The much-loved King

‘Little did we think, when COUNTRY LIFE appeared last week, that, before another issue was in the hands of our readers, the whole nation would be plunged into deep and sudden mourning for the death of our beloved King. At a time like this, notions of kingship pass for a time into the background. We cannot separate the King from the man, and we feel with the force of a stunning blow that the ‘Great Family’ of whom he loved to speak have lost not merely their Head, but the greatest of their members. Today we mourn one who, by his devotion to duty, his unmatched courage and wisdom, his simplicity and dignity, has for a quarter of a century been to us a pattern and exemplar of all that an Englishman would like to be.’ (Leader, January 25, 1936)