THE REAL ABDICATION WAS MUCH MORE TOXIC

COMPARISONS between Prince Harry’s departure from Royal life and the abdication of his great-great uncle Edward VIII are a real stretch, and not just because ‘Megxit’ is trivial set against the abdication of the monarch when Edward chose to marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

The financial negotiations — with Harry agreeing to reimburse the taxpayer for the £2.4m spent on the home on the Windsor estate which had been gifted to the couple — are also trivial compared with the bitter row over money between Edward and his brother George VI. Edward had managed to wring an annual allowance of £25,000 a year — equivalent to no less than £1.75m in today’s money. He also got George to cough up £300,000 for the royal residences of Sandringham and Balmoral (over £20m now).

It then emerged that Edward had given a grotesque underestimate of the other financial assets he had retained. George wrote to him, after discovering this: ‘I am not seeking to reproach you … but the fact remains that I was completely misled.’

And in a letter to Edward’s friend and advisor Walter Monckton, Queen Elizabeth — whom we later knew as the Queen Mother — referred to Wallis Simpson as ‘the lowest of the low’. I have learned all this from my wife, who happens to be Walter Monckton’s grand-daughter.

Monckton was one of a handful of guests at the 1937 wedding in France of Edward and Wallis. After the service, he had what can only be described as a frank discussion with the bride: ‘I told her that most people disliked her very much because the Duke had married her and given up his throne, but that if she kept him happy all his days, that would change; but that if he were unhappy nothing would be too bad for her.’

In that respect, at least, there is a genuine similarity between then and now. If Meghan makes Harry ‘happy all his days’ the British people will (and should) treat her with kindness. We can only hope that this part of the fairy-tale comes true.