This was a question in a Christmas Quiz yesterday. My mind raced to George VI, the Queen's father, but, in fact, the innovator, on the cutting edge of technology, was his father George V, the Queen's grandfather.
Photo by Andrew Shiva / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24854792
I should have known the answer because I had researched the statues of Westminster. George V's statue in his Garter Robes in Portland Stone stands opposite the House of Lords. By William Reid Dick, it is dignified, if bland. In fact, the British people had wanted him depicted sitting down, in a dining chair, speaking into a BBC microphone delivering his first Christmas Message - in 1932. The Fine Art Commission overruled, possibly understanding that the technology would soon look old-fangled.
Four years after George V died, in January 1936, this statue was mostly a block of stone in a cave on the stretch of Portland Bill on the coast of Dorset, where all the white and easy-to-cut Portland stone which built Whitehall is quarried. There is even a stretch of coastal quarry there called 'Whitehall'.
The artist worked on the statue during World War Two, the King taking final shape in the cave overlooking The English Channel - that wall of our defence - symbolically looking out to sea with his 'white face of England', as Shakespeare put it. Shakespeare was referring to his Queen's leaden cosmetics and the white cliffs of Dover.
His first Christmas Message in 1932 was written by Rudyard Kipling, a wizard with words. He had, as we know, from his ever inspiring poem "If", an eye to the future relevance of his writing. The speech is still rings true in the refining fire of coronavirus, with billions isolated from life and people they know.
The King was talking to the generation which had fought World War One and come through the Great Depression. They were of high mettle but also broken by terrible tragedy and personal losses. The lesson is that the tests will come again to nations but we must draw on the strength of coming through them in the past, to endure. While we are tested, we must remain in a state of 'reasoned tranquillity within our borders' and we must go forward to rebuild prosperity inclusively without self-seeking, with special concern for those whom the past has brought to despair and even destitution. It includes a special word for those disabled and chronically ill.
It is Christian, in its essence, since integating and including the most vulnerable, as we build back prosperity selflessly, is the mark of a civilised people. The most striking words are in bold below:
"Our future will lay upon us more than one stern test but our past will have taught us how to meet it. The work to which we are equally bound is to arrive at a reasoned tranquillity within our borders, to regain prosperity without self seeking and to carry with us those whom the burden of the past years has disheartened and overborne.
My life's aim has been to serve....I speak from my home and from my heart to you all; to men and women so cut off....that only voices out of the air can reach them. To those cut off from a fuller life by blindness, sickness or infirmity...to all, to each, I wish a Happy Christmas."
His Christmas Message can be heard in his own voice in full here
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