Biography of Sussexes suggests bridges remain
The publication of Finding Freedom, which promised to reveal “what really happened” during the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s whirlwind royal life, followed by “Megxit” to their self-imposed exile in America, is unnerving for the House of Windsor. As the Queen heads for Balmoral, let’s hope that she is able to enjoy a respite from the year’s barrage of headlines that continue to buffet the monarch’s impeccable reign.
For while Finding Freedom hasn’t delivered any bombshell revelations so far, it is still surely an unabashed attempt to settle scores. The Sussexes have distanced themselves from the content, issuing the firm denial that they “haven’t helped with the book”, but, for a couple whom the book’s blurb reassures us, are “determined to create a new path away from the spotlight”, the peaceful and private new life they apparently desire so deeply continues to elude them.
Although Finding Freedom makes the claim that the Sussexes are “unafraid to break with tradition”, there is solid form in the varying form of royal biographies. Although an authorised biography is a distinguished way to record a royal’s unique life of service – James PopeHennessy’s 1959 biography Queen
Mary is riveting to this day – anything that stems from an injured perspective tends to never end well. Andrew Morton’s Diana: Her True Story, which in 1992 detailed the princess’s extreme unhappiness, threatened to destabilise the monarchy, so shocking were the revelations.
Prior to the Sussexes rattling around their Los Angeles mansion, adrift from the Royal family, it was the Duke and Duchess of Windsor who paved the way, writing about their experiences in exile. After his abdication in 1936, banished from Britain, Edward VIII never recovered from the shock that neither he nor his wife would be welcome to live here again. When, by 1951, it became clear that royal familial relations were not going to soften, after writing a series of articles for American Life magazine, he decided to write his own memoir.
Although his articles in Life, serialised in the Sunday Express in 1947, were a jaunty, innocuous and even favourable account of the Royal family and its daily life, to Queen Mary it was deplorable. “I was surprised you thought it a pity I wrote so many private facts,” replied the Duke to one of her steely missives. “I would submit that the personal memoir of Papa undertaken by John Gore at your and Bertie’s request… contains far more intimate extracts from Papa’s diaries and glimpses into his character and habits than I would have dared to use.”
Fuelled by a gnawing sense of injustice that he was refused the role of a roving ambassador to the US by his brother, Bertie, Edward wrote his version of the abdication. A King’s Story, The Memoirs of HRH the Duke of Windsor was published in 1951. It’s eminently readable with some priceless lines. “Christmas at Sandringham was Dickens in a Cartier setting,” he explained. In 1907 he described being dispatched, in tears, to the Royal Naval College on the Isle of Wight with the bizarre assurance from his father that: “I am your best friend.” Although he was hurt by his family’s refusal to accept Wallis Simpson, he still tempers his account.
The book was a success, selling 80,000 copies in the UK in the first month. The court, and courtiers, were aghast. “All of them express disgust at a former king of England selling for money his recollections of his family life, in a form that is indecent and for a motive that is squalid,” thundered his former equerry, Alan “Tommy” Lascelles. What upset Lascelles the most were the passages detailing the Duke’s love for Wallis Simpson – the omission of which would have been glaring considering that the king abdicated for her. “It is obscene to write gainfully about one’s own love affairs,” he fumed.
That is exactly what the Duchess of Windsor did in her autobiography, The Heart Has Its Reasons, which she published in 1969, long after any form of reconciliation. For a woman who was reviled and rebuked by the Royal family, Wallis is almost unbearably generous towards them. She writes repeatedly how it saddens her that her husband is estranged from his mother, Queen Mary, blaming herself. The chapter entitled The War Within A War, in which during 1939 the couple are summoned fleetingly back to Britain, Wallis describes the discomfiture of being scrutinised.
“It was I, rather than the former King, who was the object of their covert curiosity. When I was chatting with one, I could feel the sidelong glance of the other, charged with speculation, roving searchingly over me. Can this really be the Mrs Simpson who caused it all? Can this be the woman who took us from our King?”
Yet a few lines later, she laments of her husband: “If only the rift between him and his family could be healed!”
Edward ends his book poignantly looking back on England on Dec 12 1936 as the naval destroyer HMS Fury swept him away. He concludes: “Though it was my fate to sacrifice my cherished British heritage along with all the years in its service, I today draw comfort from the knowledge that time has long since sanctified a true and faithful union.” Wallis too, ensures that their tragic sacrifice is rendered worthwhile. “All I can say is that, everything taken together, I have finally found a great measure of contentment and happiness.”
At first glance, with no Diana “reveal” moment, the publication of Finding Freedom, suggests the Sussexes have, as of yet, not irrevocably burned bridges. The book suggests the Queen is still one of the most important women in Harry’s life and that the Queen indicated there would always be a way back for him. But it would be wise for them to steer clear of the biography genre from here.
The American Duchess by Anna Pasternak is published by William Collins £9.99