A number of you responded when I asked that question and here are your replies (with many thanks for the front page of The Star):

Marjorie writes:

I remember 6th February1952 vividly. I was a little girl of 9 years old I was attending the Church Primary School in Ilfracombe, N. Devon where I grew up. I recollect that we were all called into the Assembly Hall where the Headmaster and teaching staff were lined up to make the solemn announcement that our dear King had passed away and that Princess Elizabeth was now our Queen. We were then released into the playground but I do not recollect that any children were playing but rather think there was a muffled silence. 

Of course we did not have television back then our main source of news was from an old valve radio where we listened to crackly announcements from the BBC. I was a member of the First Ilfracombe Brownie Pack. We use to meet every Thursday in the Vicarage Rooms based in the enormous gardens of the Vicarage. Our vicar then was the Rev. Arthur Chandler. I was an Elf in the Brownies and the thing to remember most was to say in the Brownie Oath to God and the Queen and not God and the King as Brown Owl had taught us girls.

Geoffrey writes:

It was just another day at Clifton College for this 16 year old. When the announcement came, I remember an air of sadness enveloped the school but when it sank in that the Kingdom was henceforth to be a Queendom there was excitement that there was going to be “a new Elizabethan Age”, as the newspapers said at the time, but otherwise, with no TV and only B&W pictures in the papers it was all much more subdued.

Grace writes:

I was in the hall at my school. We were doing "Music and movement" with the aid of a massive Department of Education radio. The music stopped and an announcement was made that an important message would be played shortly. The doors opened and the whole school came in with their teachers. The children all sat down, cross legged and the announcement was made that the  King had died. We were very shocked, some of the girls were moved to tears. I also remember my first visit to a sweet shop. We were able to buy sweets, without coupons, as sugar was no longer rationed to celebrate the coronation of our lovely new Queen.

Anthony writes:

On 6th February 1952 I had recently turned 4 and was very excited as my friend Rex Norris’s parents had just bought a tv – the first ever in Loughborough Road, Bunny, and my elder brother and I were invited to go and watch Children’s tv with Rex. But that afternoon Mrs Norris came round and said “I’m afraid you won’t be able to come – the King has died. The television has been cancelled”. I think there was just solemn music instead. I remember feeling puzzled how we would manage without the King. A few weeks later my father took me in his motorbike and sidecar to my grandparents nr Leeds for 3 weeks while my younger brother was born and the first thing I said when we arrived was “Granny, did you know that your King has died?” This was retold whenever we saw my grandparents after that.

Mandy writes:

The King's death on February 6 1952 had a profound effect on me. It was the culmination of three memorable events in quick succession and the end of an era. I was a war baby; my first memories were of being bombed by the Italians in Cyprus, where I was born and where my father was the headmaster of the English School teaching Greek and Turkish Cypriots. By 1952 we were living in Suva, the capital of Fiji, on Viti Levu, the largest of the many Fijian islands and my father was in charge of education for the South Pacific. Two weeks before the king died I turned 12. One week before, we experienced the most devastating hurricane Fiji ever experienced, centred on Viti Levu, with winds well over 150mph, loss of life, roofs torn off the houses, ships blown from Suva harbour onto the street and trees uprooted for miles around. Aid poured in with great generosity from all over the Empire and from Britain ,in spite of their struggles to cope with the long aftermath of the war, including winter clothes for a very hot and steamy country !

Then the news broke of the king's death a week later. It came, as all our news did, from the BBC on the radio. I was devastated. We knew what the king looked like from official portraits and his head on the exotic stamps we collected for our stamp albums and we had heard him speaking on the radio, but to us children he was also the greatly admired war hero, who, with Winston Churchill, had led us all to victory in a long and devastating war. In 1952 all our reading was books of recollections of fighting in Europe and the Far East - " now it can be told." My godfather had been killed in a Japanese prisoner of war camp and I still flinched every time the sirens in Suva sounded the end of work for the day because it was exactly the same sound that would warn us of approaching enemy aircraft in Cyprus.

So I wept for the death of the king. But I remembered too that in 1947 my parents had gathered us five children together round the radio in Cyprus to listen to the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip of Greece and the future looked exciting and more hopeful in a now peaceful world.

Jean writes:

I arrived at Paddington Station on 6th February 1952 and the first thing I saw was a placard which read “THE KING IS DEAD”’. My friend and I were meeting two older girls we had met in 1946 on holiday on a farm in Tintern. One of these had become a GI bride and gone to the USA but was back in the UK on a visit. We were looking forward to reminiscing about Tintern but everywhere we went in London we saw placards telling us that the King was dead which rather marred the reunion!

And finally

Alan reminds us that an SMR treble called Malcolm Tanner was one of the 350-strong Coronation choir at Westminster Abbey in 1953

Thank you for sending me your memories.