WHEN, in June 1948, I was invited to undertake this work, I was told that, after King George's death, it had been decided that his biography should be written in two separate instalments and en- trusted to two different authors.The first instalment was to be a portrait of the man himself; it was to describe his private life and to give a picture of his homes, friend- ships, occupations, tastes and hobbies. This task was entrusted to Mr John Gore, who brought to his work the application of a trained scholar, the liveliness of an alert mind, great gifts of selection and arrangement, and the agreeable virtues of tact and taste. His book was published by John Murray in 1941 under the title King George V. A Personal Memoir.My own task, as the author chosen for the second instalment, was to chronicle King George's public life and to examine his attitude towards the successive political issues of his reign. To attempt a com- prehensive history of those years of transition would, I soon realised, throw the biography out of scale. With many of the major events of his reign, King George was only indirectly concerned: to have identified him directly with these events would have been to falsify proportions, and to confuse what I anticipated would prove this book's most useful theme. My desire was to suggest some answer to the two questions: 'How does a Monarchy function in a modern State?' and 'To what extent were the powers and influence of the Monarchy diminished or increased during the twenty five years of King George's reign?'The relevant papers in the Royal Archives at Windsor, to which, by gracious permission of His late Majesty I was accorded unrestricted access, fall into six main categories:
1.
Papers dealing with King George's childhood and education. They include letters from Mr Dalton to the Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria, reports from tutors and instructors, letters from naval com- mandants etc.
2.
King George's own diaries. These run without intermission from May 3 1880 to January 17 1936. Even when he was ill he would dictate his daily entry to Queen Mary or one of his nurses. The diaries fall into three divisions: (a) a small pocket engagement book for the year 1878, begun on July 30 and given up three days later: (b) a section from May 3, 1880 to January 1, 1881 written on loose sheets torn from
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Publication Information: Book Title: King George the Fifth: His Life and Reign. Contributors: Harold Nicolson - author. Publisher: Constable. Place of Publication: London. Publication Year: 1952. Page Number: v.
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