A river that won royal favour
When Christ chose fishermen from Galilee as his closest disciples, it was a statement that the Kingdom of God was run by unassuming men of peace, in contrast to the commanders of the occupying Roman Empire. The bard of angling, Izaak Walton, amid the violence of the English Civil War, proclaimed that “God did never make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling”. And George V, King during the most tumultuous period of recent British history, which saw our empire crumble and World War I wipe out close to an entire generation of men, confessed: “I am never so happy as when I am fishing the pools of the Dee.” Angling and peaceful escapism have been bedfellows since time immemorial.
George V was not the first, nor the last, monarch to find comfort away from the glare of public life on the banks of the River Dee. When Sir Robert Gordon, leaseholder of the Balmoral Estate, choked to death on a fish bone in 1847, it was
