1934.

100 Fleming, Voices Out of the Air, p. 12.

101 TK, SxMs-38/2/2/2/1/2/2/5/3, C. Wigram to R. Kipling, 25 Dec. 1933. Interestingly, it also seems from this letter that the king was not entirely happy with the broadcast. Wigram was not as effusive in his praise of Kipling’s efforts as he had been the year before (TK, SxMs-38/2/2/2/1/2/2/5/1, C. Wigram to R. Kipling, 27 Dec. 1932). Neither did he convey a particularly positive response from the monarch: ‘The King himself is quite pleased and I am sure that in his inmost heart he realizes that this has been another success and is pouring his blessing on your head’. If the king was for some reason displeased with the 1933 message (possibly because of its over-ornate, meandering style), it would help to explain why he turned to Lang to write his broadcast the following year.

102 L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (London, 1994), pp. 230–1.

103 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 17–20 and fos. 26–7. Lang’s papers include copies of both Kipling messages, suggesting that he used them in developing his own ideas.

104 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 26–7, C. Wigram to C. G. Lang, 11 Dec. 1934.

105 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 26–7, C. Wigram to C. G. Lang, 11 Dec. 1934.

106 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 40–3.

107 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357. See the letters written by J. W. Cooper, K. Godfrey, L. E. Roberts, G. Saunders, G. Pontifect and M. Waters.

108 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, C. Geary to King George V, 26 Dec. 1934.

109 More research is required if we are to know whether imperial subjects in the colonies and dominions also felt part of an international emotional community united around the family monarchy.

110 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, T. E. Bailey to King George V, 25 Dec. 1934.

111 P. Murphy, Monarchy and the End of Empire: the House of Windsor, the British Government, and the Postwar Commonwealth (Oxford, 2013), pp. 2–5 and 17; E. Buettner, Europe After Empire: Decolonization, Society, and Culture (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 46–9.

112 Daily Mirror, 27 Dec. 1934, p. 11.

113 The Times, 27 Dec. 1934, p. 11.

114 LPL, Lang 318, fo. 32, C. Wigram to C. G. Lang, 30 Jan. 1935.

115 Daily Express, 27 Dec. 1934, p. 8.

116 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357. See the letters written by K. Godfrey, L. E. Roberts and M. Waters.

117 LPL, Lang 318, fo. 40.

118 Quoted in the Daily Mirror, 7 May 1935, p. 7.

119 Daily Mirror, 27 Dec. 1934, p. 11.

120 Daily Mail, 8 Dec. 1933, p. 11. See also Potter, Broadcasting Empire, p. 63; Connelly, Christmas, pp. 146–53.

121 Daily Mail, 26 Dec. 1934, p. 9.

122 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, H. Grayson to King George V, 7 Jan. 1935.

123 BBCWA, R34/299/1/1a, Memo from Felix Felton to Director of Regional Relations, 13 Nov. 1935.

124 BBCWA, R34/299/1/1a, Internal Circulating Memo from Felix Felton, 20 Nov. 1935

125 BBCWA, R34/299/1/1a, Internal Circulating Memo from Felix Felton, 31 July 1935.

126 BBCWA, R34/299/1/1a, Memo circulated by Felix Felton, 17 Dec. 1935.

127 M. Chamberlain, ‘George Lamming’, in West Indian Intellectuals, in Britain, ed. B. Schwarz (Manchester, 2003), pp. 175–95, at p. 176; B. Bush, Imperialism, Race and Resistance: Africa and Britain, 1919–1945 (London, 1999); W. M. Macmillan, Warning from the West Indies: a Tract for Africa and the Empire (London, 1936); K. A. Wagner, ‘Calculated to strike terror’: the Amritsar massacre and the spectacle of colonial violence’, Past & Present, ccxxxiii (2016), 185–225.

128 Encyclopaedia of Recorded Sound, ed. F. Hoffman (2 vols., New York & London, 2005), i. 1880. The recording (#19072) can be heard at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JyC6qw2D_s> [accessed 1 Feb. 2018].

129 TK, SxMs-38/2/2/2/1/2/2/5/3, C. Wigram to R. Kipling, 25 Dec. 1933.

130 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, Lewis children to King George V, 25 Dec. 1934.

131 RA, PS/PSO/GV/PS/MAIN/55357, P. Cooper to King George V, 25 Dec. 1934.

132 LPL, Lang 318, fos. 33–6. Note Lang’s emphasis and also that the king placed stress on the word ‘you’ in his broadcast as well. See also The Listener, 30 Jan. 1936, p. 196.

133 I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Keep fit and play the game: George VI, outdoor recreation and social cohesion in interwar Britain’, Cult. and Soc. History, xi (2014), 111–29.

134 Daily Mail, 26 Dec. 1934, p. 9.

135 E.g., Daily Mirror, 27 Dec. 1934, p. 11; The Times, 27 Dec. 1934, p. 11.

136 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.

137 The 512 essays referred to here are the number quoted in a Mass Observation teaching handbook published to accompany this collection of essays. However, this is an approximation in that the handbook lists 45 essays on George V whereas this author has consulted the originals of the essays in the Mass Observation archive and located 46 written on him (SxMOA1/2/59/4/F-H: ‘The Finest Person Who Ever Lived’ handwritten essays, Westhoughton, Middlesbrough, 1937–38; Mass Observation, Children’s Essays, 1937: ‘The Finest Person That Ever Lived’ (Mass Observation Teaching Booklets Series, iv, Brighton, 1988), pp. 1–30) <http://www.massobs.org.uk/images/booklets/Childrens_Essays_1937.pdf> [accessed 8 Dec. 2018].

138 On the difficulties with using school essays as historical evidence, see J. Greenhalgh, ‘“Till we hear the last all clear”: gender and the presentation of self in young girls’ writing about the bombing of Hull during the Second World War’, Gender & History, xxvi (2014), 167–83, at pp. 169–71; Barron and Langhamer, ‘Children, class, and the search for security’, pp. 369–71; H. Barron and C. Langhamer, ‘Feeling through practice: subjectivity and emotion in children’s writing’, Jour. Social Hist., li (2017), 101–23, at pp. 103–6.

139 While it would have been easy for the schoolboys to compare George V’s long reign with the much shorter, controversial reign of Edward VIII, it is notable that none of the essay writers sought to contrast the personalities of father and son, which suggests that Edward’s failures as king – specifically his failure to put royal public duty ahead of self-fulfilment – did not necessarily weigh heavily on the compositions.

140 Thirty-four of the 46 essays written on George V were numbered 1 to 34 (H1-34) and can be located in SxMOA1/2/59/4/H. One further unnumbered essay on the king can be located in file H, referred to here as ‘H0 [Brass]’. Three essays on the king can be located in SxMOA1/2/59/4/F and a further 8 can be found in SxMOA1/2/59/4/G. Where identifiable, other essays are referenced using the surname of the schoolboy and relevant file letter.

141 MOA, G. [Cranston]. Although the age of this boy is undisclosed in the essay, comparable essays written by his classmates in ‘UVG’ or ‘U5G’ contained in folder G suggest he was 14 or 15.

142 Prochaska, Royal Bounty, pp. 174–5, 183–91.

143 MOA, H14.

144 MOA, H4.

145 MOA, F. [Rigby], G. [Archibald] and G. [Shufflebotham], H4, H6, H16, H21. On the king and the First World War, see Jones, ‘Nature of kingship’, pp. 195–216.

146 MOA, F. [Ashworth], G. [Archibald], H0 [Brass], H31, H21.

147 MOA, H2.

148 MOA, H1 and G. [Hodgkinson].

149 MOA, H11. See also G. [Hodgkinson], G. [Archibald] and G. [Shufflebotham], H5, H2 and H11.

150 MOA, H0 [Brass].

151 MOA, H5. For other examples, see G. [Hodgkinson], G. [Bulmer], H0, H8, H9, H12, H20 and H22.

152 MOA, F. [Tempest].

153 MOA, H6 and H11. For other references to Queen Mary, see G. [Archibald], G. [Wilson] and H13.

154 MOA, H18.

155 MOA, G. [Wilcockson].

156 MOA, H14.

157 MOA, H8.

158 LPL, Lang 318, fo. 45, King George V to C. G. Lang, 30 Dec. 1935.