Queen Elizabeth has not only lived long, she's prospered in her role

It does not seem like 60 years ago that my late brother said to our half-asleep parents as we departed early for school: "There was a bug in my cereal, and by the way, the King is dead."

A much admired man, only 56, there were some comparisons between George VI and then U.S. president Harry S. Truman, as men who had not sought the greatest offices for which they were eligible, neither expected nor wished them, but acquitted them admirably when they were thrust upon them.

In other respects, King George VI more resembled Truman's illustrious predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, patrician, even an aristocrat, but stricken by polio that deprived him of the use of his legs at the age of 39; as the King had largely overcome a severe speech impediment, a stutter that in his youth, and as Duke of York, sometimes prevented him from uttering a complete sentence in a feasible time. The King, like Roosevelt before the onset of his illness, had been a fine athlete, appeared with distinction on the centre court at Wimbledon in the 1920s. And though FDR moved awkwardly, once before a microphone, he spoke always with apostolic confidence and mellifluous virtuosity, a very civilized, but almost unanswerable demagogue.

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© 2024 Conrad Black