George VI

". I like Sarah’s work; she is very diligent and a thorough and a very skillful writer. I think this is perhaps her best book because she got a degree of distance from the subject – obviously through time. And she was given a lot of access to documents. I thought she painted a vivid portrait of the man. The response to his death was very touching. We forget that people lined the railway track as his coffin was taken from Sandringham back to London. For me, the book goes further than that. It’s the relationship between George VI, the Queen Mother and the Roosevelt family. I would always argue that their visit to America in 1939 was probably the most important Royal visit in the last century. In the face of American isolationism, it helped push the American elite away from their tender warmth toward Nazi Germany and feel closer to the British. So that, for me, was a turning moment. The whole abdication crisis is also described, as well as the relationship with Churchill that you mention."