The King's Speech - Mark Logue [95]
Christmas was looming – and with it the annual message. ‘I have got a new type of broadcast this year from a more personal angle which I hope will go well,’ the King wrote to Logue on the twentieth. In a sign of the progress he had made over the years, he no longer looked to Logue to help him prepare for his broadcast, as he had in the old days, although he urged him to telephone afterwards to give his opinion on his performance.
The King delivered the message from Sandringham, returning to London only at the end of February, when he resumed a limited programme of audiences and held an investiture. March 1949 brought bad news, however. After a full examination, it was decided the King’s recovery had not been as complete as everyone had thought; Learmouth advised a right lumbar sympathectomy, a surgical procedure intended to free the flow of blood to his leg. The operation, which was carried out at the King’s insistence in an impromptu operating theatre in Buckingham Palace rather than a hospital, went well. The King was under no illusions, however, that he would be completely restored to health; his doctors ordered him to rest, reduce his official engagements and cut down drastically on the smoking that had aggravated his condition; a second attack of thrombosis could be lethal.
The King’s health appeared to continue to improve through 1949, but the doctors nevertheless ordered as much rest as possible. That Christmas brought another message to the nation, the Commonwealth and the Empire. ‘Once more I am in the throes of preparing my broadcast,’ the King wrote to Logue, thanking him for his annual birthday greetings. ‘How difficult it is to find anything new to say in these days. Words of encouragement to do better in the New Year is the only thing to go on. I am longing to get it over. It still ruins my Christmas.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Last Words
George VI looking tired and ill shortly before his death
To the millions of people in Britain and across the Commonwealth and Empire who gathered around their radios on Christmas Day 1951, the voice was both familiar and yet worryingly different. George VI was delivering his traditional Christmas message, but he sounded uncomfortably husky and hoarse, as if he were suffering from a particularly heavy cold. At times, his voice dropped to almost a whisper. He also seemed to be speaking slightly faster than usual. Yet few of those listening could have failed to be moved by what their monarch had to say.
After beginning by describing Christmas as a time when everyone should count their blessings, the King struck a deeply personal note.
I myself have every cause for deep thankfulness, for not only – by the grace of God and through the faithful skill of my doctors, surgeons and nurses – have I come through my illness, but I have learned once again that it is in bad times that we value most highly the support and sympathy of our friends. From my peoples in these islands and in the British Commonwealth and Empire as well as from many other countries this support and sympathy has reached me and I thank you now from my heart. I trust that you yourselves realise how greatly your prayers and good wishes have helped and are helping me in my recovery.
The King’s five doctors telephoned their congratulations, but the newspapers both in Britain and beyond were shocked by what they heard. Although commentators and leader writers were relieved to hear the King speak for the first time since a major operation three months earlier, the wavering tone of his voice brought home to them quite how poorly he was. ‘Millions of people all over the world, listening to the King’s Christmas Day broadcast, noticed with concern the huskiness in his voice,’ the Daily Mirror reported two days later. ‘The question at many Christmas firesides was: Is the King just suffering from a chill,