Claiming that a single royal couple saved the centuries-old British monarchy might be going a bit far. But King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, by an accident of history and through personal qualities that earned the admiration and support of the British public, may have done just that during some of the most challenging times the country had ever seen. George VI had been crowned King just three years before the outbreak of World War II, and his and Elizabeth’s nerves, perseverance, and courage would be severely tested during the conflict—especially when Britain itself became a battlefield. Nowhere is this more obvious than during the Blitz, when the monarchs broke with protocol and mingled directly with the people. Their actions during those days set the pattern for their leadership during the most critical year of the war.

George VI and his wife, Elizabeth, were unexpected rulers: Only when his older brother, King Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, battering the monarchy’s reputation, did the then–Duke of York reluctantly wear the crown. Almost immediately, the new royal couple faced a challenge to the United Kingdom’s very existence. Although eight unnervingly quiet months passed on land after Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939, an onslaught from Hitler’s forces was inevitable.

The pace of conflict accelerated in the summer of 1940: Italy went to war with Great Britain and France on June 10, and days later, France formally surrendered to Germany. Britain was now on its own in Europe. The first inkling of the Battle of Britain came at the end of June, with scattered German air attacks on ships and south-coast ports. At the outset, they inflicted little damage. But the bombings intensified over the summer, when the Germans tried to destroy the Royal Air Force and hit factories, airfields, and other defense facilities. A deadly new period of ferocious aerial bombardments began on Saturday, September 7, when Germany shifted from daylight raids aimed at military structures to what would become known as the Blitz, beginning with a 57-day continuous assault on London. It was a savage campaign, carried out mostly at night, to terrorize the citizenry and destroy vital infrastructure.

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This article has been excerpted from Sally Bedell Smith’s new book, George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy.

The second week of September 1940 was a dramatically dangerous one for the King and Queen. A bomb landed next to Buckingham Palace, where it sat unexploded for 48 hours before detonating—the first of nine direct hits on the palace and its grounds between that day and summer 1944. The war had come directly to Britain, and its citizens were now as integral to the country’s defense as its frontline military. The danger from the air meant that everyone—monarch and commoner—was on an equal footing. Nothing symbolized this new dynamic more than the attack on the home of the sovereign.

On the morning of Monday, September 9, George VI spent three hours with Captain Euan Wallace touring bomb-damaged neighborhoods in the East End and south of the Thames. They saw burned-out docks and visited several shelters; in one of them, 50 people had died, including three children whose grieving mother the King comforted. As people removed their belongings from a damaged apartment house, a woman cried out, “Are we downhearted?” “No!” came the hearty reply from her neighbors.

Captain Wallace was struck by the King’s interest in talking to “all and sundry.” He “insisted on carrying out the program in full,” Wallace wrote. “It is almost impossible to believe that he is the same man who took the oath before the Privy Council less than four years ago.”

On September 11, George VI returned to the East End, and the Queen joined him for the first time to tour the poor neighborhoods of Camberwell, Lewisham, and Lambeth. “The usual collapsed houses & homeless people who had lost all their belongings,” he recalled. “But here again their fortitude in adversity is amazing.” As the royal couple passed one heavily damaged block of workers’ flats, a small crowd cheered for them and sang, “There’ll always be an England.”

They made an unscheduled stop that underlined the risk of such outings. When the air-raid alarm sounded, a police car sped them to a basement room in the Lewisham Police Station. As the King and Queen entered the dimly lit shelter, uniformed policemen, court officials, and other staff looked at them with disbelief, and then burst into cheers. The royal couple sat down; he lit a cigarette, and they waited to have some tea. Even after the “all clear” sounded, the King insisted on staying. Canteen workers served them biscuits along with tea in thick china cups, and the Queen said it was delicious. Such spontaneous moments would be a regular feature of their wartime tours. As the Queen later recalled, “I think we must have taken refuge in every single police station in London. We were always given a cup of very, very strong tea.”

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) inspect the damage to a cinema building on Baker Street after it was destroyed by Nazi bombing in an air raid over London. (Popperfoto / Getty)

Their insistence on connecting with citizens continued through the attacks. On Friday, September 13th, after narrowly escaping injury and death during another Buckingham Palace bombing, the King and Queen picked themselves up and went out as planned for a tour of damage in East London. One official who accompanied them said that knowledge of the bombing the couple had endured “made their reception even more enthusiastic.” “Their Majesties appeared to be quite unshaken by their experience,” observed The Times of London.

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The appearances were deceptive. Elizabeth told the King’s mother, Queen Mary, that as they walked down an empty street past evacuated houses, London felt like “a dead city.” Through the broken windows, “one saw all the poor little possessions, photographs, beds, just as they were left.” They visited a bombed school that had collapsed on 500 people; 200 were still buried in the ruins. “It does affect me seeing this terrible and senseless destruction,” she wrote. “I think that really I mind it much more than being bombed myself. The people are marvellous and full of fight.”

On Thursday, September 19, George VI and Elizabeth went to Chelsea, Fulham, and Marylebone on the western side of London. The Times noted that they moved freely among the people “with whom they are sharing—and with the same cool tenacity—the peril from the air … Men, women, and children brushed shoulders with Their Majesties as they made their way among scenes of destruction.” In Fulham, George VI and Elizabeth walked with difficulty, hemmed in by the pressure of a crowd in a narrow alley. “Let us give three cheers for our King,” shouted a workman. The response was “thunderous.” Hitler may have been hell-bent on killing the monarch and consort, but he’d failed to anticipate the galvanizing effect of the Buckingham Palace bombings. Churchill told the House of Commons that the attacks “unite the King and Queen to their people by new and sacred bonds of common danger.”

The King noted in his end-of-year reflections that the second half of 1940 “certainly showed the world what we can stand.” The Royal Air Force had demonstrated its superiority over the Luftwaffe, and by early November, the 57-night continuous assault of the Blitz had effectively concluded, though the violence was not yet over. The cost of the total campaign was horrific: More than 1 million homes were destroyed or damaged, and some 20,000 Londoners died. German forces would continue to drop bombs on Britain until March 1945, but the King and Queen’s contact with the people didn’t waver—throughout the war, they came to Buckingham Palace most weeks for appointments and tours of the city’s destroyed neighborhoods. The King found it vital for the pair to circulate widely around Britain regardless of the risks.

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In a September 1940 public message delivered as the Blitz was raging, George VI said, “Like so many other people we have now had a personal experience of German barbarity, which only strengthens the resolution of all of us to fight through to final victory.” He told his mother privately that in comforting the bereaved and homeless, he and Elizabeth “both found a new bond with them as Buckingham Palace has been bombed as well as their homes, & nobody is immune from it.” Elizabeth went even further: “I’m glad we’ve been bombed. It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face.” Their new solidarity and repeated displays of compassion, especially toward those in the poorest neighborhoods, lifted morale. For the King and Queen, showing their vulnerability and humanity was part of a steadfast commitment to duty and service; it also helped shore up the badly damaged reputation and primacy of the monarchy, setting the stage for the rule of their daughter, Elizabeth II, who would become one of the most popular monarchs in British history. Their actions ensured that the nation would continue to revere its once-fragile monarchy—not only through the war but also in the years of austerity that followed.

This article has been excerpted from Sally Bedell Smith’s new book, George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy.

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