George V Timeline

After an anti-Catholic lie about George first surfaced in print in 1893 resurfaced, the Accession Declaration Act 1910 shortened the declaration and removed the most offensive phrases.

Image source: Accession Declaration Act 1910

On 6 May 1910, Edward VII died, and George became King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India.

Following constitutional crises, two general elections in 1910, and a breakdown of reform talks in November 1910, the Parliament Act 1911 permanently removed the power of the House of Lords to veto bills and established the supremacy of the elected House of Commons.

Image source: Parliament Act 1911

The coronation took place at Westminster Abbey on 22 June 1911 and was celebrated by the Festival of Empire in London.

Image source: Coronation of George V and Mary

Later in 1911, the King and Queen travelled to India for the Delhi Durbar, where they were presented on 12 December 1911 to an assembled audience of Indian dignitaries and princes as Emperor and Empress of India.

Image source: Delhi Durbar

On 18 December 1913, George was part of a shooting party that shot over a thousand pheasants in six hours — about one bird every 20 seconds — while visiting the home of Lord Burnham.

Desperate to avoid civil war in Ireland between Unionists and Nationalists, George called a meeting of all parties at Buckingham Palace in July 1914 in an attempt to negotiate a settlement.

On 4 August 1914, George wrote in his diary, 'I held a council at 10:45 to declare war with Germany... Please to God it may soon be over.' From 1914 to 1918, Britain and its allies were at war with the Central Powers led by the German Empire.

George was seriously injured on 28 October 1915 when thrown by his horse at a troop review in France; the injury, along with heavy smoking, began a lasting toll on his health.

When his cousin Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown in the Russian Revolution of 1917, fears of revolution in Britain led George to think hosting the Romanovs would be inappropriate. Nicholas and his family remained in Russia, where they were killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918.

Image source: Nicholas II of Russia

On 17 July 1917, George appeased British nationalist feelings by issuing a royal proclamation changing the name of the royal house from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor, making him the first monarch of the House of Windsor.

Image source: House of Windsor

In letters patent gazetted on 11 December 1917, the King restricted the style 'Royal Highness' and princely titles to the children of the Sovereign, the children of sons of the Sovereign, and the eldest living son of the eldest son of a Prince of Wales.

Relatives who fought on the German side, such as Ernest Augustus, Crown Prince of Hanover, and Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, had their British peerages suspended by a 1919 Order in Council under the Titles Deprivation Act 1917. That year Strutt also escorted former Emperor Charles I of Austria to safety in Switzerland.

At the opening session of the Parliament of Northern Ireland on 22 June 1921, the King appealed for conciliation in a speech partly drafted by General Jan Smuts and approved by Lloyd George. By the end of 1922, Ireland was partitioned and the Irish Free State established.

Image source: Parliament of Northern Ireland

In 1922, a Royal Navy ship was sent to Greece to rescue George's cousins Prince and Princess Andrew during the turmoil following the Greco-Turkish War.

In May 1922, George toured Belgium and northern France, visiting First World War cemeteries and memorials built by the Imperial War Graves Commission. This tour, plus a short visit to Italy in 1923, were the only times he left the UK on official business after the war.

Amid frequent changes in government between 1922 and 1929, George appointed Ramsay MacDonald as the first Labour Prime Minister in 1924, in the absence of a clear majority for any one of the three major parties.

Image source: Ramsay MacDonald

In 1926, George hosted an Imperial Conference in London at which the Balfour Declaration accepted the growth of the British Dominions into self-governing 'autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another'.

Image source: 1926 Imperial Conference

The Statute of Westminster 1931 formalised the Dominions' legislative independence, recognised them as separate states within the Commonwealth, and required agreement of all Dominion parliaments for any change to succession. Amid financial crisis, George encouraged a National Government led by MacDonald and Baldwin and volunteered to cut the civil list.

In 1932, George agreed to deliver a Royal Christmas speech on the radio, an event that became annual thereafter and brought the monarchy closer to the public through mass media.

Image source: Royal Christmas message

In 1934, George bluntly told German ambassador Leopold von Hoesch that Germany was now the peril of the world and there would be war within ten years if it continued its present course; he warned ambassador Eric Phipps in Berlin to be suspicious of the Nazis.

In 1925, on the instruction of his doctors, George reluctantly took a recuperative private cruise in the Mediterranean — his third trip abroad since the war and his last.

In November 1928, George fell seriously ill with septicaemia, which localised between the base of his right lung and diaphragm as an empyema requiring drainage. A suggested rest abroad in 1929 was rejected 'in rather strong language'.

In 1935, George said of his son Edward, 'After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself within 12 months', and prayed that Bertie (Albert) and Lilibet would come between Edward and the throne.

Image source: Edward VIII

The death of his favourite sister, Victoria, in December 1935 depressed George deeply in the final weeks of his life.

Image source: Queen Victoria

On the evening of 15 January 1936, George took to his bedroom at Sandringham House complaining of a cold; he remained in the room until his death. His physicians issued the bulletin 'The King's life is moving peacefully towards its close.'

George died on 20 January 1936 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII. His last words, a mumbled 'God damn you!', were addressed to his nurse Catherine Black — revealed only when Lord Dawson's diary was published in 1986.

Image source: Death and state funeral of George V

George's will was read at a private family meeting at Sandringham on 22 January 1936. When Edward VIII queried why no provision was made for him, solicitor Sir Bernard Halsey-Bircham explained the late king had assumed his son would have built a fortune from Duchy of Cornwall revenues.