King Edward VIII. Philip Ziegler

      In dressing gown, photographed by the Duchess (Al Fayed Archives)

      Preface

      It is now more than twenty years since my biography of King Edward VIII appeared and three-quarters of a century since the abdication. To most contemporary readers Edward VIII’s father and grandfather – King George V and King Edward VII – are shadowy figures. Even George VI is remembered, except perhaps by those who experienced him as a wartime monarch, more for being the father of the present Queen than as a figure in his own right. Yet Edward VIII, who was on the throne for less than a year, remains vividly in the popular imagination. Within the last two decades there have been more than twenty further books dealing with his life or certain aspects of it, not to mention newspaper articles galore, plays, television documentaries, even a musical comedy. The Duchess of Windsor has been quite as prominent. There have been several recent biographical studies – the latest of which quotes letters suggesting that Mrs Simpson, as she then was, was still in love with, or at least anxious to keep her lines open to, her estranged husband, even when her courtship by the King was at its fiercest. But neither Duke nor Duchess in isolation is the principal focus of this intense attention; it is above all their relationship which has captured the public’s interest and is almost as potent an attraction now as it was in 1936. ‘The king who gave up his throne for love’ is a cliché of romantic fiction, but it is also an accurate rendering of that extraordinary event. Nothing can diminish its potency.

      The fact that the Prince of Wales has now married Camilla Parker Bowles, both parties with a divorce behind them, inevitably makes one wonder whether there might have been no abdication if contemporary morality had stood then where it does today. The question whether the present Duchess of Cornwall might one day become Queen has, of course, not yet finally been resolved but, in the closing days of the abdication crisis, Edward VIII seemed ready to contemplate a morganatic marriage. The problem might therefore not have arisen. Would Mrs Simpson be acceptable today as consort of the King? Probably not. She had been divorced not once but twice, with both husbands still living. She was an American – not in itself a reason for rejecting her, but reinforcing the uneasy conviction that she did not belong so close to the throne. She was seen, fairly or unfairly, as being a smart, hard-boiled, wise-cracking society figure – an image which did not and does not fit happily with what the British people expect of their royal court. But the moral certainties of 1936 have been diminished if not extinguished in 2012 – the issue would be more keenly debated and the answer might possibly be different.

      It may be for his marriage that Edward VIII is particularly remembered, but in a way he seems much closer to contemporary society than his far more considerable father, brother and niece. This is the age of celebrity, when, perhaps more than ever before, people are celebrated not for what they have done but for what they appear to be. Nobody would ever have described George V and George VI or indeed Elizabeth II as ‘celebrities’; Edward VIII would have rejoiced in the title, or at least accepted it with equanimity. He saw himself as a thoroughly modern monarch, a reformer, rejecting the outdated pomposities of the past, adopting a style which was less formal, less bound by protocol, more relevant to the needs of the day, than the creaky old court he had inherited. This was not all fantasy. He had some good ideas and, if he had had the energy and determination to carry them through, he might indeed have made a valuable contribution to the British monarchy. But it is in the nature of celebrities that they shine only fitfully and leave little mark in the pages of history. Edward VIII’s intentions were often excellent; his ability to carry them through to fulfilment was sadly lacking.

      This sounds, indeed is, severely critical. It is no more than he deserves but, over the last twenty years, he has been subjected to attacks far more violent than his performance in fact merits. Most of the emphasis has been on his alleged sympathy for the German cause before and during the Second World War. As Prince of Wales, it is claimed, he had condoned, indeed applauded, the rise of National Socialism. As King he was an arch-appeaser, energetically intervening to ensure that his ministers did not react robustly to the German occupation of the Rhineland. As Duke of Windsor he wittingly betrayed secrets of military importance to the Germans in 1939 and 1940, while in Spain and Portugal he flirted with German emissaries who suggested that he remain in Europe and hold himself in readiness for his return to an occupied Britain. Until well on into the war he maintained that Britain must inevitably be defeated and that a negotiated peace was the only sane way forward. At any time, it was suggested, he would have been ready to supplant his brother and take back the throne if the opportunity had arisen. Such attacks reached a peak with a television programme entitled Edward, the Traitor King, without even the courtesy of a question mark. His great-nephew, Prince Edward, in 1996 made a valiant effort to retrieve the situation with another television programme showing the Duke in a rather more positive light. But, as is usually the case, the spreading of muck proved more effective than the subsequent sponging operation.

      I would not pretend that the Foreign Office papers that have been released in recent years show the Duke in a particularly flattering light. They deal mainly with the period when he was in France in 1939 and 1940 with a Military Mission charged vaguely with liaison with the French; his escapades in Spain and Portugal after the fall of France; his time as Governor of the Bahamas; and his financial problems during that period and after the war was over. It was my study of these papers that convinced me that he was often, though by no means invariably, silly, indiscreet and egotistical, and that by 1936 he was unfit to occupy the throne. In particular, in Spain and Portugal, his behaviour was such as to give German agents – anxious to feed their superiors in Berlin the news that they wanted to hear – some reason for hoping that he might rally to the Axis cause if the circumstances were right. But German official documents published since the war show that this was mere supposition, and that there is no hard evidence to support the thesis of treachery, be it actual or potential.

      Ah yes, say the Duke’s detractors, but the published documents do not tell the whole story. King George VI sent the royal librarian, Owen Moreshead, and the art historian (and, as it later transpired, Communist spy) Anthony Blunt on a secret mission to secure the papers that would have proved the Duke’s guilt and bring them back for destruction or incarceration in some inaccessible vault at Windsor. The fact that the mission was far from secret; that its task was to bring back certain nineteenth-century family papers – mainly letters from Queen Victoria to her eldest daughter, the Empress Frederick; that all these papers were eventually returned to Germany; and that a complete inventory exists of everything that was brought back has not been allowed to spoil a good story.

      To reach the conclusion that the Duke of Windsor was a traitor it is necessary to credit every surmise of those who wanted him to be so and to ignore the testimony of all those who worked with him and who knew him best. Even then there would be no proof. It is a cardinal principle of British law that an accused is assumed innocent until proved guilty. In the case of the Duke of Windsor the reverse has been true; he has been assumed guilty because he cannot positively be proved innocent. And yet to prove that somebody did not do something is notoriously difficult: for a single crime an alibi can with luck be established, but if a pattern of behaviour or of thought is in question it is generally impossible to do more than establish a balance of probabilities, based on one’s knowledge of the person concerned. I make no claim to omniscience, but I probably know more about the Duke of Windsor than anyone else alive. I am absolutely certain that, with all his faults, he was a patriot who would never have wished his country to be defeated or have contemplated returning to an occupied Britain as a puppet king. I accept that I cannot prove my contention, but I have much better grounds for maintaining it than any of those who have asserted the contrary over the last twenty years. Nothing that they have said or written has caused me to change my mind.

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