Oblivious to the fact that May was wearing a light tweed walking dress, one of her distinctive toque hats and had been in the process of putting on a pair of kid gloves, he sat down, wincing with pain as he did so.

Three years ago, when making one of his self-imposed visits to the Western Front to bolster the spirits of the troops, the horse he was riding had been spooked by the sound of the men cheering and had reared up and fallen on him. The injuries he had received – one of which was a badly fractured pelvis – had meant that he had never fully recovered, and he still regularly walked with a stick. Combined with the crushing burden and griefs of the war, it had ensured there was nothing whatsoever left of the rosy-cheeked, joke-loving Georgie of those long-ago days when Eddy had still been alive.

He was fifty-three, but he looked seventy-three. His always-trim Van Dyke beard was almost white. There were bags beneath his eyes, his face was deeply lined and even before the news that had come from Russia in late July, his eyes had held nothing but sadness for the hundreds of thousands of young men cut down in their prime on foreign soil.

After July, stupefying grief had been yoked with crippling guilt – emotions that May knew he would carry with him for the rest of his life.

Suddenly aware that she had been about to leave the palace, he said, ‘I didn’t mean to keep you, but I knew you would want good news from the Front. There is also a family letter for you from Irène, via Sweden. The Prime Minister is waiting to have a word with me, so you will have to update me on its contents later.’

When he had left the room, May opened the envelope he had given to her. George’s first cousin, Daisy Connaught, was married to the Crown Prince of Sweden and, ever since the beginning of the war, Daisy had acted as an intermediary between family in England and Germany. Irène had written in hasty-looking handwriting:

Dearest May,