From the dust jacket: "If you thought you knew everything there is to know about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, you are in for a shock.
In this authoritative, entertaining dual biography of Edward VIII and the American woman for whom he sacrified the crown of England and its Empire, we see the Windsors as they have never been seen before: Wallis as a domineering woman who badgered the King for a bigger title, and the King himself as a slave of love. Through interviews with those closest to them, we observe their marriage not as the sentimental love story of legend but as the nightmare it truly was, including its near dissolution when the Duchess took up with a notorious braggart homosexual, Jimmy Donahue, who kicked her in public and eventually died under suspicious circumstances.
In a narrative agleam with the great names and events of this century, we follow the separate dramas of David's and Wallis' lives as fate, in a reckless mood, draws these mismatched lovers ever closer. She was from the poor branch of a rich family, 'pushy, never quite in, always asking friends to get her invited to this party or that.' Her first husband, a pilot, beat her; Felipe Espil, a Latin smoothie, broke her heart; and her second husband, Ernest Simpson, acquiesced as her romance blossomed with the King of England.
Headstrong, spoiled, shallow, David Windsor was a playboy King. According to preWllis mistress Freda Dudley Ward, 'he was a masochist. He liked being humbled, degraded. He begged for it!' Bewitched by the vain and supremely self-confident Wallis, he blindly gave her interest top priority in the kingdom with the well-known results: estrangement from family and friends, abdication, banishment and exile. As Lord Mountbatten says in a heretofore unpublished interview, 'Wallis' influence was fatal.'
In this authoritative, entertaining dual biography of Edward VIII and the American woman for whom he sacrified the crown of England and its Empire, we see the Windsors as they have never been seen before: Wallis as a domineering woman who badgered the King for a bigger title, and the King himself as a slave of love. Through interviews with those closest to them, we observe their marriage not as the sentimental love story of legend but as the nightmare it truly was, including its near dissolution when the Duchess took up with a notorious braggart homosexual, Jimmy Donahue, who kicked her in public and eventually died under suspicious circumstances.
In a narrative agleam with the great names and events of this century, we follow the separate dramas of David's and Wallis' lives as fate, in a reckless mood, draws these mismatched lovers ever closer. She was from the poor branch of a rich family, 'pushy, never quite in, always asking friends to get her invited to this party or that.' Her first husband, a pilot, beat her; Felipe Espil, a Latin smoothie, broke her heart; and her second husband, Ernest Simpson, acquiesced as her romance blossomed with the King of England.
Headstrong, spoiled, shallow, David Windsor was a playboy King. According to preWllis mistress Freda Dudley Ward, 'he was a masochist. He liked being humbled, degraded. He begged for it!' Bewitched by the vain and supremely self-confident Wallis, he blindly gave her interest top priority in the kingdom with the well-known results: estrangement from family and friends, abdication, banishment and exile. As Lord Mountbatten says in a heretofore unpublished interview, 'Wallis' influence was fatal.'
