George V audiobook

“George V: Never a Dull Moment”, by British historian Jane Ridley is one of the best political biographies I’ve ever read. Despite the somewhat silly title, -“Never a Dull Moment” - the book is a scholarly, yet extremely readable biography of one of the most important British monarchs.George was the son of Edward VII and the grandson of Queen Victoria. Edward was in a similar position of the current Prince of Wales, Charles. He came to the throne in 1901 upon his mother’s death after an incredibly long reign. His reign was only nine years before he died in 1910, handing the throne to his second son, George V. George ruled until that fateful and long year, 1936. That “Year of Three Kings”.Jane Ridley examines George V life from all angles, private and public. She doesn’t stint on the vain glorious; George’s shooting kill rate of birds and animals is, frankly, obscene. He had his hobbies - stamp collecting and killing things were the most important to him and those are how he partly is known in history.But his reign covered a very important time. The Great War- the “War to End All Wars” - was fought by his country under his command and the Depression and build up Germany in the early to mid - 1930’s were also his problems. His son, George VI, saw the country through WW2.Ridley also looks at George’s marriage and at his relationships with his family. Jane Ridley has written a first-rate biography.

This is easily the best new royal biography I've read in some considerable time. Dense with detail, but never trapped in minutiae or irrelevance, this is first rate scholarship and first rate writing. George V is definitely far from the boring man he is made out to be...although any other number of adjectives could be applied.

Ms. Ridley is an exceptional writer who makes history come alive. George V may not be the most famous of English monarchs, but he takes his place as one who transformed the monarchy at the turn of the century. He ruled as a partner with his wife, Queen Mary, serving as an inspiration to the empire. He was constant, judicious, faithful to his wife, raised a family, and was involved in settling some of the most serious crises facing the country. No, he wasn't exciting. He abhorred all the trappings of the nobility and its society. He was a refreshing change, however, from his father, Edward VII, who led quite a different, scandal-ridden life. As years went by, it became very clear that his son, David (later, King Edward VIII), who was his heir, was not at all suited (or interested) to become king. Edward VIII abdicated the throne after 10 months as king to marry Wallace Simpson. Fortunately, for the royal family, the second son in line, Bertie (who became George VI) proved a much steadier, traditional monarch. Though terrified at the prospect of becoming king, George VI managed his stammer, grew in self-confidence, and became a much-loved king. This is a wonderful piece of less-known history and a treasure-trove for the amateur historian.

An engaging and authoritative new biography of King George V that challenges the traditional perception of the king as boring or insignificant to the tumultuous events of his times. Jane Ridley examines George V's political and public role and analyzes his difficult relationship with his sons, especially the future King Edward VIII. Ridley also provides a balanced assessment of King George V and Queen Mary's decisions concerning the Romanovs including George V's decision to withdraw an offer of asylum for Czar Nicholas II and his family following the Czar's abdication in 1917 and Queen Mary's later acquisition of valuable pieces of Russian Imperial jewellery. In addition, the book serves as a biography of the two people closest to George V in his childhood and adult life respectively - his elder brother Albert Victor whose death made George second-in-line to the throne and his consort Queen Mary. Ridley's analysis of George and Mary's marriage is one of the most compelling aspects of the book. Highly recommended to anyone interested in the history of the monarchy.

This is an authoritative and readable biography of King George V by a rightly well-regarded historical biographer. Using an impressive range of primary sources, Jane Ridley makes a good case for the importance of George V and his wife, Queen Mary, in the repositioning of the British monarchy as a strength and stay of the modern constitution - a tradition which our current Queen has scrupulously followed.As a personality, George was - as has been often depicted - a rather dull character. At times, he seemed to inhabit a different time from his subjects. But the king did his duty and adapted. From a shaky start, the king grew in confidence until he became a powerful force, as seen in his role in the 1931 crisis that led to the formation of the National Government. Ridley describes this and similar episodes of the exercise of constitutional authority with balance and reason.Ridley is critical of the king's role with his sons and it is sad to see how he failed to support or seek to relate to them. Happily, his second son overcame these difficulties to become a fine king in his own right.Overall, this is a fair and thorough exploration of this important and impressive monarch and it is strongly recommended.

I came to this book after reading Jane Ridley’s ‘Bertie: A Life of Edward VII’, which first caught my eye when I worked at Waterstones. Although the period of the two books is not my speciality in historical knowledge and interest I did enjoy them. The narrative of this book is balanced and dives deep enough into George V for the causal historian of this period such as myself. I understood the man, who was a Victorian living in the uncertain and rapidly changing world of the early 20th century. George has often been called ‘dull’ and Ridley does a great job correcting that assumption, stating he was a normal man who achieved extraordinary things. He was able to connect with his people and make great decisions time and again to lead them from the dark of despair to the light of hope. Examples include encouraging the National Government in 1931, working with Ramsey MacDonald and the first labour administration, disconnecting the monarchy from European dynasties and taking massive personal allowance cuts during the Great Depression. He is the father of the minders monarchy as we know it today, but he certainly was not without fault. He was a terrible father to his four sons and the major blot or his reign is of course refusing asylum to Tsar Nicolas II and his family. All of these factors are covered at a satisfactory level in the book. There are often large left turns where Ridley talks about Queen Mary, however she does state that you cannot know George without understanding Mary, so in the end I didn’t mind, even if this explanation comes later on. A solid book which I recommend.

My first reaction when this came out was, "Really? Why do we need another biography of George V when we already have excellent ones, including the official life by Harold Nicolson and the outstanding, later unauthorized biography by Kenneth Rose, whose revelations about the King's role in denying asylum to his Romanov cousins almost certainly earned Rose the enmity of the present Queen and cost him the knighthood a historian of his stature might otherwise have been expected to eventually receive. But, as I was planning a couple of lengthy road trips this summer, I thought it might be a good selection to listen to in audiobook form on my travels. Well, I'm glad I did! Ms. Ridley's biography is excellent. She does not simply rehash the story of George's life anew, although her book absolutely works for a reader who does not have any prior familiarity with this monarch, Queen Elizabeth II's grandfather, who saw the British Empire through World War I, the Great Depression, the partition of Ireland, and Britain's first socialist government, among other historic turning points. She also writes George's life and reign in conversation with his previous biographers, directly addressing where she thinks they got it wrong, in light of both her own original research and the work of others in the decades since Rose's book was published in the 1980s. It is as much a biography of Queen Mary as of her husband, and of their partnership, and she takes on many of the conclusions of James Pope-Hennessy in his exceptional biography of the Queen (generally considered, including by this reviewers, as one of the greatest royal biographies ever written in English), as well as the unkind things related in his research notes, embargoed and released only decades after his death as *In Search of Queen Mary*, edited by Hugo Vickers. Ms. Ridley does a great job of rehabilitating the images of both the King and Queen, not mythologizing them as paragons as Nicolson and Hennessy did in their official lives, but by challenging head on some of the charges often made against them. She makes a strong case that George's denial of asylum to Nicholas and Alexandra came too late to make a difference anyway, and challenges the image of Queen Mary both as cold and unfeeling and as a kleptomaniac. She also revisits the brief and tragic life of Prince John. While they don't come across as ideal parents (as though such a thing exists), they by no means come across as ashamed of their special needs child, nor unloving or unconcerned. While giving a full accounting of George's life before his accession (unlike in the famous jibe, she shows that he did more than merely stick in stamps and slaughter wildlife, although he did a great deal of both), she is most concerned with his reign. This is above all a political and constitutional biography, and she demonstrates his surprising agility and skill at redefining the role of the monarchy for the new age of democracy ushered in by the Parliament Act, women's suffrage, and the Representation of the People Act. He was no mere cipher or ornamental monarch as his granddaughter seems to be, but neither did he try to impose himself on decisions which belonged to the people's elected representatives. He saw himself as an impartial convener and mediator. The one action for which the author takes him to task as overstepping the bounds of constitutional propriety is in the formation of the National Government, when he corralled Ramsey MacDonald, the Labour leader, to stay in office at the head of what was in reality a Conservative government. MacDonald was, for this betrayal of his colleagues, expelled from the Labour Party and was, therefore, placed at the head of the government as the King's favorite, not because he commanded the confidence of the House of Commons.The book is not only insightful but is written in a clear and entertaining style. Royalty enthusiasts and those new to the subject alike will find much to enjoy and ponder. Many years ago I saw a quote but I don't remember who said it or exactly how I went (if anyone does, please let me know and I will edit this), but it said something like anyone worth having a biography of is worth having a biography of every 30 or 40 years. This is certainly a case in point. I plan on reading more of Ms. Ridley's work!

A period of time with which I am far less familiar. And certainly not a dull time. George V dealt with the death of his elder brother Albert Victor Christian Edward (known as Eddy) - which made him king - WWI, Irish Home Rule and the ultimate partition of that country, and the first Labour government. He faced, too, a transition from 1800s Victorian England to a modern 1900s world, complete with changing dress codes and eroded respect for authority figures. Many, if not all, of his European royal relatives lost their thrones in the wake of the Great War. Perhaps most painful of all, George faced the knowledge that his eldest son had neither the inclination nor the talent to become king. According to Jane Ridley, George noted well in advance of his own death that he expected, and even hoped, that David would abdicate and “leave the throne to Bertie and Lilibet.”How did George make it through this turmoil? By being a staid family man. Dull! He married his brother’s fiancée and settled into a life of an English country squire. He connected with the English people by visiting parts of London during the war and later in the first years of the depression. He and Mary went to hospitals; George went to the Front several times and May went once. He started the practice of giving a radio address at Christmas to speak directly to the public. He worked with his advisors to build the Cenotaph and started the practice of laying a wreath there on Remembrance Day. But if anything, George was a little too remote. His father was a bit of a playboy and so were three of his sons. He may have overreacted in rejecting that lifestyle. He is said to have remarked, “I don’t see why I would ever want to sleep with anyone but my own wife!” Instead of making him more approachable, it made him seem dull! It was not until his final years that people really started to see him as a bastion of stability. The author does address some interesting points. The anti-German feeling during the war prompted George to make the historic family name-change from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor. From the description of the decision process it sounds like Windsor was literally picked out of the air. Ridley also discusses the question of whether George could have saved Tsar Nicholas’s life, but concludes that the Bolsheviks had penned the family up so tightly that sending any kind of ship or rescue team would have been impossible. George’s real motivation, though, for not giving the Romanovs asylum, she says, was the feeling of unrest in England itself. The overthrow of all his fellow monarchs, coupled with a surge of left-wing activism in his own country, made losing his own throne a genuine possibility. This sense of instability, coupled with the shift from routine visits to all the royal relatives for their different weddings, christenings, and funerals to a stay-at-home lifestyle, made George seem more of an English country squire than ever. It didn’t help that three of his four surviving sons and his daughter married into the British aristocracy instead of marrying their cousins. His wife, May, who took the name Mary, lived another 17 years after George’s death. I found the descriptions of May’s predatory shopping and visiting expeditions very entertaining. She was an inveterate collector, especially of royal artifacts. Her family heritage as a child of a peer without right to inherit the Austrian throne, Francis Duke of Teck, drove her to collect and, fortunately for historical purposes, to catalogue. She had such an eagle eye that English families would hide the Fabergé when she came to call!All in all a book well worth reading.

I've read two other books by Jane Ridley, and really liked them. I listened to her latest book on Audible, and loved it. George V ended his life as a grumpy old man, a true "man yells at cloud" type. He also apparently has had a reputation for being boring. He was. He went to bed early. He had a conventional marriage, no mistresses, no exciting trips to Paris. Very much like his father, he was never a playboy prince. He was conservative, cautious, uneducated, reactionary, and hidebound. He was a martinet to his sons, overly authoritarian and absolutely unwilling to meet with them in the middle. Jane Ridley takes this - let's face it, awful - man and breathes life, and understanding, into him. She doesn't play pop psychologist, but she does open doors and windows for us to peer in. Unlike his prior biographers, Ridley also makes sure that his wife, Queen Mary, gets a starring role; she had been overlooked in the past, but Ridley certainly believes and proves that for most of his reign - at least before World War I - George was Mary; they worked as a unit. A tremendously interesting biography. Also: Joanna David was perfect for this audio; her husky voice mixed with (at least what sounded to me like a) posh accent was truly a royal treat.