The Duchess of Windsor: The Uncommon Life of Wallis Simpson

More than sixty years on, the relationship between King Edward VIII and Wallis Warfield Simpson, a twice-divorced American woman, remains one of the love affairs of the twentieth century. Its ability still to yield new sensation and capture the front pages all over again has been demonstrated once more in recent weeks with the revelations of the Duchess's affair, once the King had abdicated to marry his mistress and become the Duke of Windsor, with a car salesman allegedly called Guy Trundle. Wrongly blamed for the Abdication crisis, Wallis Simpson suffered constant hostility from the Royal Family and much of the world, and a thinly-veiled animosity towards her informs many accounts of her life. But Greg King has sifted through the decades of rumour and accusation to reveal the woman behind the legend. The truth he discovers is infinitely more fascinating. Marshalling a huge array of documentation, including newly declassified papers in German military files and the Public Records Office, as well as interviews with hundreds of contemporary witnesses, he presents for the first time a complete and sympathetic portrait of the Duchess.