God save Der König / Vintage trolleybus

On Tuesday morning I passed this lovely old trolley bus en route to work. I had no time to stop and ask about it but it grew puzzled looks from many. It had vanished 24 hours later. Maybe I was seeing a ghost of transport past? The route it would have taken, according to the sign, was Cheetham Hill, Belle Vue, Whitworth Park and Brooks Bar. 

Those signs on board encourage people to sign up to fight in World War I. I imagine the otherwise lovely trolleybus was here to pay homage to the working masses in World War I but haven't seen or read anything else about it.

The rather unlikely “God Save the King” slogan reminded me of a documentary I saw last year on the UK royal family. During World War I revolutionary fervour amongst the British populace was so high that the royals feared being overthrown. This was compounded by their Germanic surname of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. So they tried to appease any local anti-German feelings (which if course had been stirred up by other parts of the UK establishment and media to recruit troops) and find themselves a British sounding name instead. So they chose to name themselves after the local town of one of their many palatial homes - Windsor. (They could have, still could in theory, become the Balmorals, Sandringhams, Buckinghams, Hillsboroughs, Highgroves, Kensingtons or many others).

Elizabeth Windsor wanted to change the surname to Mountbatten in the 1950s a few years after she had married ex-Cretian Philip. But her mum refused. Philip privately complained, "I am nothing but a bloody amoeba. I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children.” 

(Quote from Brandreth, Gyles (2004). Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Marriage. p.253–254. London: Century).