That Woman: The Life of Wallis Simpson

From The Telegraph:

Should Wallis Simpson be awarded a posthumous George Cross? It becomes abundantly clear in Anne Sebba’s biography that the late Duchess of Windsor did Britain an enormous service when she allowed Edward VIII to abdicate so he could run off with her. The Prince of Wales was more than a liability – he was “a depressed adolescent… worryingly unsafe, he could be certified”, according to Lord Wigram, George V’s private secretary. “Certain cells in his brain have never grown,” murmured another courtier, Sir Alan Lascelles.

Madness was less of a problem, though, than the Prince’s chumminess with the Germans and pro-appeasement politicians. He and Wallis were feted by Mussolini in Venice, stayed at the Ritz in Madrid when Spain was run by Franco and visited Hitler in Berchtesgaden, where they were photographed among the swastikas. The Nazis “were ready to exploit the King’s sympathies”, and even after the abdication there were plans to install him as a puppet monarch should Britain have been successfully invaded. By August 1940, however, the government had exiled the Windsors to the Bahamas, “the Empire’s most backward-looking colony”. The remainder of their lives was to be spent in an aimless, boring round of luncheons with dressmakers and dinners with jewellers. Nobody of substance would venture near them – and George VI was adamant that Wallis should never be referred to as HRH as it would be “a great mistake to acknowledge Mrs Simpson as a suitable person to become Royal”.

More here.