The Love Letters of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth
When King Charles III’s maternal grandfather died at age fifty-six in February 1952, his widow, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, sent a message of thanks to people “from all parts of the world.” “No man had a deeper sense than he of duty and of service,” she said, “and no man was more full of compassion for his fellow men. He loved you all, every one of you, most truly.” King George VI deeply loved his family, and above all he loved Elizabeth, his wife for twenty-eight years.
Theirs was a compelling love story—one-sided initially, when at age twenty-seven Prince Albert, the Duke of York, fell in love with twenty-three-year-old Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon in the summer of 1920 while dancing with her during at a ball at the Ritz Hotel in London. He pursued her with determination for thirty months, and she turned down his marriage proposals twice. By the time she finally accepted his hand in January 1923, she had grown to love her “Prince Bertie.”
Their love story played out in the letters they wrote to each other, starting in December 1920, five months after they met on the dance floor. They had spent time together during country house weekends and at parties in London. The wrinkle in the romance was her getting over her love for a handsome Scottish aristocrat, James Stuart, who worked as an aide to Bertie and was also smitten with Elizabeth. But when offered work in the United States at the end of 1921, Stuart seized the opportunity. He was an impecunious second son of an earl, and he needed a lucrative job. His departure left the courtship field open for Bertie.
A switch flipped
It was a poignant experience for me to read Bertie and Elizabeth’s correspondence in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle and her ancestral home in Scotland, Glamis Castle. I saw nearly 100 letters in all, some 55 before their engagement, and 43 afterward. All the letters were handwritten. His were sturdy and deliberate, hers were curvy and relaxed. Both writing styles reflected their contrasting personalities—his earnestness and her breeziness.
The pattern of Bertie and Elizabeth’s letters throughout their prolonged courtship reflected restraint on both sides, suffused with sweetness. Bertie gently pressed his case, and Elizabeth responded warily, although she always kept the door open for his entreaties. Her tone was frequently light-hearted and even coy. His was invariably straightforward. His third marriage proposal, on January 3, 1923, while dancing in the foyer at Claridge’s Hotel in London, was followed by eleven days of vacillating by Elizabeth until she finally said “yes” close to midnight on January 14, 1923. At that point, a switch flipped, and their correspondence, by the standards of the times, overflowed with passion and terms of endearment.
For Valentine’s Day, I’m offering you a representative sampling, some of which appeared in my recent biography, George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy, which includes revealing diary entries as well. But Valentine’s Day is about love letters, so I hope you enjoy what I’ve pulled together.
In the spirit of the day, I’m making this post available to all my subscribers, without a paywall. I’ve only done this a couple of times, but I hope those of you who are not paid subscribers will consider stepping up to a full subscription. And if you’re feeling a little “extra” ❤️ for someone, please share this post!
28 February 1921 Elizabeth to Bertie, who had proposed marriage for the first time the day before at lunch, and she had turned him down: “How dreadfully sorry I am about yesterday,” she wrote. “It makes me miserable to think about it…Please do forgive me…It worries me so much to think you may be unhappy…We can be good friends, can’t we?”
7 March 1921 Elizabeth to Bertie, who had sent a reply, which has since been lost: She told him his letter “much relieved my mind. I feel just the same as you do about it and I am so glad.”
Sympathetic letters about her ailing mother
Over the following months, Bertie and Elizabeth encountered each other at parties, played tennis together, and exchanged quotidian letters sporadically. James Stuart left his job with Bertie, but he was still seeing Elizabeth even as he prepared to sail to New York in January 1922. Bertie sent Elizabeth sympathetic letters about her ailing mother, and she graciously replied to each. Bertie’s sister, Princess Mary, announced her engagement and asked Elizabeth to be a bridesmaid at the wedding on February 28th, 1922. A week later, on March 7th, Bertie proposed a second time. Elizabeth turned him down again.
8 March 1922 Elizabeth to Bertie: “I am so terribly sorry about what happened yesterday & feel it is all my fault,” she wrote. “You are one of my best & most faithful friends…I am too miserable about it.” She urged him to come and see her if he wanted to “talk about things in general,” adding “I do wish this hadn’t happened.”
8 March 1922 Bertie to Elizabeth: He admitted that he was “entirely in the wrong” for proposing without “giving you any warning,” and asked for her forgiveness: “I am so sorry for making you miserable.”
12 March 1922 Elizabeth to Bertie: She told him that his letter “relieved my mind tremendously in a way…Please do try & forget about this, as I hate to think that you worry about it.”
16 March 1922 Bertie to Elizabeth: “I quite understand your feelings,” he wrote. “But I feel I must tell you that I have always cared for you & had the hope that you would one day care for me.” He promised to try to “forget it” and would “keep it a secret,” adding, “I only hope that you will always look upon me as more than an ordinary friend.”
“Desperately in love”
He was still “desperately in love” with Elizabeth, as he admitted to a friend that summer. Although he agonized that he had “lost the only woman he would ever marry,” he resolved to continue his courtship and propose again. Elizabeth stayed in touch and invited him to a shooting party at Glamis at the end of September. After his visit, the tone in her letters turned decidedly warmer. They danced together at holiday parties in London, and her father invited him to shoot at St. Paul’s Walden Bury, her family’s English estate. “Of all the days’ shooting I have ever had I can’t remember any I have enjoyed more,” he wrote to her at the end of November.
4 January 1923 Elizabeth to Bertie, the day after his third proposal: She thanked him for being “so angelic” in “not hurrying” her reply. “I am determined not to spoil your life by just drifting on like this…Last night seems like a dream,” she wrote.
Concerned about leaving her close-knit family and friends
He did not anticipate that Elizabeth would take so long to make up her mind before accepting his proposal. She never fully explained the nature of her reluctance, but those who knew her well said she was mainly concerned about leaving her close-knit family and friends for a lifetime of duty inside the royal family. Once she committed herself to Bertie, the couple’s intense feelings poured into their letters. From “very sincerely, Albert,” he became “your very very loving Bertie.” They set their wedding date for April 26, 1923.
25 January 1923 Bertie to Elizabeth: “My own little darling one,” he wrote. “How I hated leaving you this evening after our delightful little tete a tete dinner…I think I must have always loved you darling but could never make you realise it without telling you actually that I did & thank God I told you at the right moment.”
25 January 1923 Elizabeth to Bertie: “I do love you Bertie & feel certain that I shall more & more…You are such an Angel to me…from your always and forever loving E.”
11 February 1923 Bertie to Elizabeth: “How lonely I am feeling this evening without you…Just a month ago tonight isn’t it darling when you told me you loved me. What a day that was for me!!!!”
14 March 1923 Bertie to Elizabeth, who was resting at Glamis: “Your little letter this morning…brought me heaps of comfort & millions of thanks…Saturday will soon be here…& I shall see your sweet little face again all radiant with smiles. And so will mine…I am only existing now while you are away.”
29 March 1923 Bertie to Elizabeth: “Only 4 more weeks darling & then we can take a rest away from everybody & everything. I wonder how you are looking forward to that time. I know I am very much indeed & I do hope you are too…this is the last time I shall be without you my little angel, & I think it is one too many.”
31 March 1923 Elizabeth to Bertie from St. Walden’s Bury: “Why haven’t you got a small aeroplane, when you could fly over here for an hour or two…& return to Windsor…Well s’long Bertie, don’t forget your Honey Lamb will you?”
29 September 1924 Bertie to Elizabeth at Glamis from Balmoral, the royal estate in Scotland where he was stalking deer with his father, King George V: “I am feeling very lonely & am quite lost not seeing & hearing you in this room. I do hope you will not miss me too much, tho’ you will know I am always thinking of you. Don’t get frightened at night sleeping all alone darling in that enormous bed…It seems so funny writing to you darling as we have never been away so long from each other before.”
1 October 1924 Elizabeth to Bertie: “I miss you dreadfully, and am longing for Monday, when I hope you will arrive here sunburnt, manly, & bronzed, bearing in your arms a haunch of venaison roti as a love offering to your spouse…It seems all wrong that we shouldn’t be together, doesn’t it—from your very very loving E Xxxxxxxxx kisses Ooooooooooo hugs.”
2 October 1924 Bertie to Elizabeth: “I am longing for Monday & I shall be back with you for lunch. Two lunches of course. One from you I hope darling in xxxxx etc etc & then an ordinary culinary one.”
8 December 1925 Bertie to Elizabeth from the King’s Sandringham estate in Norfolk, where he was shooting with his father: “I love our little talks [on the telephone]; we can’t say much but we hear each other’s voices, which is the nearest we can get to each other.”
24 December 1925 Bertie to Elizabeth during their Christmas holiday with his family at Sandringham: Recalling a letter he had written to her in December 1922 before his final marriage proposal, he wrote, “My heart still goes pit-a-pat in the same way as it did then. Why I have written these letters to you when you’re in the room I don’t know. But I just have, All my love darling.”
11 January 1926 Bertie to Elizabeth, who was house bound in London, while he was foxhunting with friends: It was one of the few instances where she appeared to have upbraided him for neglecting her. “I felt such a beast in having left you all alone for the weekend,” he wrote. “You know you always come first in my thoughts…I think I am selfish…My conscience has pricked me & your letter tonight made me feel that I had been very unkind to you…You’re so sweet to me & I don’t really deserve it & I take advantage of it as in this case. Darling I am so sorry, & do forgive me, All my love to you my sweet always, Your ever loving Bertie.”
15 March 1927 Elizabeth to Bertie, after she was stricken by a high fever and tonsillitis following two weeks of engagements on the North Island of New Zealand: Bertie had reluctantly decided to tour the South Island without her. “I am feeling very lonely and wishing I was with you, and that I could help you a little bit,” she wrote. “I think you are marvelous the way you keep it up.” She reported that everyone had been “so kind” to her, but “all I wanted really was a nice comforting kiss from you…I send you all my love and hundreds of kisses & several hugs.”
18 March 1927 Bertie to Elizabeth: “Your darling letter,” he wrote, “has spurred me on to greater efforts. Millions and millions of thanks for it you darling…Nothing could have given me greater help and encouragement.”
27 August 1930 Bertie to Elizabeth at Glamis, six days after the birth of their second child, Princess Margaret, the sister of “Lilibet,” four-year-old Princess Elizabeth: He was upset that his father had insisted that Bertie join him at Balmoral. “How I hated going away yesterday and leaving you my angel & that lovely precious new born baby of ours, to say nothing of our adorable Lilibet,” he wrote. “You don’t know how happy I am about it all & how thankful that you my angel are going on so well & strong…Well my darling Angel all my very best love to you, Lilibet & the new precious one.”
Bertie and Elizabeth were inseparable
During the Second World War, Bertie and Elizabeth were inseparable. They corresponded for the first time in years when he made two trips outside Britain to review troops: in June 1943 to North Africa for two weeks, and in July 1944 for ten days in Sicily.
14 June 1943 Elizabeth to Bertie: “It seems weeks since you went off, and I am counting the days until you return. I do hope that the warm sun will do you good…I think of you all the time, and do pray that you will have a really interesting & not too exhausting time.”
17 June 1943 Elizabeth to Bertie: “Please don’t get overtired…We all miss you terribly, and Buckingham Palace feels very lonely and more lugubrious than ever!...I am so happy to know what pleasure you are giving to everybody in Africa…Goodbye my darling, all my love & everything from your very, very loving Elizabeth,”
26 July 1944 Elizabeth to Bertie: “It seems at least a month since you left….I shall look forward tremendously to your return…From your loving and rather lonely Elizabeth.”
29 July 1944 Bertie to Elizabeth: He wrote from “a lovely camp overlooking Arezzo & the mountains beyond…I have only been away a week & I feel it is 10 years. I hope you are not too lonely angel.”
6 February 1952 On the day of Bertie’s death, Elizabeth wrote to her mother-in-law, Queen Mary, that he “was my whole life and one can only be deeply thankful for the utterly happy years we had together.”
14 February 1952 Prime Minister Winston Churchill to Elizabeth. “All feel how Yr. Majesty’s devotion & love made it possible for him to reach the pinnacle on wh. He stood at his death.”
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