I’ll bash your head in! Royal road rage of the playboy prince
HE WAS the playboy prince, with a well-documented love of fast women and even faster cars.
And now previously unpublished documents reveal the future King Edward VIII also had a fierce temper when he was behind the wheel – and once became embroiled in an explosive exchange with a cyclist.
The early example of road rage occurred in 1934 when the thenPrince of Wales was forced to slow the car he was driving because the unidentified cyclist was meandering down the middle of London’s Great West Road, now the A4.
An enraged Prince – who was to ascend the throne two years later before abdicating over his determination to marry divorcee Wallis Simpson – slammed on the brakes and leapt out to ‘expostulate’ with the man.
If the London cyclist recognised the future King he was not cowed, telling Edward he deliberately rode in the middle of the road ‘in order to annoy the idle rich’. At this the Prince threatened ‘to bash his head in’, having ‘observed that he [the cyclist] was smaller than himself’ – though the Prince was only 5ft 5in tall.
The extraordinary tale has emerged from an account of a meeting between the Prince and the then-Secretary of State for Transport, Leslie HoreBelisha – the man who gave the country ‘Belisha Beacons’.
The Minister said that, during their discussions at St James’s Palace in December 1934, Edward had ‘complained bitterly of cyclists and said he was at a total loss to understand their attitude’.
Hore-Belisha said the Prince had ‘jumped out of his car and expostulated with a cyclist’ and threatened ‘he would bash his head in’. The future king then showed foresight by praising ‘cycle tracks’, saying ‘they should be built everywhere’ – a policy pursued by recent mayors of London.
Despite his behaviour behind the wheel, he revealed a deep concern about road safety, and said he was one of the ‘most ardent supporters’ of Belisha Beacons.
However, the Prince did not approve of their amber shade and ‘wondered whether we could have them some other colour?’ He was also not keen on having them placed in fashionable Grosvenor Square.
The Prince did, however, express his liking for one-way streets and called for more of them, despite once throwing a tantrum when his chauffeur refused to take a short cut the wrong way down one.
The Prince even confessed to Mr Hore-Belisha that he was ‘awfully upset’ his father the King, with whom he had a notoriously bad relationship, had blocked him from making a radio broadcast on ‘road safety’.
While the documents do not reveal the make of car the Prince was driving at the time of his confrontation, his tastes were revealed the following summer when he purchased a Buick Limousine. He gave the London car salesmen instructions the vehicle was to be fitted with a drinks cabinet, vanity mirrors, reading lights, a radio, a smoker’s cabinet, a jewellery cabinet and space for luncheon trays.
The Prince also owned a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. After his 1936 abdication he continued his love affair with cars, spending £9,000 on a Cadillac.
Tim Bouverie, a Channel 4 News journalist, is writing a book on the politics of the 1930s for Penguin Random House.