Anne Sebba
That Woman: Time to Reassess Wallis Simpson?

Anne Sebba - That Woman: Time to Reassess Wallis Simpson?

- [Moderator] So everyone, it is my pleasure to welcome you and to welcome back Anne Sebba. Anne is an accomplished author and journalist, and she spoke with us a couple weeks ago about Ethel Rosenberg, and today, she is telling us about Wallis Simpson and sharing with us some of the story that she wrote about in her book, “That Woman.” So Anne, when you’re ready, I’ll hand over to you.

• Thank you very much. Well, I’m certainly ready. Thank you all for listening to this. Just by way of introduction to start, I think it’s helpful to think about the task facing a biographer because sometimes the life of a dead person is just reduced to a few choice anecdotes, the things that they wanted us to know about them or the things that other people who might not have liked them thought we should know about them. And into that mix comes the very subjective views of a biographer. So every biographer has what I suppose I would call historical perspective, and you’d probably call emotional baggage, but it’s where our story fits into the bigger story. And what we’re really trying to do is strip away the accretions that the subject probably wanted us to have as they create and shape the narrative of their own life. So this actually is where my story fits into the bigger story. It’s Schloss Enzesfeld Castle in Germany where I went when I was a 21 year old novice reporter for Reuters. And although I knew that it was the place where the Duke of Windsor had gone newly abdicated in December 1936, I didn’t really understand its significance in the whole story, but we’ll come back to it later. For now, all I want to say really is that it is where Edward, as I’m going to call him, went in 1936, not because he chose it, but like everything else in his life from now on, it was the decision of the woman he desperately wanted to marry who was waiting for him. And it was chosen not because he spoke German, not because it had a golf course, but because like everything else in his life, it was owned by a friend of Wallis’ a much divorced American Kitty de Rothschild.

And there was much yo-yoing of religion depending on whom she was married to. And at this point, she was Jewish because she was married to Baron Eugène de Rothschild. As I say, we’ll come back to its place in the story later. This unprepossessing house is where that woman was born, and we’ll certainly come back to Square Cottage at the back of the Monterey Inn in 1896. I’m just setting the scene for you of all these different stories and how they will fold into each other. And this, you are probably wondering why on Earth is LaPaz, Baja California Sur in Mexico a part of the abdication story as far as I was concerned, a very important part, and no, I haven’t put some of my holiday snaps in by mistake. I had to go to this extraordinary, desolate, and beautiful place in order to meet this man. Now, this man does not usually play a part in the abdication story. If I tell you he’s called Aharon Solomons, you are probably also confused as to how on Earth his story fits into the bigger story. I needed to go and meet this man who was born in 1939 in order to discover a cache of letters and diaries and documents that had never been seen before, but which really changed the very one dimensional version of the story, which always had Wallis Simpson as that woman or worse. And if I tell you that by going to see this man, and you can probably tell he doesn’t own very much. So he certainly didn’t own the letters that I found, but he set me on a path. And I’m just going to read you a teaser of one bit. Wherever you are, you can be sure that never a day goes by without some hours thought of you and for you, and again, in my enum prayers at night. With love, Wallis. So once I discovered that letter, I knew that there was a completely different version of the story. It was a letter that Wallis was writing to the man she was publicly accusing of adultery, publicly telling the world she hated. But when I discovered these letters, I knew that that version of the story clearly couldn’t hold. So how does one start researching the story of a woman that everybody thinks they know about? For example, I would discuss Wallis’ story with my then more than 90 year old mother-in-law who was appalled I was writing about a woman that she thought she knew clearly everything about not just that woman, but that ghastly woman.

But you have to start at the place where she was born. So Square Cottage at the back of the Monterey Inn at the Blue Ridge Summit Spa Community. Why was she born there? Well, her parents who were married in secret had gone there hoping for a cure for Wallis’ father Teackle Wallis Warfield, who had TB or consumption as it’s often called, they didn’t find a cure. And Wallis was born there in June 1896. She didn’t need a birth certificate in those days. Why were her parents married in secret? Well, neither family wanted this marriage to go ahead. Her father was a Warfield and her mother, a Montague, and the Blue Ridge Summit Spa Community straddles the Mason-Dixon line. Those of you who know your Civil War history will know that that’s the line that crucially divides from the North from the South of America during the Civil War. And Wallis in creating this narrative of her own life, as I was discussing, was very keen to make a play of the fact that she embodied both elements of the North and the South. So her mother, Alice Montague was party loving, free spirited, old fashioned courtesan really think of gone with with the wind and stand by your man, that is what Wallis believed she inherited from her mother. So elements of the South from her father, the Warfield. She understood that she inherited elements of greed of needing money. The Warfield really were hardworking, go-getting Protestant work ethic. And Wallis knew that she had elements of both. Now the family came from Baltimore, and you may have recognised Mount Vernon Square.

So in Baltimore terms, they were both patrician. Really her nemesis, the Queen Mother in calling her later on, the lowest of the low was quite wrong. Both families were elite. Patrician, in American terms. The problem was that her father died when she was only a few months old. So Wallis was an outsider. She was always an outsider. She never had any money. This statue that you can see is the man she was named after Teackle Wallis Warfield. So she was actually christened, Bessie Wallis Warfield. She quickly ditched the Bessie. She commented that it sounded like a cow, and she chose the more androgynous Wallis Warfield. But Severn Teackle Wallis was a lawyer in the Civil War for the Southern side. So Wallis’ Southern credentials were absolutely impeccable. And that’s actually the side that she played up when she came to London. And she needed to define who she was as she burst into the London scene. She really was very proud of her Southern credentials, but they were genuine. Now her mother who you see here, the very beautiful Alice Montague who became a single mother with a baby, how on Earth was she going to cope? Well, she did things like sell embroidery in the local craft exchange that never earned her much money. She took in lodges and she started a restaurant. Nothing really worked for her, but she tried to be independent and Wallis really had a very close bond with her mother.

But in these circumstances, of course, they had to rely on the Warfield family. And this is her late father’s brother, Uncle Sol. Now Wallis disliked Uncle Sol always. She believed he was hypocritical in that he was a bachelor, but he had a string of mistresses. He was a would be politician, which is where this picture comes from. I think most of all what she disliked Uncle Sol for was the fact that he supplied her mother Alice with money. There was an allowance, but it was irregular. So sometimes there was a lot of money, sometimes there was nothing at all. And that was cruelly controlling. And I think the message that Wallis took away from this was that you have to rely on a man in those days, in the Early 20th century. On the other hand, you can’t rely on a man because just when you need him, he won’t necessarily be there. I think Wallis is slightly unfair to Uncle Sol, after all, he paid for her education, he paid for her education. But Wallis decided what school she wanted to go to, and she chose a very old fashioned, we might call it today, a finishing school called Oldfields in Maryland. But it didn’t have to be simply a finishing school as we’d understand it today, because I’ve spoken to some of the grandchildren of Wallis’ contemporaries, and they had careers like you could become an editor or you could have a shop, that’s what many of them did. But that was never going to be enough for Wallis. She decided very early on she was going to live vicariously. And that’s really why she chose Oldfields, because of the other families who went there.

For example, the immensely rich DuPont family or the Douwe family as in Douwe Egberts’ coffee, so old money, Dutch money. And Wallis believed that if she had a coming out ball, she would meet the right sort of person and make the right sort of marriage. Now I call myself a footsteps biographer in that I like to go to the places that mean something to my subjects. And when I went to old girls, it was very clear, first of all, they’re very proud of Wallis. After all, she was the pupil who married a prince, almost a princess or a queen, but not quite. She might have been, that’s their attitude, but it’s more than that. They supplied me with these photographs and they had memories of Wallis that showed she was the sort of girl who really liked to make an entrance so everybody would notice her when she came into a room. You can see in the picture where she’s wearing a monocle. You may not think she’s pretty, but she’s certainly somebody you’d notice. And the way she did that with not much money, she and her mother had a dress maker back in Baltimore. Wallis would cut out pictures from magazines and she’d take them to the dress maker to have copied. She signed the leaver’s book with “All is love?” And it jumps off the page because others wrote rather boring things like “Have a good Life or Hope all goes well.” So you could say she was romantic. The other thing I learned from going to Oldfields is that Wallis felt trouble. Any of you who have daughters will know exactly the sort of girl she was. She’s the sort of girl you’d say to your daughter, “I don’t want you mixing with her.” And I saw that from the letters of her best friend, Mary Kirk, because the Kirk parents were not happy about this relationship. I’ll just give you one example. She decided to meet a boy for dinner one night secretly, and that involved jumping off the veranda to meet him in the car that was waiting. But Wallis had decided which restaurant they were going to.

And of course, this was far too expensive for the poor boy to settle a bill. When the bill came, he couldn’t, he had to send his father the next day. What I learned from that story is here is a young girl who knows her own mind. Now, this is where Uncle Sol really displeased Wallis. She wanted her own coming out ball, and World War I was breaking out in Europe. America wasn’t involved yet, and Uncle Sol refused to pay it. He said it would not be appropriate with a war approaching for Wallis to have her coming out ball. And I think being denied that is what projected her into the early marriage with Win Spencer. Now he’s the second on the left, the sort of Errol Flynn lookalike. I haven’t got a laser pointer on Zoom, I’m sorry. But I think Win Spencer, who was 26 and Wallis was 19, and she was the first of her cohort to marry. He was a man of the world. She met him in Pensacola, Florida. He was a pioneer naval aviator. Now that was really something in 1915. He came from a good family. The Spencers of Oak Park Chicago were a stockbroking family, not immensely rich. It wasn’t the grand marriage that Wallis had dreamed of. The Spencer’s lives revolved around church and good deeds. When Spencer had a brother who had joined the Lafayette squadron, that was it a way that those Americans who wanted to join in World War I, before America was formally part of it, could. So they were volunteering and one of Win’s brothers was actually killed. And here’s what his mother said, “Would that I had more sons to give to the war effort and I willingly would give them.” So he was one of six siblings.

And I think it’s fairly clear that the life for Wallis, and here she is on her wedding day, the life that was expected of her was of children and church. And that is not how it panned out. The significance of the caption there is, or the date rather, is that Woodrow Wilson was returned on a ticket, the day before that read, “He kept America out of the war.” Well, not for much longer, and as soon as America joined in World War I, Wallis went to join her husband in Pensacola, Florida. And the marriage was a disaster from the start. How do I know that? Because all the payslips and all the letters that should have been sent to Wallis care of where her husband was in Pensacola were not sent there. They were all over the place. So Wallis was the one absenting herself from the marriage, from the get go. Now her version of the story is that when Spencer was violent and an alcoholic and the one fueled the other, that he packed a bottle of alcohol in his suitcase for honeymoon. And the more he drank, the more violent he became. Win Spencer was ever the gentleman, he never spoke about what went wrong with the marriage. So you have to rely on the fact that he was married twice subsequently. And both subsequent wives cited his violence and alcoholism more significant perhaps is the fact that he never got the promotion that he craved and teaching other pilots to fly was something that was in demand. He might have been promoted once America was in the war. But actually what you read in his report in the Naval Yard archives is that he had a temper. And the Air Force, his Air Force bosses did not believe that he could be relied upon.

They cited his volatility in not giving him the promotions that he craved. So I think Wallis was miserable and she came home to see Uncle Sol to ask if he would fund a divorce. And both Uncle Sol and her mother were furious with Wallis asking for a divorce. They said, “Nobody in the Warfield family has ever had a divorce. You’ll bring shame on the family.” No, you go back and you make the best of this marriage because that’s what everybody does. And I think the interesting thing here is that he backed up his threats by a blackmail really, by some accounts, Wallis was his sole benefactor. And she stood to inherit $5 million had she just gone back and remained Mrs. Warfield but led, sorry, remained as Mrs. Spencer, but led an independent lifestyle. She could have claimed back her Warfield name. She could have done what many other unhappy wives of the time did. But he said to her that not only would he not give her the $5 million, but he’d put that money towards setting up a home for indigent gentle folk in Baltimore so that everybody would know that she disobeyed the Warfield family. So it’s quite a threat and not surprisingly, she decided to try and give the marriage a second chance, which is why I’m showing you this 1930s picture of Shanghai at the time. Shanghai was a settlement, had an American settlement. It it was an area that was divided up into various settlements. And Wallis was told that she could get a cheap divorce in the American part of the city.

So she went back with a cargo of naval wives and tried, but that didn’t appeal when she got there. It wasn’t so cheap. So what she actually did is lead a life of relative independence because the second go at the marriage had not worked at all. And by some accounts, when Spencer did was unspeakable, he locked her in the bathroom. At one point, he took her to sing sing houses, and she just thought, what’s the point of coming home at this point? She’d had a taste of real violence from him and she thought she maybe could stay in the Far East and she would shuttle between Peking as it then was where she had friends, and Shanghai. And that’s what a lot of Americans did. She was a naval wife and there were plenty of those. She was Mrs. Win Spencer. So questions were not really asked of her and she hoped it might work. And when she was in Peking, she was meeting a lot of interesting people, the sort of people she might have hoped to marry, but of course, she couldn’t marry them without a divorce. And this picture was given to me by the 90 year old daughter of an American who remembers very clearly her mother talking about what happened when Mrs. Spencer breezed into town. She said that she would have everyone fall at her feet. And this wonderful 90 year old who gave me this picture said, “My mother used to dread it when Wallis Spencer came to her parties or for the weekend because she said it was a bit like having a bitch on heat in the house. Well, that’s all very well, but what’s the purpose?

As far as Wallis was concerned, she was nearing 30 and she thought, there’s no point in having interesting people fall at my feet if I can’t marry them. Now, there is a lot of talk about what Wallis got up to in China, mostly because her nemesis later on, Queen Mary, who became her mother-in-law and Prime Minister Baldwin, was said to have compiled something called the China dossier about all the things that Wallis got up to while she was having what she in her own memoir called her "Lotus Year.” She said life was so good in China almost too good for woman. Well, a lot of people have puzzled about what she meant by how can life be too good for a woman? And surely, this China dossier that I’ve searched for would explain all the sexual shenanigans that she got up to the Baltimore Grip, the Shanghai Squeeze, and the China Clinch was said to be all, all things that Wallis knew everything about. Well, I’ve searched for the China dossier, it doesn’t exist. And actually, I think what you’re seeing in this picture is the real story. If Wallis was about to meet somebody, a diplomat or a military person, or in this case, a lieutenant who became an admiral in the Italian Navy after the war and wrote in his memoirs about Wallis’ penetrating violet blue eyes. She would read up about the person she was due to meet. So she knew everything about them.

And then she would focus on their eyes and regurgitate everything, making them feel that they were the centre of the world. And you can see the body language in this picture. So, you know, I advise you, you try it at home, it works every time. But Wallis decided that actually she simply had to get a divorce and remarry. There was no point in having affairs while she was not free. So she established residency in Warrenton. Now, divorce in America was not easy, but it was a lot easier than in England as she was to discover. And Win Spencer, as I say, ever the gentleman gave her a divorce, because what she really needed to establish was that he had deserted her for three years, but the reverse was the case. She was the one who deserted him, but he didn’t make her suffer like that. And while she was in Warrenton, her best friend from Oldfield’s, Mary Kirk, introduced her to a man called Ernest Simpson. Now the the public version of events is that Ernest Simpson was divorced or single and free to marry Wallis. Well, that’s not the version that Ernest’s wife tells, the former Dorothea Dechert has a completely different version of the story where she says, “Wallis breezed into my life, stole my clothes, stole my home, stole my husband, and stole my child.” Not many people know that actually Ernest was a single father when he married Wallis. There was a daughter called Audrey. But when they moved into this flat in Bryanston Court in Marble Arch because they married eventually in 1928, and they came to live in London, and Wallis really wanted to put everything behind her and start again. There was never a room for the child. Wallis thought that alimony was a ridiculous business and was furious whenever that subject came up.

But also she didn’t like the idea of being a stepmother. So although this flat was beautifully decorated, there was never going to be a room for Audrey to come and stay. It was actually a bit of a faux part on Wallis’ part to move to Marble Arch ‘cause it was north of the river. Now had she known better, she’d have gone South of the river to Kensington or Chelsea or Knightsbridge. Anyway, though far apart, she quickly came to the attention of this man, Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David. And he was always known as David to his intimates. That was his last name. I’m not intimate, so I’m going to persist in calling him Edward. Now Edward liked everything American. And this photograph speaks volumes about the disparity between the public image in spite of the cigarette between his teeth. The public image is what a handsome charmer he was. This was in 1920 when he was being sent around the world in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution to proclaim to the Commonwealth and the dominions. So don’t worry about the Bolsheviks, they may have killed the Russian royal family, but the monarchy is really safe in the hands of this young man who’s going to be king. Well, what we know from his private letters that he was writing to his then mistress, Freda Dudley Ward is a completely different version of events. And what he was writing to Freda he liked his women safely married. Here she is with her husband. I love the fact that the husband, William Dudley Ward is clutching her hand, her arm rather.

So he was writing to her that he really thought the days of monarchy were over. He thought his father was a tyrant. He didn’t want to inherit the throne under those circumstances. He showed in these letters several severe psychological traits. He talked about preferring never to eat. He asked Freda if she liked his knobbly knees in shorts. If he wasn’t eating, he thought he looked much more attractive. But most of all, he threatened suicide in newsletters. It was actually his second suicidal cry. The first one came when he wanted to be sent to the front during World War I. And the family didn’t want to send him, but he said, “Look, what does it matter if I die? I’ve got brothers.” And the second suicidal cry comes in the letters to Freda where he first of all says, he’d rather die than take the throne as it is at the moment. And then he says, so wouldn’t it be dippy to die together? He talks about everything American that he loves. Freda is half American, that was fine. But he loved things like jazz, the telephone, painted fingernails, trouser, turn-ups, all the things that he thought signified a really modern world. But it was never going to work with Freda. She was far too sensible. And eventually he gave her up for a second half American mistress, Thelma or Thelma Furnace as she was. And it was while she was his mistress that his father George V gave him this castle on the edge of Windsor Great Park, a folly, really. And he said when he gave it to him, I suppose you’ll want it for those damn weekends. Well, it was precisely those damn weekends that he did want it for.

But Thelma didn’t last very long. She made a faithful mistake of going off to America where she had to go for a short time. And she said to her friend, Wallis, “Will you look after the little man while I’m away?” Well, you can guess what happened, of course. Wallis who had actually met him once before because she’d acted as a chaperone for Thelma and jumped at the chance to look after him while Thelma was away. So in this picture, she’s being presented at court, which again is quite extraordinary because a divorced woman normally would not be allowed to be presented at court. And she’s wearing Thelma’s outfit. Thelma was so keen to keep Edward amused and he knew that Wallis, who was so spirited and funny and witty would keep Edward amused while she was in America. Although interestingly, Wallis, although she borrowed Thelma’s clothes, she couldn’t resist buying a big aquamarine cross so that she stood out when she was actually presented to Edward. And on this occasion, she made her mark because when she was presented and he said, she’d overheard that he’d said to all the women. Edward had made a remark to his court is that all the women looked so ghastly in that light. So when she was presented, she repeated his words to him saying, “How can you tell me I look so lovely when I’ve just heard you say that all the women look ghastly in this light.” It was an example of the fact that she was very quick and witty and spirited.

And Edward thought that this lack of deference was something that he really craved in his life. So that very night he drove him home. And really Ernest was utterly taken with this because Ernest was a terrible snob. He thought that this was the pinnacle of his life. He was a kind man. And when you question why on Earth when Wallis was just married to somebody who she described to her mother as kind and good looking, he was half-American and half-English. And that’s what enabled them to live in England. And although it seems bizarre that this newly married woman who just found security and kindness because Ernest had a shipping company, Wallis of course thought that the shipping company would earn a lot more money than it actually did. And that was part of the problem that they were short of money to lead this amazing lifestyle. But she thought her mother would be really proud of what she was doing. Now she made her mark because she gave dinner parties, which were very modern to London people. This is where she really fell upon her Southern credentials. She offered food like Chicken Maryland and bacon molasses. Well, nobody had heard of that in London in 1930. And she really thought that she was doing it to please her mother. Her mother had made two subsequent marriages after Wallis’ father, but neither of them were long lived or successful. They didn’t bring her money or happiness. And actually she died in 1928 before coming to London. And all her savings were lost in the crash and the Depression.

So Wallis didn’t have her mother’s money to inherit, she didn’t have Ernest’s money, because the shipping company wasn’t doing very well. And in those circumstances, when Edward offered her as Prince of Wales, he set up a trust fund for Wallis and he kept giving her money. He was bankrolling the Simpsons. And that’s really the root of the problem. They almost couldn’t afford their flat in Bryanston court. And Wallis would say to Edward things like, oh, you are just a tease. I know you don’t really mean it. There won’t actually be a marriage. He would say, no, I do mean it. And he would give her more jewels and furs and cash. So how do we explain Ernest’s role in all of this? Why did he allow his wife to be picked up by the heir to the throne? Well, as I say, he was a snob. He thought at first that it wouldn’t last very long. Neither of them thought that it would last very long. But actually they were a threesome for a while. And when Ernest would say to Edward on one occasion, for example, oh, but that’s such a lovely coat your wearing, if I may say so, sir. And within minutes, Edward said to him, oh, but I’m sure I’ve got a bolt of cloth in the attic. I’ll have my tailor make you a replica. And Ernest cousins showed me this very replica of a coat, which helped me to understand, of course, it’s much more complicated than a coat. But they called him the man who sold his wife for a bolt of cloth. And I started to understand how it just got out of hand. Now in January 1936, when the King died, Wallis was convinced that this affair would end. That there was no way the British public would allow this handsome man who could have had the pick of any princess anywhere to marry a twice married American divorcee. She was sure she would be dumped, and historically, she was correct. But actually Edward’s need for her increase, it was pathological almost.

He could not look at documents of state without Wallis by his side. He’d hoped that it all would’ve gone a stage further before his father died. So he wanted Wallis to go on holiday with him in the summer of 1936. And Wallis thought, oh, how do I go on holiday with with this man and come back to my husband at the end of it when I’m dumped? And then she thought, I know there’s my friend from old fields, Mary Kirk, poor old Mary who you see here, she’s having such a miserable time at the moment ‘cause her husband’s got syphilis and she was the one after all, who’d introduced Wallis and Ernest. So she thought, I’ll just invite Mary over and she’ll keep Ernest company. You can guess what happened? She did keep Ernest company and they fell in love. Now it all unravelled when this photograph shot around the world because until then the British press had been self-censoring. They thought it was deferential not to talk about the relationship of the heir to the throne. But this photograph with the hand of a married woman on the arm of the heir to the throne shot around the world. And Wallis discovered it because her aunt, kind Aunt Bessie slipped all the world’s cuttings. So she cut her holiday short, she went to Paris and there she was greeted with a manila envelope. And inside it were cuttings from all over the world. And they were not happy in India, in Canada, all the dominions, South Africa, New Zealand did not think that the advice Wallis was getting from her friends that a little bit of adultery was okay, that she’d be forgiven. No, she very definitely would not be forgiven. So at this point, Wallis writes to Edward and says, I’m calling it off, you and I will only create disaster together. That’s it, it’s over. Well, of course, she did that far too late.

And Edward responded with his third cry for suicide. He said, “If you try and leave me, not only will I scour the world till I find you, but if I don’t, I’ll slit my throat.” And several courtiers talk about Edward sleeping with a loaded gun under his pillows. So it may have been real, who know? Wallis couldn’t take that risk. So she came back to England. And this is where Edward organised her divorce in Felixstowe, Ipswich, I’m showing you here, but she had to establish residency in Felixstowe. Now I don’t want to give you a whole history lesson, but divorce was much more complicated in England in 1936. There was only one single ground for a woman who wanted to have a divorce. She had to prove the adultery of her husband. And if it could be shown that she also was indulging in adultery, in other words, if it was collusive, the divorce was set at North. Now there were no other grounds like madness or desertion, insanity, nothing like that. It was cut and dried. And if it could be shown that Wallis also was indulging in adultery, then a lawyer called the King’s proctor could be summoned because the divorce was two stage. And you might get a decree nisi, but you wouldn’t get a decree absolute because during those six months, the King’s proctor would investigate. And if he found that material facts had not been put before the judge, then you’d be left in this sort of limbo. Your husband would’ve left you, but you wouldn’t be free to marry again. And that’s exactly what happened to Wallis because everybody knew that she had not put material facts before the judge. So while they were waiting, here’s Ernest who had fallen in love with Mary. And that really was the biggest blow of all for Wallis. She had lost the security net. She always thought she could go back to Ernest. And losing Ernest to her best friend was what really cut her.

In spite of losing Ernest, in spite of getting the decree nisi and the King’s proctor investigating, she still was hoping she could go away to China and lead some sort of private life in this limbo. Neither married nor divorced. But again, events overtook her because after the divorce, which was covered by all the worlds journalists, she became the most hated vilified woman in the world. And she was terrified every time that a photographer took a flash off her, she thought that that was somebody with a loaded gun. So at this point, Edward and Baldwin fear for her safety and they have to get her away to France. And there’s a horrible journey with a blanket over her head, and she was not a happy bunny. Now I know this is a public image, but you can see how miserable she looks. So she was shouting at Edward to get more money. And every time she shouts at him not to abdicate, she gets another piece of jewellery. And we know that because Special Branch were listening into her phone calls, they really didn’t trust her at all, but they do eventually get married. And this is the time when Edward is waiting in Sachsen because he does abdicate. And he just hopes that the King’s proctor will find nothing in the event the King’s proctor has to be called off because politicians are too worried about what he might find. So they do get married in Château de Candé and only seven people come to their wedding. And that includes the official photographer and the official florist, Constance Spry and Cecil Beaton. None of Edward’s family will come to his wedding.

He’s completely cut out. He’s a non-person. And although he’s created Duke of Windsor, HRH, Wallis’ only the ordinary Duchess of Windsor, no royal initials. Now that’s significant because it means that he can’t bring her back to England where she’ll be insulted. Nobody will curtsy to her. So effectively they are now exiles for the rest of their life. And Edward is so furious at the treatment of this wonderful woman by his family that he says, where can I take her for a honeymoon where she’ll be treated like a queen, where people will curtsy to her? And that’s why he takes her to Germany because he doesn’t read newspapers or books. Of course, he should have known about the Nuremberg laws. Of course in 1937, he should have not been allowed to go to Germany. But he goes and they discuss housing, which is a pretext. And he doesn’t really understand what a foolish step this is. I don’t think it proves he’s a Nazi. I do however, think he was pro-German. He believed that his German ancestry was enough that he could possibly make peace, that there shouldn’t be another war. He wanted to show Wallis how well he spoke German. And he believed that actually because the House of Windsor had been Saxe-Coburg only a generation before that it would be fine to go to Germany and meet the German rulers, ‘cause he had so many cousins in Germany. How foolish and stupid that was. Now when war breaks out, there’s nowhere for him to stay. No royal castle is put at his disposal.

So he has to stay with Fruity Metcalfe. He comes back briefly and then a job is found for him overseeing the British troops. But when he should have been on the beaches of Dunkirk doing his job, seeing that the British troops get safely back to England on June the 19th, 1940, what does he do? He goes to Paris de Cartier and he buys this exotic flamingo for his wonderful wife’s birthday that year. Luckily, by the time Churchill is in power, a job is found for the Duke and Duchess in the Bahamas. They’re absolutely furious 'cause they think they’ve been sent on a non-job in a quarter. But actually it’s downhill all the way from here. Wallis makes a reasonable fist of being a governor’s wife. She joins the Red Cross. She builds us a canteen for downed airmen. But they find every possible excuse to go to the mainland, even if it’s for dentistry or dry cleaning. They’re absolutely furious at being sent to the Bahamas. I just wanted to show you this one picture because although there are lots of books and plays and films about the abdication story, I’ve only found one painting by Jack Levine. I think it’s absolutely wonderful this expressionist picture. He is furious Jack Levine, that his fellow countryman kowtow and kiss the hand of a woman who has kissed the hand of Hitler because when she goes back to Baltimore, crowds line the street and make a fuss of this woman.

And he quite rightly is appalled by it. Now, just to go back a minute to the man I met in Mexico, you’ve probably guessed who he is, born in 1939. He is being Christened in the guard’s chapel, Henry Child Simpson. So why is he called Aharon Solomons? Because when his mother, Mary Kirk dies of breast cancer very tragically when he’s only two and his father Ernest Simpson dies when he’s 18. He’s finally told that actually Ernest Simpson, a generation back was Ernest Solomon. The family was a Jewish shipping magnate’s family. And Ernest the snob, well actually it was Ernest’s father, but Ernest never wanted anyone to know that he had Jewish blood. And so the J word was absolutely forbidden. And when the baby that you see here was 18, he was so appalled that his father snobbishness in wanting to join the right Masonic lodges and be friends with the Prince of Wales. He decided that the thing he could do that would most appal his father, although his father was dead, was change his name to Aharon Solomons. He went to live in Israel, the IDF trained him as a free diver. And he went to live in Mexico and he became one of the world’s leading exponents or free diving, which of course is an eccentric, and it’s a sport that demands breath control and diving to great depth. And the man I met is about as far away from his father’s guards uniform and masonic lodges as you could possibly imagine. So that’s where I found the secret letters that I hinted at. And they really revealed to me a very different version of the story. Edward did come back and meet his mother, Queen Mary, but she refused ever to meet her daughter-in-law. It was on this occasion post-war that Edward said Queen Mary had ice in her veins and really their life was empty after the war. They lived in this house that was given to them in Paris for a peppercorn rented subsequently became the home of Al-Fayed. And it was the last house where Diana went before her fatal car crash.

And all they did in the post-war world really was buy jewellery. Wallis was good at telling Edward off. She was often noted for humbling him, humiliating him in public. She bought lots of jewellery, big jewellery, and this is the only crown she’s ever likely to wear. Edward played golf. Here he is with Ben Hogan. Wallis didn’t. They liked dancing together. Lots of jewellery. I could show you. Articulated Panther bracelets. Her clothes, usually she got her clothes right, not always, but as you see here, she sometimes made a mistake. She used clothes to convey a message here. She came back to England in 1967, and although it was a June day underneath that first still, she had this huge brooch. She used clothes and jewellery to convey a message. She was trying to say, I’m on top of the world. But of course she wasn’t. She was miserable, but she hoped the jewellery would speak for her. Edward died in 1972 of throat cancer and Wallis came back to England for the funeral. And Givenchy had to stay up all night to make that coat and veil because she knew that she couldn’t give interviews, she had to use her clothes to speak for her. So she had 14 years in Paris, a miserable 14 years where she was looked after by a battery of nurses.

CLIP BEGINS

• [Speaker] This is Windsor Castle.

• Secretaries.

• [Speaker] His Royal Highness Prince Edward.

• And although you will be very familiar with this speech, the reason for playing it is because she used it to say.

• [Edward VIII] At long last, I am able to say a few words of my own. I have never wanted to withhold anything, but until now it has not been constitutionally possible for me to speak. A few hours ago, I discharged my last duty as king and emperor. And now that I have been succeeded by my brother, the Duke of York, my first words must be to declare my allegiance to him. This I do with all my heart. You all know the reasons which have have impelled me to renounce the throne. But I want you to understand that in making up my mind, I did not forget the country or the empire, which as Prince of Wales and lately as King, I have for 25 years tried to serve. But you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support.

CLIP ENDS

• The reason for playing you that which I’m sure everyone is very familiar with, is simply that for decades that broadcast always elicited the almost Pavlovian reaction of, oh, that was the most romantic love story of the 20th century. And I hope what I’ve shown you in this whistle stop tour of their lives is that I don’t see it as romantic. I see it as something much darker, almost gothic, where jewellery really played the role of the tempting devil. And I think whatever you conclude about Wallis, it really is no longer possible to see her as the hunter. It’s a much sadder story where I believe she was the one who was hunted. So thank you for listening and I hope this time for some questions.

Q&A and Comments:

• [Moderator] Great, Anne, thank you so much. I will read a few of the questions for you. Well, first we have a comment from John Spain saying it could be said that it was a good thing for UK, especially Jews, that Mrs. Simpson snared Edward.

• Yes, absolutely, we got the better brother. I mean, Noël Coward said there should be a statue to Wallis Simpson in every market town in England. Of course, it was. My only slight hesitation is that some people then continue that thought by saying it was a conspiracy. Wallis was put up to it. Well, you only have to read the original letters, and these letters that I found still in their envelopes, you know, not in microfilm. And they came via a very direct route in the end, once I found them, it’s obvious that Wallis was overtaken by events. It’s obvious that Wallis did not want this marriage to go ahead. I mean, I had a stock phrase while I was writing this book, be careful what you wish for. If you play with fire, you get burnt. All the old cliches are the best ones. I think Wallis, who never wanted a child, was stuck with this overgrown baby. One of the phrases in the letters is she referred to Edward as Peter Pan, and she and Ernest had this secret messaging that Peter Pan didn’t understand. Peter Pan didn’t want to face up to his responsibility. So yes, absolutely it was a good thing that it happened, but I think it happened by a series of extraordinary accidents. And there is no element of this story that was planned.

Q - [Moderator] Thank you. This is from Marita. Would you be so kind to address the Chinese dossier and whether it is true?

A - Well, I live very close to the National Archives in Q, so I can honestly say it was the first place I went to determined to try and find the China dossier. No, I’m afraid. It clearly is not true. It’s part of the misinformation campaign, but it was so obvious in the days before Jet Travel, a woman who was leading this independent lifestyle. And I do talk a lot more about how she was able to do that in the book. Probably not suitable for this. How was Wallis able to have this lotus year, this fantastic relationship with so many men? Well, I think that’s why people assume there must be a China dossier. But I’ve looked for it, there are files on what was going on in Shanghai at the time. There’s a lovely file called Bad Hats and Sundries Suspects, but there is no place in it for Mrs. Spencer. So she simply was a naval wife who was having a good time. And you’ll have to draw your own conclusions if you read the book as to how she was able to have such a good time and why she decided at the end of a year that she couldn’t just carry on leading a good girl’s life.

Q - [Moderator] Right. This is from Michael. Is it true that Special Branch were aware that Wallis’ German friends had access to the boxes containing confidential government information that were sent to Edward prior to his abdication?

A - I think there is a lot of myth around this. Now Special Branch was searching for something on Wallis because they thought she was a terrible influence. Well, other than the fact that she stopped Edward drinking, that was good. But they thought she was going to blackmail him. They thought, well, with two husbands living, that was the phrase used. She’s bound to be a blackmailer. It was blackmail, they were frightened of. But so I know that Special Branch was involved in listening into the conversations. You can see the Special Branch reports of her shouting down the phone to Edward to get more money. But I don’t believe that there was German involvement on Wallis’ partner. Now there’s lots of misinformation about the Ambassador Ribbentrop, the former champagne salesman. His job was to suss out for Hitler. Now if you win the war, who’s going to be on your side? Well, obviously Edward with his deep love of appeasement, his deep love of Germans, if Edward had taken the throne, Wallis would’ve just done what he wanted. But I don’t believe that Wallis was a Nazi. And I certainly don’t believe that Wallis was having an affair with Ribbentrop as well as Edward in all the letters to her aunt, she’s having a really tough time keeping two men happy. So this really is fabrication that Wallis was having some kind of relationship with Ribbentrop that Special Branch knew about. They were just trying to find out some dirt at one point to stop the marriage going ahead and because they thought that she would exercise blackmail. And that was the real fear.

Q - [Moderator] Anne asks, what do you think would’ve happened if he hadn’t abdicated?

A - Well, I hate the what ifs of history because there are so many variables. If you push me, if he hadn’t abdicated, he’d have been king because people like Churchill were deferential. They thought that he should be king. I think the real worry that many people felt about Edward was that he was not good at taking orders. And even Churchill eventually really lost his temper or rag or belief in Edward. So what if, so he might’ve been king, but would he have been allowed to marry Wallis? Well, yes, probably if he’d seen through the war, if they’d had a decent war, but he would’ve made overtures to the Germans. So those are the variables I think we just don’t know. There was a strong appeasement party. I think if he hadn’t married her, that was the stumbling block, marrying a woman, and not just for the British, but for the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth were appalled at the fact that, he was a king who should have been upholding the law of the land. And he was actively subverting it by getting this divorce, which should never have been allowed. I mean, the Archbishop of Canterbury has always come in for a lot of flack for not helping Edward. But the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang was really worried about anointing a man who would have to promise to uphold the laws of the land when everybody knew he was actively subverting them by getting a divorce for a woman that was clearly a collusive divorce that was against the law. So it was the divorce that was worrying people. So your question is, what would’ve happened if he hadn’t gone ahead with trying to marry a divorced woman? It’s so impossible to answer because there are so many imponderables, but I think he would’ve had to have been king. They would’ve had to have hoped that Churchill became Prime Minister, but that wasn’t a given because if the appeasement party and Halifax had become prime minister, they might have tried to do a deal. There are so many worrying possibilities that it’s truly an impossible question to answer, but it’s fun. Well, not fun. It’s the reverse of fun to imagine what might have happened.

Q - [Moderator] Harold is asking if you might comment on her antisemitism.

A - I don’t have any evidence of Wallis’ anti-Semitism. I think Wallis knew perfectly well she was married to somebody who was Jewish, who was anti-Semitic. But I think there’s one letter where Wallis talks about her fear of Ernest going to Hamburg, where the family shipping company was based. So I think she clearly knew that he was Jewish. So I don’t think it worried her to be married to somebody Jewish. I mean, she probably imbibed the upper class atmosphere of casual antisemitism. She didn’t have any Jewish friends. I think Wallis was pro Wallis really. I don’t suppose she, you know, it would be nice to have found some pro-Semitic remarks. I think she just was in the wind. I think it’s Edward who really was anti-Semitic and she had to go his way, but I don’t think she was the prime mover in all of this.

Q - [Moderator] Audrey is asking where did the Mitford fit in here?

A - I’m not sure they did other than post-war when they became friendly. But I’m interested in who Wallis became and how she married him, and how a constitutional crisis was averted. Although my view is that actually it was not a crisis, it was a solution to a crisis. So I don’t think the Mitford was really do fit into this except in their post-war Paris life, which to me is so empty that they had to find their friends wherever they could, but you know, it’s not part of my story. I don’t think Wallis was friendly with the Mitford pre-war or pre-abdication.

Q - [Moderator] Wasn’t there a rumour that she was having an affair with a car salesman at the same time as Edward? That’s from Shelly.

A - Yeah, but there is absolutely no proof of that. That’s one of the biggest bits of misinformation. And even a guy Trundle was his name. Even his family say that he was a boast or a liar, a fantasist, a Walter Mitty character. So Special Branch. It’s much as I was saying before, we’re desperate to try and find something and this was the best they could come up with. But it really is, I think, nonsense. I mean, I’m always prepared to say somebody could come up with some kind of killer piece of evidence, but beyond Special Branch producing it to try and show that they were watching her. There is really no evidence that they met. It’s one of the most bizarre aspects of the whole story. Why would Wallis want an affair with a car salesman? It simply doesn’t make any sense. And once you listen to the family’s side of events, that Guy Trundle may have met her on one occasion and he blew this into some extraordinary story that Special Branch latched onto to show that they were on top of things. It’s just a bit of nonsense.

Q - [Moderator] And the last question is, could you comment on the Queen Mother’s enduring antagonism to Wallis?

A - Oh, well, I think she gave as good as she got. There are numerous episodes where Wallis imitated her. Wallis loathed her. She thought she was a goodie goodie that she was boring. She wore boring clothes. So Wallis usurped her role. And the Queen Mother stood by her mother-in-law in just trying to reveal that Wallis was a jumped up piece who would cause damage to the reputation of the royal family. But subsequently the relationship worsened. It deteriorated because she wanted some kind of quiet private life in which to bring up her two daughters. She knew she was married to a man who had not been brought up to believe he was king, who stammered, actually Edward stammered as well as you can hear in that broadcast. But George VI as he became, Bertie, it’s very complicated. They all have so many names. But the second son who was forced into taking on the role of King stammered much more, he had never been prepared for the role of king. And I think the Queen Mother was protective. She believed that her daughters would be thrust into a public role as they were. It would damage the family life she had always hoped for. And ultimately, when her husband died prematurely in 1952, she blamed his death, which was from cancer, from probably from smoking, it was lung cancer. But the Queen Mother always insisted that his end was hastened by having been forced onto the throne in a role that he was never brought up for and was not suited for. I think subsequently when she realised after the war when the British public loved her and took her to their hearts. Actually, I think she wasn’t scared of Wallis anymore, but until that point she was worried that perhaps there could be a king’s party that this glamorous couple over the water might come back and the glamorous chic Wallis and Edward or the Duke and Duchess of Windsor might usurp them. So early on there was fear and worry of destabilisation. But I think once she caught through the war, she just decided that Wallis was somebody that she wanted absolutely nothing to do with, but she wasn’t frightened or scared of her anymore and she grew into her own role. And no matter how much Wallis made fun of her, she couldn’t harm her at this that point.

Thank you for inviting me. It’s always a really good story to tell, so thank you all for listening.