12 May 1937 A.D. Westminster, London: George VI Crowned
12 May 1937 A.D. Westminster, London: George VI Crowned
Editors. “George VI
crowned at Westminster.” History.com. 2010.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/george-vi-crowned-at-westminster. Accessed 7 May 2015.
At London’s Westminster
Abbey, George VI and his consort, Lady Elizabeth, are crowned king and queen of
the United Kingdom as part of a coronation ceremony that dates back more than a
millennium.
George, who studied at
Dartmouth Naval College and served in World War I, ascended to the throne after
his elder brother, King Edward VIII, abdicated on December 11, 1936. Edward,
who was the first English monarch to voluntarily relinquish the English throne,
agreed to give up his title in the face of widespread criticism of his desire
to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson, an American divorcee.
In 1939, King George
became the first British monarch to visit America and Canada. During World War II,
he worked to keep up British morale by visiting bombed areas and touring war
zones. George and Elizabeth also remained in bomb-damaged Buckingham Palace
during the war, shunning the relative safety of the countryside, and George
made a series of important morale-boosting radio broadcasts, for which he
overcame a speech impediment.
After the war, the royal
family visited South Africa, but a planned tour of Australia and New Zealand
had to be postponed indefinitely when the king fell ill in 1949. Despite his
illness, he continued to perform state duties until his death in 1952. He was
succeeded by his first-born daughter, who was crowned Queen Elizabeth II in
June 1953.
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