The English love to hate Wallis Simpson. She is vilified as the gold-digging sex goddess who stole our film-star king, Edward VIII. Hugo Vickers has spent a lifetime following Wallis. At the age of twelve, when most children his age were in thrall to the Beatles, Hugo was a fan of the Duchess of Windsor. His researches have convinced him that Wallis has been unfairly treated, and that she was not a villain but a victim. This was true throughout her life, but never more so than at the end.

Wallis, the widowed Duchess of Windsor, spent her last years incarcerated in a living grave in her villa in the Bois de Boulogne. Barely able to speak, mentally confused and paralysed by rheumatism and strokes, she had almost ceased to exist as a person. She lay all day