Alexander Waugh
How Weird was Wallis?
Mrs Simpson: Secret Lives of the Duchess of Windsor
By Charles Higham
Sidgwick & Jackson 557pp £20 order from our bookshop
We all know people (do we not?) who claim to have been conceived from the hot salty tears dripped onto their mothers' laps by the infantile Prince of Wales (subsequently Edward VIII, and then Duke of Windsor). Personally, I have never quite believed in the fertility of tears, but then it is impossible to know precisely what to believe about this extraordinary man and his equally extraordinary wife. He certainly enjoyed weeping onto laps, but they were not always women's; nor, I suppose, was it his intention on these occasions to conceive a royal bastard. When his brother, the King, refused to grant Wallis entitlement to the initials HRH, Edward collapsed with emotion and, testifies his secretary and equerry, Sir Dudley Forwood, put down his beautiful head with its golden hair in my lap and sobbed helplessly. His heart was broken . . . I never saw such agonised grief, even from the bereaved.'
At heart, as Charles Higham's intriguing new recension of his 1988 biography strongly implies, Edward (or David, as he was known to his circle) was a severe case of arrested development. Like his childhood contemporary, Peter Pan, he wanted 'to be a boy forever' - an ambition in which he
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'It is the ... sketches of the local and the overlooked that lend this book its density and drive, and emphasise Britain’s mostly low-key riches – if only you can be bothered to buy an anorak and seek.'
Jonathan Meades on the beauty of brutalism.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/castles-of-concrete
'Cruickshank’s history reveals an extraordinary eclecticism of architectural styles and buildings, from Dutch Revivalism to Arts and Crafts experimentation, from Georgian terraces to Victorian mansion blocks.'
William Boyd on the architecture of Chelsea.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/where-george-eliot-meets-mick-jagger
'The eight years he has spent in solitary confinement have had a devastating impact on his mental health ... human rights organisations believe his detention is punishment for his critical views.'
@lucyjpop on the Egyptian activist and poet Ahmed Douma.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/ahmed-douma