With his accession, the Crown returned to the capital. After decades of neglect, the Palace was spectacularly revitalised. Forsaking Marlborough House, his home of nearly forty years, the King wasted little time in purging what he referred to as the ‘sepulchre’.8 In the words of his grandson the Duke of Windsor, it was ‘as if a Viennese hussar had suddenly burst into an English vicarage.’9 Cases of knick-knacks and family mementoes vanished into storage, Prince Albert’s library of valuable first editions was dissolved with almost indecent haste and museum-quality paintings were cleaned and
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