Did Wallis cheat on Edward with a car salesman?
‘Affair’ uncovered after MI5 wire-tapped royal phones
WALLIS Simpson cheated on Edward VIII with a London car salesman, according to declassified police documents.
Her apparent liaison was discovered more than a year before the monarchy was plunged into constitutional crisis, when Edward gave up the throne to be with her.
Had he known Mrs Simpson was twotiming him with Ford car dealer Guy Trundle, and if he had chosen to remain as King, it would have transformed the course of history.
After he abdicated his younger brother became King George VI, whose daughter Elizabeth is now the world’s longest-serving monarch.
A bombshell Scotland Yard dossier exposing ‘the identity of Mrs Simpson’s secret lover’ has been unearthed by academics.
It also confirms, after decades of denial, that ‘His Majesty’s Secret Service spied on His Majesty’.
Last night a Channel 4 documentary, Spying on the Royals, revealed how then-prime minister Stanley Baldwin sanctioned the MI5 wire-tap on royal phones.
Edward abdicated in December 1936, as he could not marry American divorcee Mrs Simpson and carry on as King. It has long been suspected that the socialite was seeing another man behind his back, with Joachim von Ribbentrop, then Hitler’s ambassador to Britain, previously in the frame.
But a 1935 police report from the National Archives has unmasked the alleged philanderer as married Mr Trundle, 36.
Written by Superintendent Albert Canning and stamped ‘secret’, the file says: ‘Trundle is described as a very charming adventurer, very good looking, well bred and an excellent dancer. He is said to boast that every woman falls for him.’ It adds: ‘He meets Mrs Simpson quite openly at informal social gatherings as a personal friend, but secret meetings are made by appointment when intimate relations take place.
‘Trundle receives money from Mrs Simpson as well as expensive presents. He has admitted this.’
The spying operation began before Edward became King.
He was the playboy Prince of Wales when Superintendent Canning, of Special Branch, was given the task of investigating the mystery woman on whom he was splashing vast amounts of cash – Mrs Simpson. He then discovered she was two-timing the royal.
In his memo of July 3, 1935, Superintendent Canning said: ‘The identity of Mrs Simpson’s secret lover has now been definitely ascertained. He is Guy Marcus Trundle, now living at 18 Bruton Street [in London’s Mayfair].’
Edward became King in January 1936, and Mr Baldwin’s government continued the spying operation. MI5 officers tapped the King’s phone and listened to a call from Edward to his brother announcing his abdication. Dr Rory Cormac of the University of Nottingham, one of the academics who unearthed the files, said: ‘It was a case of His Majesty’s Secret Service spying on His Majesty.
‘This episode sets two of our most secretive institutions, the Royal Family and the spies, on a collision course.’ He added that it was unlikely Edward was ever informed of Mrs Simpson’s affair.
But Anne Sebba, Mrs Simpson’s biographer, claimed Mr Trundle was ‘known in his family as a fantasist who liked to boast’.