The duke of duplicity
SARAH GRISTWOOD on a new profile of Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson that casts them in a distinctly unflattering light
The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, can be hard to see clearly. Looming over their controversial figures are clouds of confusion: were they fools for love or feeble faces of the British monarchy? Those clouds only grow more obscure every time a new royal couple seems to be juggling the conflicting demands of love and duty.
The official position – that, by stepping away from the demands of his nation, the duke set himself beyond the pale – sowed the seeds of its own revision, positioning this particular duke and duchess as victims of a repressive monarchical establishment. Now Andrew Lownie sets out to revise the revisionists, and he does so convincingly.
His book begins where others might leave off, on the eve of the abdication, and he portrays a couple who, far from resigning themselves to a polite and pathetic retirement, made a sustained attempt to continue to steer world affairs. It is impossible not to be convinced by the evidence Lownie produces, or fail to share his relief that the duke and duchess did not succeed.
Suspicion about Edward’s attitude towards Nazi Germany is nothing new: witness the FBI reports on the couple’s wartime activities, or the interest triggered by the Marburg Files. These, discovered by US soldiers in Germany at the end of the Second World War, contained details of “Operation Willi”, a plot to persuade the duke, with Wallis beside him, to be reinstated on the British throne as the Nazis’ puppet king.
These documents have, of course, already been explored. But Lownie takes the charge further, suggesting in effect that no persuasion was necessary. It has hitherto been possible to envisage a distinction between the Nazis’ proven desire to involve Windsor in their plans, and readiness on his part to comply with them. This view would see him as naive, perhaps self-serving, but essentially betrayed into imprudence only by his hatred of war. Lownie reveals Edward not as a dupe of the Nazis, but an active and culpable collaborator, still in treacherous contact with the Germans even as the Battle of Britain raged. The title of his book makes a bold claim, and one he is prepared to back with extensive new research.
The list of individuals interviewed and archives consulted is formidable. The more impressive, then, that this is a wonderfully readable and succinct story. Alongside the political concerns of the British establishment (and Churchill’s complicity in the partial suppression of the Marburg Files) runs riveting detail about the sheer awfulness, the anomie, of the Windsors’ postwar life in exile, including his sexual submissiveness and her alleged affairs. Lownie portrays a duke whose charm was hugely outweighed by his narcissism, dishonesty, and enduring anti-Semitism. The duchess gets less space, yet emerges with no more credit. The indictment is all the more chilling for the fact that, until the last pages, Lownie abstains from editorialising. But then, the facts as he presents them speak for themselves.