The long, low redbrick house could never contain the exuberant generosity of his hospitality. As a young doctor with an empty pocket, a full heart, low prospects and high principles, Eliot had warmed himself agreeably with indignation at the dozen royal balls there a season, the elaborate shooting of ten thousand pheasants, the "King's Special" steaming daily from London, loaded with guests in their tweeds and furs, with their guns and dogs, their leather luggage polished like saddles by their packs of servants.

In York cottage beyond the lake, a villa of suburban glumness overwhelmed by shrubbery, the King's son George played bluff naval officer turned blunt squire and waited for the throne. Now King George V, a quarter of a century later, lay comatose over their heads, his quitting the world only another regal formality.

'The King went downhill very rapidly this afternoon.' Eliot refused wine from the tail-coated footman.

'That Privy Council meeting this morning severely taxed him,' said Dawson. 'Yet it was nothing but a tragic pantomime. The King sat in his dressing-gown, leaning on a bed-table across an armchair. He could make only a couple of "Xs" for his signature.'

Dawson was the only medical man among 400-odd politicians sworn as a Privy Councillor. He seems to collect honours as an actress compliments, Eliot thought. Dawson had a taut face, straight eyebrows and a bushy moustache. He was genial, sensitive, ambitious and impatient. As the King's physician, he had penetrated British consciousness like airwoman Amy Johnson or cricketer Jack Hobbs. His name footed the brief handwritten bulletins policemen hung on Buckingham Palace railings when the King was near death before, in 1928. He was the man the newspapers telephoned for a doctor's view on the Modern Girl, the Motor Age or Whither Europe? Eliot heard that the King chose Dawson as his doctor because he never fussed and was good with dogs and horses.