Slow to be appreciated by his mother, Edward’s gifts were given free rein after her death. His accession coincided with a shift in government thinking that saw him, over the next nine years, burnish a reputation as an extra-mural diplomat, whose travels were seen as indivisible from the maintenance of peace in an increasingly fractious Europe. It was a heavy burden, but one he experienced, at least at first, as a source of pleasure and satisfaction – and never more so than during his epoch-defining visit to France in the spring of 1903.
