Harry and Meghan are not the first royal scandal magnets to enjoy the benefits of a book advance. His great-great uncle the Duke of Windsor (King Edward VIII as was, “David” to his friends and family) and his wife, the Duchess of Windsor (aka Mrs Wallis Simpson) were also paid
Paul Little: The Duke of Windsor and Wallis Simpson wrote their memoirs long before Harry and Meghan
When Edward VIII abdicated and married Wallis Simpson they brought an empire to the brink of ruin. Photo / Getty Images
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Like his birth.
His sovereign status is always going to be problematical, even if his attitude can be described as: “Just call me Majesty – none of this ‘Your’ nonsense.”
The adolescent identity crisis continues into his 20s. “But who really was I?” he howls at one point. Good question. Presumably, it would have become easier to answer once he had the benefit of reminders like seeing his face on all the stamps and money.
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The Duke is frank about the numerous day-to-day inconveniences that come with his job, such as that encountered on a visit to Bolivia when “because this trip was only semi-official there was no provision of a battlecruiser”.
Wallis Simpson is not introduced until more than halfway through the book, with a classic rom-com meet-cute during a weekend hunting party in 1931.
The heroine is stricken with a cold and the hero, noblesse oblige pumping, is prompted to observe that she must miss American central heating. She responds with words to the effect that she’s heard that tired old chat-up line from a million other princes, and he retires bemused but unbowed.
He describes her as “complex and elusive”. Well, obviously not that elusive.
Although Wallis is apparently happily married, the astute reader might discern a developing attraction between the lines. “The Simpsons had a small but charming flat,” notes the Duke, an opinion he probably formed in the hurried half hour between the maid leaving for the day and Mr S getting home from the office.
One thing leads to another and before you know it Wallis is separated from her husband, Edward – who cannot marry a divorcee and remain king - is separated from his throne, and the pair are united. The Duke, who was clearly there for a good time, not a long reign, concludes his account with the abdication.
In The Heart Has Its Reasons (1956) the Duchess, as she became, takes the story much further.
Her first impressions of the prince note “the slightly wind-rumpled golden hair, the turned-up nose and a strange, wistful, almost sad look about the eyes when his expression was in repose” and an “odd and indefinable melancholy that seemed to haunt [his] countenance”. Sort of a cross between Mr Darcy and Morrissey.
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Her prose is never more torrid than when she describes trying to sacrifice herself to prevent the abdication: “Now it was my turn to beg him to let me go. Summoning all the powers of persuasion in my possession, I tried to convince him of the hopelessness of our position.”
At the height of the crisis, she is undeterred: “I was prepared to go through rivers of woe, seas of despair and oceans of agony for him.”
Wallis had taken some time adjusting to British life, given she “never had lived under a monarchy” – ironic, given that soon she would be spending so much time under a monarch. Keen to learn all she can about Britain, she goes with her husband to “Stonehenge to see the Stone Age monuments” – ironic, given that soon she would be married to one.
Highlights between that wedding in 1937 and the war include a visit to Germany. There the Duke and Duchess meet every prominent Nazi you can think of, with the possible exception of Wernher von Braun and Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS.
The trip’s highlight is an invitation to tea with Hitler. Of the Fuhrer, the Duchess is probably the only person ever to note: “His hands were long and slim, a musician’s hands.” Having asked David what he and Hitler discussed in a private confab, she is told not to worry her pretty little head about it. “The usual stuff,” fudges the former monarch. Many have speculated that the topic of employment prospects for an out-of-work king may not have been verboten.
The book limps to its last pages, the war and all that forming little more than a backdrop to seemingly interminable years of house-hunting for this king and would-be queen without a castle. If only there had been Heirbnb back then.
