The royal house of Windsor - Elizabeth Longford

On 17 July 1917 King George V changed his name from the German-sounding Saxe-Coburg in response to the intense anti-German feelings which marked public opinion during the war years. Thus  the Windsors, the family name of the present Royal House, came into being.

Theirs has been a chequered story, and is told here by Elizabeth Longford with insight, sympathy and with wit. The first Windsor had come to the throne at a time of grave constitutional crisis; he reigned during the agonies of the Great War; and lived on to become a much-loved father to his subjects in a far-flung empire. Their affection for King George surprised nobody more than himself. His intellectual abilities were limited and his early interests - 'stamps, babies and shooting' - were not inspiring, yet his style of kingship, including his famous BBC broadcasts, brought him very close to his people. 

George V was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward VIII, whose brief but dramatic reign ended in the trauma of Abdication. These events, with all the delicate personal and political considerations involved, led to the accession of Edward's youngest brother as George VI. Shy and withdrawn where his predecessor had been extrovert and dashing, King George found an ideal consort in Queen Elizabeth and rose above all his disadvantages - among them a stammer he never quite lost - to become, like his father, a beloved figure and a symbol of the nation's unity in war.

When King George died in February 1952, he was succeeded by his twenty-five-year-old daughter. The problems she faced are emphasised  by Elizabeth Longford; not least was that of an expectant nation acclaiming the 'new Elizabethan age' with highest hopes. Disillusion was bound to come, and critics of the Queen, and of the Royal Family individually and collectively, have been numerous and vocal. Yet in establishing a uniquely informal style of monarchy, even linked to 'off-record' film and television sequences, this Queen made herself more accessible, certainly more widely known, than any sovereign in the nation's history.