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celebrated as usual at Sandringham with the entire inner circle of the royal family,
except the Harewoods, present. It had been a less taxing time than usual for the King
since, because of his extreme weakness, the Christmas broadcast, which he always
dreaded and which ruined the first part of Christmas Day for him, had been pre-recorded
so that for once he did not have to deliver it live. None the less, in the family
photograph he looked gaunt, a shadow compared with the hearty bucolic form of his
brother, the Duke of Gloucester, standing behind him. Next to him, Queen Mary also
looked frail; she would survive him by barely a year. Princess Anne sat happily centrestage
on his knee, while Prince Charles stood beside his grandmother, who encircled him
with a comforting arm.
Both the Queen and the King wanted to believe that he was better. He enjoyed himself
out shooting, but he also did his duty writing personal letters to Truman and
Eisenhower, intended to help Churchill on his forthcoming visit to Washington. He was
planning to leave for South Africa with the Queen on 10 March to convalesce at Botha
House, the Prime Minister’s official country residence, which had been offered him by Dr
Malan, the Nationalist Party leader who had replaced the King’s friend, Field Marshal
Smuts. On 29 January he went up to London for a consultation with his doctors, who
pronounced themselves ‘very well satisfied’ with their patient. Only nine days before,
however, Lascelles had become sufficiently concerned about the fragility of the King’s
health that he had sent Churchill in the United States a warning telegram. On 30
January the King, the Queen, the Edinburghs and Margaret, with Peter Townsend in
attendance and other friends, went to a performance of South Pacific at the Drury Lane
Theatre. It was a family get-together to celebrate the doctors’ favourable report and a
send-off for the Princess and the Duke who were to fly off for their antipodean state
visit the next morning. Photographed sitting together, the King’s face was so finely
drawn as to resemble a death mask, although he looked not old but youthful; both his
daughters looked much as they had in the Crawfie days of ‘The Little Princesses’. It was
as though the family, on the verge of dissolution, had gone back in time. The next day,
31 January, he took the unusual step of going as far as Heathrow Airport to see his
daughter off to Kenya, the first stage of her journey. He stood hatless in the cold wind,
his eyes with the straining, glaring look they took on in moments of emotion. In his
heart of hearts he knew that he was, in Churchill’s phrase, ‘walking with death’ and that
there was always a possibility he might not see his beloved daughter again. Churchill,
who was with him at the airport, described him as ‘gay and even jaunty; [he] drank a
glass of champagne. I think’, he added, ‘he knew he had not long to live.’ Bobo told
Dean that he had said, ‘Look after the Princess for me, Bobo,’ and that she had never
before seen him so upset at parting from her.
He died, suddenly and without warning, of a thrombosis in his sleep at Sandringham,
just six days later, in the early hours of 6 February 1952. His daughter became Queen in
Kenya as she sat on the platform of the Treetops Hotel in the branches of a giant wild
fig tree watching and photographing the animals at the salt-lick. On guard at the foot of
the tree stood a famous ‘white hunter’, Jim Corbett, armed with a heavy-calibre rifle,