King George VI's Last Day
Remembering what Winston Churchill called "a happy day of sunshine and sport"
For the seventy years of her extraordinary reign, the late Queen Elizabeth II lovingly marked February 6th, the day her father, King George VI, died in his sleep at age fifty-six and she acceded to the throne at age twenty-five. She observed the historic transition quietly each year at Sandringham House, her estate in Norfolk where he passed away. Now King Charles III commemorates his own Accession Day on September 8th at Balmoral, the royal estate in the Scottish Highlands where his mother died in 2022.
But today, the 5th of February, I would like to expand our view of the King’s last day at Sandringham with the benefit of little-known contemporary accounts. Although he had been seriously ill and had undergone a three-hour operation in September 1951 to remove his left lung, the doctors declined to reveal their cancer diagnosis. Instead, they blamed “structural changes” (thought to be a blocked bronchial tube) that required the drastic surgery.
“Having triumphantly recovered”
George VI and his family were under the illusion that he was getting better. Both he and his younger daughter, Princess Margaret, wrote letters to that effect to their friends. Three days after his death, in a letter to Major Thomas Harvey, her mother’s former private secretary, Margaret wrote, “We are so thankful that he died so peacefully here at Sandringham which he loved best, in the best of health—having triumphantly recovered from an appalling operation, and having enjoyed the day before very much.”
In fact, the cancer had spread to his right lung, and he was also afflicted with arteriosclerosis—severe heart disease aggravated by 40 years of heavy cigarette smoking. Two months after the surgery, George VI continued to sharply curtail his public duties. The royal family went to Sandringham in December to celebrate Christmas and stay through the end of the shooting season in early February.
“The nicest possible way of spending our last evening together”
They broke away just once, for the King to be examined by his doctors in London. The next night, January 30th, they saw the hit musical South Pacific at the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane with Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Margaret and the King’s equerry, Peter Townsend. One press account noted that the King wore “a heavy overcoat necessitated by the bulky nature of the electrically heated waistcoat which he wore following his operation.” During the interval, the royal party received the show’s stars: Mary Martin, Wilbur Evans, and Ray Walston. “I thought this was the nicest possible way of spending our last evening together,” Queen Elizabeth told Walston, referring to the family outing.
“The heavy strain of the occasion”
The following day the King and Queen went to London Airport to say goodbye to Elizabeth and Philip, who were embarking on a royal tour of Kenya, Ceylon, Australia, and New Zealand. The Sphere, a weekly illustrated newspaper, observed that the photograph below indicated “the heavy strain of the occasion” on the King. Still, George VI was chipper after inspecting the aircraft taking his elder daughter to Africa. “This is a magnificent airliner,” he said. “A modern aircraft is certainly a lot different to the stick-and-canvas ones I used to fly.”
Back at Sandringham with their grandchildren, three-year-old Prince Charles and one-year-old Princess Anne, George VI and Elizabeth resumed their holiday. By then the King was strong enough to shoot game with a light gun. One regular guest at his shooting parties was his neighbor Maurice Roche, Lord Fermoy. He and his wife Ruth, Lady Fermoy, lived at Park House, a property owned by the monarch and located next to the Sandringham estate. Their daughter Frances was the mother of Lady Diana Spencer, the future Princess of Wales.
Since the 1930s, George VI and Elizabeth had been good friends with the Fermoys, who frequently dined at Sandringham. Frances had been born on January 20, 1936, the night King George V died. Despite her anguish over her husband’s death, Queen Mary wrote a congratulatory note to the Fermoys, delivered by hand at dawn. In the words of her biographer, James Pope-Hennessy, it was “a signal instance…of her self-control and consideration of others.”
“His neighbors from all walks of life”
Maurice Fermoy joined the King’s shooting party at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, February 5, 1952. He was among the group of 20 men who gathered for the sort of informal end-of-season shoot George VI most enjoyed, with “his neighbors from all walks of life”: friends, Sandringham tenants, farmers, policemen, and members of his staff. Aubrey Buxton, a naturalist and writer who shot with the King and studied his Game Books, described “the Norfolk scene” that was “set for the occasion”:
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