King George VI has in recent years enjoyed something of a revival of reputation, largely as a result of the screening of the brilliantly crafted 2010 Film "King's Speech" which starred actors Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter.
Whilst the film focuses on the relationship between the stammering Duke soon who is struggling with the duties of the Royal role, and his speech therapist Australian Lionel Logue, the film takes huge liberties with the actual history of events particularly overstating George VI's good relations with Winston Churchill and drawing a discrete veil over George VI's support of appeasement as King, and his entanglement with Pro-Fascists as Duke of York.
In the process of 11 years of research for my debut book "Churchill's Secret Enemy" published in March 2012, I uncovered some long hidden episodes airbrushed out of the official version of George VI's lifestory.
Twenty Interesting Facts not commonly known about King George VI
- The Lost Visit - King George VI (Queen Elizabeth II's Father) and Queen Elizabeth (Who we knew as the Queen Mother) - stayed in Berlin before World War 2 on 2 occasions in 1929 whilst attending the Wedding of the King of Norway. They visited Potsdam Palace and left their credentials with President Hindenburg.
- If King George VI had been able to choose his Prime Minister in May 1940, to replace appeaser Neville Chamberlain he would have chosen appeaser Viscount Halifax in preference to Winston Churchill.
- As Duke of York - George VI had developed a close friendship with Homosexual honours trafficker and murderer Maundy Gregory who was imprisoned in 1933 and then paid off to live in luxury in Paris whom he made an usher at the Royal Wedding to the Queen Mother in 1923 and from whom he accepted and exchanged lavish gifts and a loan of £100,000.
- After appeasing Neville Chamberlain arrived from visiting Adolf Hitler in Munich in 1938 having sold out Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, King George VI broke with Royal protocol and invited the Prime Minister to a public celebration of peace in our time on the balcony of Buckingham Palace
- In 1941 Nazi Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess arrived in Scotland claiming the Royal Protection of the King having been in communication via Albrecht Haushofer with the King's Lord Steward Head of Household - the Duke of Hamilton.
- King George VI' s previous Lord Steward the Duke of Buccleuch was sacked from his job in 1940 for his Pro-Nazi and Pro-Peace view, having attended Adolf Hitler's birthday Party in April 1939.
- Both the Queen Mother and King George VI held pro-peace and ultra-right wing views and were desperately attempting to sponsor peace with Adolf Hitler in the run up to the Second World War and later.
- During the 1920's the Young Duke became intangled with a Pro-fascist circle involving Boxing Promoter Harry Preston, Maundy Gregory, an Italian Banker and his personal advisor Sir Louis Greig.
- The Royal Family is renowned for risking the London Blitz rather than fleeing to Canada as recommended by government officials, yet in September 1939 their initial reaction was to flee to safety in Scotland until prevailed upon to return to England. Despite attending Buckingham Palace during the day they left London for the safety of Windsor Castle during the nightime Blitz.
- George VI appointed Pro-Nazi Right Club Members Major Sir James Edmondson his Vice Chamberlain and Lt Col Sir Charles Kerr his Comptoller of the Household in 1940 after the Right Club was banned and it's leader arrested. The King even promoted Edmondson to his Treasurer in 1942, a role he held until after the end of the war.
- When Duke of York, George VI was a member of a secret society which contemporary commentators compared to a cross between the fascists and Klu Klux Klan called the Most Noble Order of Crusaders, which was established by Conservative Politician and friend of Maundy Gregory called Colonel Walter Faber who was the Pro-Grand Master. The Duke attended a sacred ceremony at Westminster Abbey on November 28th 1923 arranged by the Crusaders to honour the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior.
- King George VI was an passionate advocate of organised youth camps and from 1921 to 1939 sponsored and attended his boys camps held on the Romney Marsh in Kent and Southwold in Essex. There was even a camp at Southport in Lancashire and at Balmoral in Scotland. The key movers in this was the Industrial Welfare Society organised by the Reverend RH Hyde, Captain JG Paterson who was the Camp Commandant. Boys from public schools mixed with those from industrial towns and the camps were "mobilised" into 20 sections led by section leaders. In the 1929 camp one section leader was Lord Clydesdale, later known as the Duke of Hamilton who was appointed as George VI's Chief Stewart in 1940 when he was compelled to sack the Duke of Buccleuch because of the Duke's Pro-Nazi views. Interestingly Hamilton then known as Clydesdale was one of the first public schoolboys to attend the First Duke of York's Camp at Romney Marsh in 1921 organised by Louis Greig and then came back in 1929 as an organiser and in 1933 as a speaker to tell the boys all about his adventures on the Mount Everest Expedition of 1933 which had been sponsored by British Fascist funder Lady Houston (on the Everest committee was Lord Wakefield, John Buchan, & the Master of Sempill - who helped Japan develop airpower) In the following year the Bursar for the camp was Mr I J Pitman (Issac James) who had married Lord Luke's (The Bovril King , and funder of Sir Joseph Ball's anti-semitic Truth) daughter. Pitman a rugby international would become a Tory MP after having appointed to the Bank of England in 1941.
- The Duke of York ran a network of pro-fitness organisations in the 1920's such as the National Playing Field Association which included Ronald Waterhouse, Noel Curtis Bennett and Louis Greig. This move mirrored similar movements in Germany such as the Kraft durch Freude (Strength through Joy) movement of the Nazis which had been studied by Hamilton spouse Prunella Stack and mirrored the pro-fitness obsessions of the British Fascists. In January 1939 the Reverend Hyde advocated a German style Kraft durch Freude approach to fitness. In February King George VI met Nazi Fitness leader Doctor Ley when he came to London to attend the World Congress for Recreation and Leisure.
- King George VI actually met Benito Mussolini in 1930 on his visit to Rome when he was Duke of York. While attending the wedding of Prince Umberto, George VI is reported to have met with Mussolini and had a long talk, the details were confidential. The British Ambassador at the time was Lord Ronald Graham, a pro-fascist and Pro-Nazi who became a key figure in the notorious anti semitic Right Club in 1939.
- Viscount Halifax reported back constantly with George VI on the progress of the Appeasement Foreign Policy and in conversations with the Nazis told them he would like to see Adolf Hitler in London standing next to George VI as a triumph of the Anglo-German Alliance
- The Duke of York was present when in 1923 at Victoria Station in London King George V and the King of Italy inspected "an honour guard of black shirted fascists made up of all parts of Britain"
- George VI's key friend and advisor Sir Louis Greig was a member of the British Fascist dining club - the January Club and also a member of the pro-Nazi Anglo-German Fellowship.
- George VI's younger brother Prince George Duke of Kent who died in a mysterious aircrash in August 1942 had frequently visited Nazi Germany and invited Nazi Ideologist Alfred Rosenberg and British Double Agent De Ropp to London in 1938 to brief him on Nazi Ideology so he could better inform King George VI "At the close of last year we received the message that the King of England has expressed himself to be very dissatisfied over the official press agency. The visit of the Duke of Kent to Munich (March 1937) had made matters still worse pertaining to the King's views on the press agency. Consequently we one day received the request from London to make possible that our English agent take a trip to London in order to orient the Duke of Kent in every detail pertaining to national socialism in order to convey this information to the King. R. went with me to London exactly as requested and there had an over three hour long unobserved conference with the Duke of Kent, who then conveyed this to the King of England. One can assume that this instruction has served its purpose and exerted a definite strengthening pressure for change of cabinet and head it in a direction of closer cordiality for Germany."
- George VI and the Queen Mother maintained their friendship with society hostess Maggie Greville despite her Pro-Nazi views and associations with Nazi propaganda. They had honeymooned at Polesden Lacey in Surrey in 1923 owned by the Pro-Nazi heiress and lover of Pro-appeasement Lord Simon.Some of George VI's other unsavioury anti-semitic and far right connections included his "protege" the Marquess of Graham who having gone to live in Rhodesia for 9 years found himself caught in England at the start of World War 2. On October 23rd 1939 in a Long letter to Mountbatten George VI asked him to keep a friendly eye on his protege who was serving with Mountbatten on HMS Kandahar. Did George VI know that his protege was a member of the Right Club - the Pro-Nazi Aristocratic Group led by Captain Archibald Ramsay. The Marquess of Graham succeeded his father in 1954 as Duke of Montrose and would become a leading light in Ian Smith's White Supremacist Rhodesia as Minister of Agriculture. His uncle was Lord Ronald Graham, former Ambassador to Mussolini's Fascist Italy, member of the AGF, Right Club and Link.
- George VI was keen to keep his friendship with homosexual Prince Umberto of Italy underwraps, they had met on many occasions in 1923, 1924 and 1930 and had corresponded, when Italy deposed the Pro-Fascist Monarchy in 1946 following a referendum, Britain did not offer direct sanctuary to the exiled King Victor Emanuelle III and King Umberto they were exiled to Egypt.
I hope to bring to the surface some more information regarding the complex and disturbing actions of Albert, first as Duke of York and later as King of England. My forthcoming book "His Majesty's Secret" will be available from Lulu.com on January 1st 2013.
PRE-RELEASE MEDIA ATTENTION
26 Feb 2012 Sunday Express Article - "How this crook saved the Queen Mother" - article by Royal Author Christopher Wilson revealing some of the new evidence regarding George VI and the Queen Mother such as the MI5 file and Royal Correspondance proving links to Maundy Gregory contained in "Churchill's Secret Enemy" published in 2012 and to be expanded upon in "His Majesty's Secret" in 2013.
