Chapter 6, Broadcasting House, London, 1 March 1936
The car swept up to the front, the King noting the crowds cheering; they bowed, deferentially, when he alighted. He shook a few hands (earning a raised eyebrow from his equerry) and walked briskly up the steps.
Waiting for him, just inside the building, and staring impassively at the King with a lugubrious look, was the Director General of the BBC, Sir John Reith. The King felt his usual distaste for this dour, canting Scotsman, and offered a very tight smile.
“Your Majesty,” Reith said, and the King was baffled by Reith’s ability to mix disapproval with reverence.
“Sir John,” the King said flatly, and decided to try and outmanoeuvre Reith; he offered him his hand. The towering Scot looked momentarily lost, and then recovered to shake the King’s hand.
“You’re in studio Four B today, Sir, it’s a small studio, one of the news studios. Wells Coates designed it”.
The King nodded, he had met Wells Coates, a Canadian architect, and admired his work. That was a good move by Reith, the King conceded.
Another figure seemed to half emerge from behind the tall Reith. “Your Majesty,” Lord Eustace Percy, Minister without Portfolio in Baldwin’s Cabinet, greeted him. “It is good to see you, Sir,” he said with real warmth.
“And it is good to see you Eustace,” the King said informally, shooting a sour look at Reith. “Are you my minder for today?”
Percy laughed, and also gave a throwaway look to Reith. “A King’s first broadcast to his people is an important matter of State,” Percy said, slightly reverentially. “There was a huge fuss at Cabinet and I volunteered; Ramsay MacDonald refused to go anywhere near this place and I didn’t think that you would want Halifax in support!”
The King rolled his eyes at that idea as they followed Reith up a bright, very modern stairwell to a long corridor (this was darker). The King took his speech from an aide.
“It is the usual procedure”, Reith said to both of them, emotionlessly. “You’ll see, when you go in…” the King’s mind wandered as Reith, carefully, described the process of the broadcast. He found Reith, and his rather Victorian principles, so
suffocating. Wallis, he knew, would be at Belvedere listening rapt to his every word. He feared the inevitable criticism from her that he failed, in some way. The King was suddenly aware of Percy staring at him.
“Sorry, Eustace, I am not good company.” He realised that Reith was also staring at him. “I, er, was focussing on my speech.”
“An admirable notion, Sir,” Reith said with a look of grave disappointment as he rolled his ‘r’s. They were briefly introduced to the BBC engineers and technicians. Finally, settled into the studio, Percy retired with a simple nod. Reith lingered.
“I shall see you, no doubt, when I am finished?”
“Depend upon it, Sir,” Reith said heavily, gravely.
There was a pause, he sipped on his water, and it was time to speak.
“It has been an ancient tradition,” he began, his voice an odd mix of thin and slightly gravelly, “of the British Monarchy, that the new Sovereign should send a written message to his peoples”. As ever the rhythm was slightly odd, slightly contrived.
No one really speaks like this, he thought with irritation. “Science, has made it possible, for me, to make that written message more personal, and to speak to you all, over the radio. Queen Mary, my family, and myself, have been greatly helped by the worldwide tributes of genuine sorrow, which we have received from every side.” He frowned at that line, ‘every side’. He just about kept the pace. “It is wonderful for us, to know, how universally my father’s great qualities,” he paused slightly here, his own swirling emotions catching up with him, “have been appreciated and valued. It is no mere form of speech to say”, he said heavily, “that he reigned in the hearts of his people.”
He was comfortable now, the ta-da ta-da ta-da rhythm settled. “And it was his happiness to know, before he died, that his long years of unstinting service, were rewarded with a devotion and an affection so perfectly expressed in the jubilee demonstrations, of last year. It now falls upon me to succeed him, and to carry on his work.”
The King looked down at his speech and, with a wry smile, decided that he would speak from the heart; it would also ‘rattle’ Reith sufficiently. “I am better known to most of you as the Prince of Wales; as a man who, during the war and since, has had the opportunity of getting to know the people of nearly every country of the world, under all conditions and circumstances. And, although I now speak to you as the King, I am still that same man who has had that experience and whose constant effort it will be to continue to promote the well-being of his fellow men”.
He smiled at the knowledge that those with copies of the speech would be searching for those lines and went back to script for the closing. “May the future, bring peace, and understanding, throughout the world.” There was an oddly placed pause, as he took a breath. “Prosperity, and happiness to British people, and may we be worthy, of the heritage which is ours.” He sat silently, waiting.
There was a gentle knock at the door and Percy, followed by Reith, entered gingerly. Percy had a look of searching confusion, Reith just glowered. “Your Majesty,” Percy said hesitantly, “did you improvise that bit about wellbeing and your fellow man?”
Percy knew that he must have done, the King realised, he wasn’t that stupid, and smiled. “This speech lacked my stamp on it, Eustace,” he said chidingly, “I wanted to say something, from the heart.”
Reith rolled his eyes but thought better of saying anything. Percy smiled knowingly. “I had wondered what I would have to discuss with Baldwin and Chamberlain,” Percy said with wry amusement, clearly not annoyed with his sovereign, “well now I know.”
“Will there be trouble, with Baldwin?”
“I’m not sure, it’s not as if Your Majesty declared for a Soviet here in London,” Percy said in an open enough manner. “Neville and John Simon can be the mother hens, if they don’t cluck then Baldwin won’t. I’m not sure that you weren’t correct,” Percy said, in his muddled way, “there is more to be done for the people.”
The King made the ‘knowing look’ that Percy had seen him make before when dealing with someone that he believed to be sympathetic. “Have they decided who is going to be sent to me?”
Percy paused, saw the look of expectant waiting on the King, and complied. “Not yet,” he said, hesitantly.
“
I was thinking,” the King said carefully, “of approaching someone myself.” He looked in careful scrutiny for a reaction. “Would that be acceptable to Baldwin?”
“I’m not sure, Sir, I will ask.”
They were at the entrance; Reith wordlessly bowed, while Percy coupled his with a broad smile. “As ever, Your Majesty, an honour and a pleasure.”
“And for me too, Eustace,” the King said, nodding at Reith as an afterthought.
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GAME NOTES
A really gentle update, but one that I wanted to get in before more Earth-shattering events take over.
Picture Edward VIII in your mind and at some point within the first few minutes the famous abdication speech will play in your head; the bit that everyone remembers is the “as
I would wish to do” with the odd emphasis. The contrast between that last speech as King as this little-known first speech is fascinating, he doesn’t sound as exhausted as he would later in the year. Here, you can tell that the King is reading – unlike the Dec 1936 abdication speech he doesn’t particularly invested into what he is saying. There are a couple of odd pauses, and the rhythm seems mad to our modern ears, but, for 1936, it was quite polished. The bit about a cheeky diversion is true, he did add the bit about promoting the well-being of his fellow man which raised a couple of eyebrows in Westminster (although it would appear that nothing was done by Baldwin or his ministers). Wallis Simpson, listening at Fort Belvedere, was delighted, and wrote to her friends about how well he had done – she was aware of the diversion so there is a possibility that they had discussed it beforehand.
Not much has been made of the earlier speech, all the attention now is focussed on the later crisis. What attention is given seems to portray this speech merely as a ‘warning unheeded’, in that the King was wayward and here was an opportunity, missed, to slap him down. I prefer to see it as the King testing his public persona a bit, testing out a theme, or a line, that he might want to explore later in his reign.
Reith and Percy are real, it is not documented that the DG was at Broadcasting House on 1 March but to me it is unfathomable that he would be absent for a Royal visit and broadcast. He is, sadly, (I have a lot of time for the BBC and what it does) as dour and canting as portrayed and, like Archbishop Laing, he is an Establishment figure who unhesitatingly took Baldwin’s side against the King. Is there a similarity? Well, I hesitate to seem anti-Scottish, I’m genuinely not, but there is something to the fact that both Laing and Reith were very upright (uptight?), dour, probably quite patronising Scots from very strict protestant upbringings who robustly defended the status quo against the forces of modernisation. They were miserable company, and I cannot think of anything more likely to irritate the King. While I have known a couple of old Scottish Tories, who had a slightly earnest side to them, they (mercifully) knew how to party. To me, Reith and Laing are the last of the Victorian Scots, terribly earnest, capable enough, great if you need a railway cutting through Africa, but not much fun to be around.
Percy is, as you may have guessed from the surname, a member of the famous (infamous) family that has run much of the North East of England for hundreds of years. I quite like this one, for a Tory he seems extremely liberal and was phenomenally loyal to his region. Not hugely remembered now, I genuinely think that, sounding trite, his ‘heart was in the right place’.
And we have the POD, again, which is the aspiration, from both the Government and the Crown (although the Crown’s is more of a canny acceptance to placate Baldwin, I think) for some senior national figure to mentor the King. This will take some time to play out, and it is time to leave the King for a few updates; this is Europe in early 1936, and major events are on the way…
@DylanMultiverse : I hear you, the AAR is more of the meandering, “I’ll get there in the end” type; I’ll deliberately swerve away from the Abdication arc for a few updates, both to show what else is going on in the world / UK and to avoid repetitive ‘he’ll have to go’ conferences-style updates.
@stnylan : Thank you, I actually enjoy complete fiction as much as the ‘based on a real meeting’ updates that form much of this first (largely historical) part of the AAR. And I couldn’t resist that throw away line from Kell.
@TheButterflyComposer : I think that much of MI5’s tone comes from Kell: certainly in the early days, pre-WW1, he was aghast at the more dramatic escapades of MI6.
@Captured Joe : All good stories need a menacing villain! You could argue that as MI5 has rumbled the German network they’re not
that good…
@DensleyBlair : Thank you! While I knew that I wanted Butler to have some fun adventures, the update was a “rainy day in lockdown” production…
@Specialist290 : Wow, that’s quite the compliment there. I tried to make it a bit lighter (in places
Tinker, Tailor is a bloody dark story) but am very heartened by your comment…
@DensleyBlair : A joint Le Carre – Ealing production then? That would be hilarious and menacing…am not sure who would play Butler. I’ve drafted (in my head) a couple of updates for the late summer which flesh out his character a bit more, and having done that I’m not sure that a young Guinness (an ironic selection given the Le Carre comments above!) would do the trick.
@H.Appleby : Thank you, as ever. The chase scene took a few rewrites, particularly the bridge bit (it was a lot shorter, initially).
@TheButterflyComposer : You are correct, and this is actually why I do like Le Carre, he at least recognises the work of the researches and administrators who make up the bulk of intelligence agencies.
@DensleyBlair : True!
@H.Appleby : So this comment reminds me, strongly, of Rory Kinnear’s observations on his character in Skyfall, along lines of “at the end of the day, Bond goes off with the car and the gadgets, Tanner gets on the Circle Line”.
@Bullfilter : So yes, I think that La Resistance offers a lot of writing potential, particularly for Britain, where almost every international ‘angle’ attracts British interest (in theory).
Urgh – Menzies (shudders)
@El Pip : Completely agree, and my point was that the list of ‘M’ sections had been raised, used, fiddled with and (in many cases) merged or disbanded long before early ’36.
@TheButterflyComposer : To respond to this point is quite a challenge, actually. You make your point very well.
