But it was the war which established the King most firmly in the nation’s affections. Of course, he had nothing to do with the direction of the war neither, because of the ebullient presence of his prime minister, Winston Churchill, was he even the most immediately conspicuous among the nation’s leaders. He was omnipresent, however; the image of the King at war which stands out most strongly is that of a slim, tired man picking his way through the ruins of one blitzed city or another, deeply disturbed by what he saw and patently determined, so far as he could, to share the sufferings of his subjects. More people saw him or at least, because of the efforts of the press and news bulletins, knew what he looked like, than had been true of any earlier monarch. His great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, and his father, George V, had been well-esteemed but they were impossibly remote from their subjects: George VI, the British believed, they knew.