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Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator.

And this week my guest is Jane Ridley. James's new book is a new biography of George V,

subtitled Never a Dull Moment.

And as somebody's just read it, I can attest to that.

But notoriously, that subtitle takes on the great charge against George,

which is that he was as boring as hell. Jane, why has he got

this reputation as being as boring as he was? Well, Sam, good morning. I think that is a very

good question. I think that he was very sort of discreet and he kept his diary, which is the sort of,

you know, it's the sort of the most boring kind of diary

that you can imagine. It just says what time he got up, what the weather's like, what he had

what time he had lunch, who he met through the day. It's all sort of fact, and there's no

reflection at all. That sort of evidence, I think, has caused people to think, you know,

that he was a good man, but a dull man. And that was the sort of evidence, I think, has caused people to think, you know, that he was a good man, but a dull man.

And that was the sort of idea that I had when I began the book. And people would say rather pityingly to me,

you know, how on earth are you going to cope with the dullness? But the more I got into it,

and I spent an awful long time on it, the more I felt that George really wasn't dull, and certainly that,

you know, the times that he was living through were not at all dull, the opposite, tumultuous,

you know, life-changing. And equally, I found his marriage very interesting.

Well, as you say, you know, you do concede that wading through these diaries, which are extremely factual, and you quote from often to kind of, well, the sort of devastating, you know, you do concede that wading through these diaries, which are extremely factual.

And you quote from them often to kind of, like, sort of devastating effect.

You know, he'll sort of say, you know, ex, somebody very close to him, you know, died.

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