READER'S DIGEST RECOMMENDED READ: Royally Exiled

Andrew Lownie recounts the scandal that rocked the Royal Family in the 1940s

SOME PARTICULARLY OBSESSIVE readers of this magazine might remember that a year ago our Recommended Read was a book about Edward VIII’s abdication in 1936. Now, Andrew Lownie explains what happened next— and the results aren’t always pretty.

As the title suggests, Lownie’s main contention is that Edward’s pro-German attitudes in the 1930s weren’t simply a question of a naïve determination to avoid war. Instead, they stemmed from a mixture of personal ambition and genuine ideology (even after the war, Edward would tell dinner guests that “the Jews had Germany in their tentacles”).

In 1937, Edward and Wallis Simpson—the wife for whom he famously gave up the throne—went on a “fact-finding” tour of Germany that included tea with Hitler. As Lownie pretty conclusively demonstrates, until the summer of 1940 the Duke of Windsor (as he’d become) was—at the very least—interested in a German plan to re-install him on the British throne as part of a negotiated peace.

Certainly, Churchill was worried enough to pack off the couple to the Bahamas, where the Duke served as governor throughout the war. After that, though, the problem remained of what an ex-king was supposed to do with his life. As the Royal Family made clear, a return to the UK wasn’t an option—any more than Wallis being allowed to bear the title of Royal Highness.