Alexander Larman - The Crown in Crisis: Countdown to the Abdication

For my grandmothers, Barbara Stephenson (19262018) and Terese Larman (19222019), who saw it all first-hand.

Royalty & their circle

Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, later Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor, Prince-turned-King-turned-Duke

Prince Albert Bertie George, Duke of York, later George VI, Edwards younger brother

George V, the late King; Edwards father

Queen Mary, Edwards mother

Prince George, Duke of Kent, Edwards younger brother

Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, Edwards younger brother

Mary, Princess Royal, Countess of Harewood, Edwards younger sister

Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg, Edwards cousin

Louis Mountbatten, Edwards cousin

Elizabeth, Duchess of York, Berties wife

Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, Berties children and Edwards nieces

Wallis Simpson, Edwards own Helen of Troy

Earl Winfield Spencer Jr, Walliss first husband

Ernest Simpson, Walliss second husband

Bessie Merryman, Walliss aunt

Freda Dudley Ward, Edwards former mistress

Thelma Furness, Edwards mistress prior to Wallis

Alec Hardinge, private secretary to Edward VIII

Helen Hardinge, wife to Alec

Sir Godfrey Thomas, assistant private secretary to Edward VIII

Alan Tommy Lascelles, assistant private secretary to Edward VIII

John Aird, royal equerry

Admiral Sir Lionel Halsey, royal equerry

Mabell Ogilvy, Countess of Airlie, Queen Marys lady-in-waiting

Ulick Alexander, royal courtier

Peregrine Perry Brownlow, Edwards lord-in-waiting

Sir Eric Miville, Berties private secretary

Edward Peacock, receiver-general of the Duchy of Cornwall

Clive Wigram, Baron Wigram, former royal private secretary

Sir William Fisher, Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the Navy

The lawyers

Walter Monckton, lawyer and counsellor to Edward VIII

St John Jack Hutchinson, George McMahons barrister

Alfred Kerstein, George McMahons solicitor

Sir Donald Somervell, the Attorney-General

Theodore Goddard, Walliss divorce solicitor

Robert Egerton, Goddards clerk

Norman Birkett, Walliss divorce barrister

Sir Anthony Hawke, High Court judge

George Allen, Edwards solicitor

Sir Thomas Barnes, The Kings Proctor

The press

Lord Beaverbrook, newspaper magnate

Lord Camrose, owner of the Daily Sketch

Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail

Esmond Harmsworth, his son and Chairman of the Newspaper Proprietors Association

Bernard Rickatson-Hatt, Reuters editor-in-chief

Geoffrey Dawson, Times editor

John Reith, director-general of the BBC

HL Mencken, Baltimore Sun columnist

Politicians

Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister of Great Britain

Clement Attlee, leader of the Labour Party

David Lloyd-George, former Prime Minister of Britain

Ramsay MacDonald, former Prime Minister

Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer

Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary

JCC Davidson, Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lancashire

Sir John Simon, Home Secretary

Duff Cooper, Secretary of State for War

Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Under-secretary of state for foreign affairs

David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford, former Conservative chief whip

Winston Churchill, Conservative politician

Sir Samuel Hoare, First Lord of the Admiralty

Sir Horace Wilson, senior civil servant and aide to Baldwin

Robert Bob Boothby, Conservative politician

Edward Spears, Conservative politician

Thomas Tommy Dugdale, Baldwins private secretary

Leo Amery, Conservative politician

Henry Margesson, Conservative chief whip

Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists

Adolf Hitler, Fhrer of Germany

Joachim von Ribbentrop, German ambassador to Britain

Konstantin von Neurath, German foreign minister

Fritz Hesse, press attach to the German embassy

Sir Eric Phipps, British ambassador to Germany

Kemal Atatrk, President of Turkey

Sir Ronald Lindsay, British ambassador to the United States

Religion

Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury

Alfred Blunt, Bishop of Bradford

Society high

Lady Maud Emerald Cunard, society hostess and German sympathiser

Henry Chips Channon, Conservative politician and diarist

Diana Cooper, wife to Duff, the most desirable woman in England

Cecil Beaton, society photographer and diarist

Sir Maurice Jenks, Lord Mayor of London

Buttercup Kennedy, aka Mary Kirk, friend of Wallis and Ernest Simpson

Harold Nicolson, Conservative politician and diarist

Lucy Baldwin, wife of the Prime Minister

Vernon Kell, founder and first director of MI5

John Ottaway, head of the Detective Branch at MI5

Thomas Argyll Tar Robinson, MI5 operative

Carew Robinson, Home Office employee

Herman & Katherine Rogers, friends of Wallis

Osbert Sitwell, writer and wit

Margaret Aunt Maggie Greville, society hostess

Sibyl Colefax, socialite

Society low

Guy Trundle, car salesman and friend of Wallis

George McMahon, would-be royal assassin

May McMahon, his wife

Alice Lawrence, royal well-wisher and patriot

Anthony Dick, Special Constable

Alfred Kerstein, George McMahons solicitor

For Gods sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war;
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poisond by their wives: some sleeping killd;
All murderd; for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be feard and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humourd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood
With solemn reverence; throw away respect,
Tradition, form and ceremonious duty,
For you have but mistook me all this while:
I live with bread like you, feel want,
Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus,
How can you say to me, I am a king?

William Shakespeare, Richard II , Act III Scene II

On 8 December 1936, Evelyn Waugh wrote his impressions of the abdication saga in his diary. The Simpson crisis has been a great delight to everyone, he remarked gleefully. At Maidies nursing home they report a pronounced turn for the better in all adult patients. There can seldom have been an event that has caused so much general delight and so little pain. Waughs witty and flippant observation was accurate in one respect. But though the delight was indeed unsurpassed for some, the pain that counterbalanced it for others was equally so.

The years events were unparalleled in English history. There had been monarchs before Edward VIII who had been variously wicked, heroic, incompetent, vain and saintly. There had never been a king who had abdicated his throne so that he could marry. If previous rulers had wished to take a wife and found the status quo against them, they acted with brutal force.

Social change on this level was not an option for Edward, who lacked a brilliant and pliant advisor to bring about his desired reforms. Instead, he was pitted against the most powerful figures in British society, many of whom tried to frustrate his wishes. Some acted out of principle; others from personal animosity. It should have been an unequal contest, but Edward was both king and in possession of considerable charisma and charm. Accordingly, the battle of wits and influence that ensued was more balanced than has often been assumed. Victory was far from assured for either side until the conclusion of the crisis, and if the half-compromise, half-defeat that Edward was presented with was a triumph for the forces of establishment conservatism, it was not without significant damage to its proponents along the way.