When this king put on a naval uniform it was not costume. On 31 May 1916 Prince Albert, second son of George V and nobody's idea of a future monarch, was a turret officer aboard HMS Collingwood at Jutland, and he was mentioned in dispatches for what he did there. It was not a long sea career and it was not an easy one — his appendix had come out early in the war, and a duodenal ulcer requiring surgery in November 1917 effectively ended his chances of further combat service — but the largest fleet action of the century happened while he was aboard a battleship in it, doing a job in a gun turret. In February 1918 he transferred to the Royal Naval Air Service and passed into the Royal Air Force when it was formed that April, and on 31 July 1919 he became the first member of the British royal family to qualify as a pilot. Then his brother abdicated on 11 December 1936 and handed him something he had never wanted and did not feel equipped for. He described it himself as a rocking throne, and said he would try to make it steady again.

The figure shows him as Admiral of the Fleet — the broad and narrow gold rings at the cuff, rows of medal ribbons, cap under one arm — which is the dress he wore for the visits that defined his war: bombed streets, munitions works, and troops in France, North Africa, Italy and Normandy. He had a stammer, worked at it for years with the speech therapist Lionel Logue, and went on the wireless anyway. On 13 September 1940 a bomb fell on Buckingham Palace while he and the Queen were in it and very nearly killed them both; they stayed in London for the rest of the war. His elder daughter is in this collection too, in a different uniform and doing rather greasier work — Princess Elizabeth in ATS Uniform. His prime minister is Winston Churchill, whom he met almost every week of the war. And his great-grandmother, three reigns back, is Queen Victoria — Victoria to Edward VII to George V to him, which is a short walk for a century that long.

Model: 10139 / W. Britain / 1/30 scale / matte finish / 1 piece set