The Windsors at War: The Nazi Threat to the Crown
Alexander Larman
Weidenfeld & Nicholson, £25.99, 432 pages
When the King and Queen returned to Buckingham Palace after the Coronation on May 6, they were greeted by 4,000 troops lined up on the lawns of the palace gardens. Members of the UK and Commonwealth Armed Forces gave a royal salute to the newly crowned couple and paid their respects with a chorus of “three cheers”.
Decades earlier, in September 1940, those gardens were the site of devastation. A German bomber flew straight up the Mall and dropped six bombs directly onto the palace. George VI and Queen Elizabeth, the present King’s grandparents, were at home but escaped unharmed; they swiftly left the palace to visit bomb-damaged East End
