The Duchess of Windsor Hardcover - 2000

From the publisher

It was the love story of the century -- the king and the commoner. In December 1936, King Edward VIII renounced the throne to marry "the woman that I love", Wallis Warfield Simpson, a twice-divorced American. His love quickly became one of the twentieth century's most famous personalities. Until her death in 1986, she was a figure of intrigue and mystery, both admired and reviled.

For years interest in her story has remained constant, resulting in a small library of books. All of these biographies share one quality: a thinly veiled animosity toward the subject.

The Duchess of Windsor sifts the decades of rumor and accusation to reveal the woman behind the legend. The Duchess's hold over her husband, her alleged sexual secrets and experiences, the couple's bitter relationship with the British Royal Family, and their involvement with Hitler and the Third Reich are all fully examined.

From her birth in Pennsylvania in 1896, during the Gilded Age, to her death in Paris in 1986, Greg King takes the reader through a world of privilege, palaces, titles, high society, and love to an accompaniment of hatreds, feuds, conspiracies, and lies. The cast of characters is vast: Lady Diana Cooper; Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West; Nancy Astor; Emerald Cunard; Noel Coward; Cecil Beaton; Lord and Lady Mountbatten; the Vanderbilts; Pamela Harriman; Adolf Hitler; Winston Churchill; and hundreds of others -- politicians and presidents, dictators and socialites.

Using previously untapped sources, the author presents a complete and, for the first time, sympathetic portrait of the Duchess. Wild speculations -- about her past affairs, her domination of the duke, and her tragic and lonely end --are answered.

Wrongly blamed for the abdication crisis, Wallis suffered years of hostility from the Royal Family and much of the world. The truth is infinitely more fascinating than the shallow, pathetic portrait previously painted.