His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand was the world's longest-serving constitutional monarch. Born on 5 December 1927 in Cambridge, Massachusetts he was the son of Prince Mahidol Adulyadej of Songkhla. His father, acknowledged to be the founder of modern medicine in Thailand, was at Harvard studying public health. His mother Mom Sangwan, later known as Princess Sangwalya, was a commoner. She had gone to the USA to study nursing at Simmons College in Boston and met Prince Mahidol while there. They had two older children, a boy Ananda and a girl Galyani Vadhana. The family returned to Thailand in 1928 at the end of his father’s course. Sadly Prince Mahidol died of kidney failure the following year and, after Bhumibol briefly attended the Mater Dei School in Bangkok, in 1933 his mother moved with the family to Switzerland. There he attended the École nouvelle de la Suisse romande in Lausanne. In 1935 his childless uncle Prajadhipok abdicated and his elder brother, then aged nine, ascended the throne as King Rama VIII. As the family remained in Switzerland he was able to continue his studies and passed his baccalaureate from the Gymnase Classique Cantonal. He had embarked on a science course at the University of Lausanne when the second world war came to an end in 1945 and the family returned to Thailand. The following year King Ananda, by then in his early twenties, was found dead from a gunshot wound. He was known to be a gun collector but his death was never proved to have been suicide or the result of an accident and the blame was eventually placed on two palace aides who were executed. Although anointed king in his place, Bhumibol returned to Lausanne to complete his studies turning to politics and history as being more appropriate to his situation. He was crowned King Ram IX in 1950. During the early years of his reign his activities were circumscribed by the ruling military junta and he later claimed that this was why he concentrated on industrial and agricultural development. Having returned to his country he travelled widely overseeing his various projects such as milk-pasturising plants, dams for rice paddies, water hyacinth and sugar-cane recycling factories and many other similar ventures. Described as a quiet and aloof man he was seen by his people as a father figure and throughout the over 70 years of his reign he came to embody some form of stability through years of political chaos and military coups. In an interview with a Western paper in 1988 he described how irritated he was by the musical *The king and I* which was banned in Thailand. Based on the memoirs of a governess who had looked after his grandfather he felt it gave a totally false image of the ways of the court. Probably due to his upbringing in Switzerland he spoke excellent French and English and developed many interests that he kept up all his life. Keen on music, especially jazz, he played the saxophone and clarinet. He was a skilled photographer, writer and artist and also a sailing enthusiast who designed his own small boats. In the late 1940’s he travelled to Paris several times and there he met Sirikit Kitiyakara, the daughter of a Thai prince who was the Thai ambassador. She was 15 at the time. In 1948 he was involved in a serious car accident which resulted in the loss of an eye, partial facial paralysis and back injuries. Bhumibol’s mother encouraged Sirikit’s family to move her to a boarding school in Lausanne so that she could visit him in hospital and the two eventually became engaged. They married in 1950 and, in spite of physical frailty, Queen Sikrit accompanied her husband on many of his country wide tours taking an especial interest in reviving traditional Thai handcrafts. They had three girls, Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya, Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, and Princess Chulabhorn Walailak. Their only son and second child, Prince Vajiralongkorn succeeded his father and is now King Rama X. He died on 13 October 2016 aged 88, survived by his wife and family.