Category: Guest Bloggers

Uncle George leaves nothing to chance as he prepares for the Coronation.

“Although it could be said that the Earl Marshal’s office is wherever he happens to be working at the moment, he had a permanent set of chambers in the House of Lords, which were not very splendid, nor very comfortable, and they reminded one of a church vestry because of their substantial Victorian gothic decoration… Continue reading Uncle George Remembers XIV

“Coronation committees of several sorts followed one another in quick succession in 1952 and 1953, and one of the most important of them was the Coronation Joint Executive Committee.

The apotheosis of Uncle George’s career at the College of Arms was Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation but please be patient while he explains about a pain in the neck.

The king is dead, long live the queen!

“We were living at that time near Old Windsor in a house which we had bought just after the war. It was my dream house. At the very first sight of it from afar I knew it was everything I wanted, everything I had hoped for. Consumed by dry-rot, rising damp everywhere, doors off their… Continue reading Uncle George Remembers X

“It was not long after this episode (being knighted by George VI) that my wife and I became aware that we lacked just one thing to make our lives complete – a dog, a faithful hound.

Uncle George was Knighted by King George VI in 1950.

Uncle George wrote about his life to amuse his family and descendants. The extracts here were all published in The Coat of Arms, the journal of the Heraldry Society. I might have read his memoir as a family member but actually did so because the current York Herald found it for me, unsurprisingly as he… Continue reading Uncle George Remembers VII

“Gordon Selfridge was once a multi-millionaire and a prince of commerce but he ended up a pensioner, deprived of all power and riches and broken in spirit and, I heard, in mind.