George V: Never a Dull Moment

Written by Jane Ridley

Narrated by Joanna David

From one of the most beloved and distinguished historians of the British monarchy, here is a lively, intimately detailed biography of a long-overlooked king who reimagined the Crown in the aftermath of World War I and whose marriage to the regal Queen Mary was an epic partnership

The grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II, King George V reigned over the British Empire from 1910 to 1936, a period of unprecedented international turbulence. Yet no one could deny that as a young man, George seemed uninspired. As his biographer Harold Nicolson famously put it, ""he did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps.” The contrast between him and his flamboyant, hedonistic, playboy father Edward VII could hardly have been greater.

However, though it lasted only a quarter-century, George’s reign was immensely consequential. He faced a constitutional crisis, the First World War, the fall of thirteen European monarchies and the rise of Bolshevism. The suffragette Emily Davison threw herself under his horse at the Derby, he refused asylum to his cousin the Tsar Nicholas II during the Russian Revolution, and he facilitated the first Labour government. And, as Jane Ridley shows, the modern British monarchy would not exist without George; he reinvented the institution, allowing it to survive and thrive when its very existence seemed doomed. The status of the British monarchy today, she argues, is due in large part to him.

How this supposedly limited man managed to steer the crown through so many perils and adapt an essentially Victorian institution to the twentieth century is a great story in itself. But this book is also a riveting portrait of a royal marriage and family life. Queen Mary played a pivotal role in the reign as well as being an important figure in her own right. Under the couple's stewardship, the crown emerged stronger than ever. George V founded the modern monarchy, and yet his disastrous quarrel with his eldest son, the Duke of Windsor, culminated in the existential crisis of the Abdication only months after his death.

Jane Ridley has had unprecedented access to the archives, and for the first time is able to reassess in full the many myths associated with this crucial and dramatic time. She brings us a royal family and world not long vanished, and not so far from our own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Jan 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9780063216532

Jane Ridley

Jane Ridley is a professor of history at the University of Buckingham, where she teaches an MA course on biography. Her books include The Young Disraeli, 1804–1846, acclaimed by Robert Blake as definitive; The Architect and His Wife, a highly praised study of the architect Edwin Lutyens and his relationship with his troubled wife, which won the Duff Cooper Prize; and Victoria, written for the Penguin Monarchs series. Her most recent full biography, The Heir Apparent: A Life of Edward VII, the Playboy Prince (published in the UK as Bertie: A Life of Edward VII), was a Sunday Times bestseller and one of the most critically acclaimed books of 2013. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Ridley writes book reviews for the Spectator and other newspapers, and has also been featured on radio and appeared on several television documentaries. She lives in London and Scotland.

Reviews for George V

[ponsonby_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a very good and readable biography, written with a genuinely human touch combined with scholarship. As befits a book by a professor of biography, it is also partly a biographical history of George V, focussing particularly on the Gore and Nicholson works, and Pope-Hennessy's work on Queen Mary (Rose's biography of the king gets less attention). Ridley does not shy away from noting George's faults, but she takes a generally sympathetic tone and comes to conclusions about his reign which are generally favourable. Her attitude towards Queen Mary (who is covered extensively in the book, to the extent that it is almost a joint biography) is sometimes a little waspish but mostly positive. The book has a notably realistic take on Prince John. Most politicians do not come off unscathed.The use of George V British Empire stamps in the endcover design is a nice touch given George's role in building up the Royal collection.At times there is perhaps a lack of imagination in the view taken of those who served the King, for example in the section at the end dealing with role played by Lord Dawson in the King's final hours.One criticism which could be levelled at the book is the somewhat casual handling of facts about WWI; for example, the Battle of Passchendaele casualty and death figures are confused. Ridley says at one place that the Russians had left the war in 1917, but in another says March 1918. More generally, subjective judgements about the conduct of the war are included with little or no supporting evidence.There is also some careless editing – for example, we are told in a throwaway line that Fred Dudley Ward was a 'glovemaker's daughter', making her sound quite working class, and only in a later chapter appears a detailed footnote on her rather different antecedents. Ms Ridley, or perhaps her editor, seems over-fond of the [sic] marking, with it appearing in often unncessary places.But these are quibbles. This is a book to read, enjoy and retain.