[applause] Yvonne Hunter: Good evening, everyone. My name is Yvonne Hunter and I'm the head
of programming here at the Appel Salon at the Toronto Public Library. I'd like to welcome you all tonight. We're going to have a great chat with Jennifer
Hunter from the Toronto Star and Andrew Morton, who is the bestselling author of a number
of books and has arrived in New York last night or this morning, I think, and arrived
in Toronto here and has been doing some media. So, I'm gonna turn it over to Bob Hepburn,
my esteemed colleague from the Toronto Star. And with no further ado, I'd like to welcome
Bob Hepburn. Bob Hepburn: Thank you for coming. Toronto Star has been sponsoring these Star
Talks for about five years now. We've had everywhere from Rick Mercer to Margaret
Trudeau, we never did get Rob Ford to come in to the Star Talk. [laughter] S?: He's available now. BH: He's available now, that's true. [laughter] BH: My role here tonight is to introduce Jennifer
Hunter and Andrew Morton. I gotta have notes 'cause they both have long,
long careers. Jennifer is a veteran journalist, an editor
with a wealth of experience after years of covering authors, political leaders, including
a politician known as Barack Obama before he became famous. These days, Jennifer is one of the Star's
top feature writers, which she displays every Sunday in a column that appears in our book
sections. In that column, she focuses on authors in
Canadian fiction and non-fiction from across the country and from around the world. BH: Before becoming a columnist for the Star,
Jennifer was our foreign editor, managing bureaus from Jerusalem to Washington, Beijing
to London. Prior to joining the Star in 2008, she was
an award-winning political columnist and editorial writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, the time
when she also made appearances on CNN and shows such as the Today Show. Over her career, she's been an associate publisher
and editor-in-chief of the North Shore Magazine in Chicago, bureau chief in Vancouver for
Maclean's Magazine, an associate professor of journalism at Ryerson and a reporter from
another local paper named The Globe and Mail. [laughter] BH: Andrew Morton. Well, I don't think anyone in here really
needs an introduction to Andrew Morton. There may be three people who don't know about
him, though. He became an international bestselling author
and a royal biographer, only after quitting his day job as a journalist, after having
worked for three of London's biggest newspapers. He rose to worldwide prominence with the publication
of Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words. In later years, Andrew authored biographies
on such celebrities as Madonna, Tom Cruise, I like that one, Monica Lewinsky, Angelina
Jolie, soccer star David Beckham and his wife, Victoria, otherwise known as Posh who were
then known as the King and Queen of Pop Culture. That book was a number one bestseller in the
UK and elsewhere. In 2011 Andrew returned to writing about the
royals with a book, William & Catherine: Their Story. And now he has just published his latest royal
book, I'll call it a royal book, 17 Carnations: The Royals, the Nazis and the Biggest Cover-Up
in History. It's about Edward VIII, that woman named Wallis,
and Hitler. BH: It's a book that took him three years
to write with the help of four researchers. As Andrew said in an interview with the Star's
book editor, DeborAM Dundas which appeared last Sunday, or Saturday, "It's got everything. It's got intrigue, it's got cover-up. In many ways I uncovered a lot more than I
ever expected." Tonight, Andrew Morton, always controversial,
always fascinating, will tell you what he uncovered. Please welcome Andrew Morton, Jennifer Hunter. [applause] Jennifer Hunter: So I'm gonna start from the
beginning of your book, and what I thought about Prince Edward when I read about him
in your book was that if People Magazine and Style had been around, that he would've been
featured every week because he had, as you say, matinee idol looks, personal charms,
scads of money, but he wasn't a happy man. What was going on in his life? Andrew Morton: Yes, one of the things about
Edward VIII, or the Prince of Wales as he was in those days, and it's fascinating really
because it all started here in Canada when he came in 1919 and he saw a different vista
to what he was used to at Buckingham Palace. It was a freer country, there was more opportunity. He really enjoyed himself, so much so that
he bought a ranch in Alberta that he hoped to retire to. But he projected this wonderfully charming
image, and women wanted to dance with him and a little bit more. [laughter] Mothers hoped that their daughters
would catch his eye and dance with him, and a lot more, and gentlemen looked at what he
was wearing and they went down to their local haberdasheries and bought it. AM: So, he was a charismatic figure. He was the royal version of the then silent
matinee idol, Rudolph Valentino, and when he appeared in public, and there's pictures
in the book from Halifax, Nova Scotia, he looks the image of the 1920s iconer, cigarette
in his mouth, a big smile, cheery smile, everybody around him looking very happy. But, away from the public he was miserable,
he was depressed, he was often suicidal; he was morose. When he was on these long tours around the
empire that his father, George V sent him on, he would spend his days in his cabin depressed. He hated the very idea of what he used to
call, "princing", and that was to say, doing this kind of thing, standing around, walking
amongst you, shaking hands, doing the glad handing; he hated it, he just longed for what... His favourite word was "informality", and
in a funny way it all started with Canada because Canada, for him, was a different world
to the world he was used to at Balmoral, at Sandringham, which was so stuffy. AM: He then went to New York, had a great
time, had a ticker tape parade. George V took a pretty dim view though when
it was revealed that his equerry, a chap called Fruity Metcalfe... You can't make these names up you know! [laughter]
It's like some character right out of Downton Abbey. [laughter] Anyway, they found his wallet in
a prostitute's bedroom in 92nd Street. George V thought, "Hmm, that's a bit too strong
for our future king," and so he banned him from going abroad. So thereafter... Or going to America. So thereafter, this morose future king was
confined to barracks as it were. JH: What was the relationship with his parents
like, Queen Mary, his mother, and George V, his father? AM: Well, when you look at the offspring of
George V and Queen Mary, it's quite a dysfunctional family. You have his younger brother, the Duke of
Kent, he was apparently bisexual, had affairs with Noel Coward, was involved with drugs
with a girl called Kiki Preston. And it's very interesting isn't it that there
are no papers, no correspondence, no letters in existence, either at Windsor Castle or
elsewhere. Strange, that, isn't it that this bisexual
royal, who led a very colourful life, there's no record of it. His other brother's the Duke of York was notoriously
a stammerer, not particularly quick and he... And Edward was quite bright but he had a very
chilly relationship with his parents. Chips Channon, the famous diarist, he used
to say that talking to Queen Mary was like addressing St. Paul's. [laughter] They were a distant couple, and
that's an understatement. In fact, Edward learned to crochet because
his mother crocheted in order to kind of be close, it's kind of pathetic really, to be
closer to his parents. So and at school, standard. He was bullied. They poured red ink into his hair. On one occasion they pulled up the sash from
the window, put his head in and did a mock execution. He had one nanny who used to stick pins in
him. So this was a dysfunctional family. You'd have social workers full time there. [laughter] JH: I should just mention that Colin Firth
played the Duke of York as George VI in the "King's Speech". AM: That's right. I'll let you in to a secret. There was a film made about the Diana book
a few years ago. It's called "The Biographer" and they used
to say to me, "Who would you like to play you? And I said, as a joke, 'cause I'm six foot
four, "Danny DeVito". [laughter] AM: But they then asked Colin Firth, because
he's better looking than me and he turned it down, sadly, to play George VI. So there you are. A little bit of film history for you. JH: Since Queen Victoria was accepted that
English Princes and Princesses would marry into German royalty, when Adolf Hitler began
to encourage a union between a German Princess, Frederica Brunswick and Prince Edward, the
only thing that was really strange in this plot was the matchmaker. Why did Hitler put so much stock in the future
of the British Prince of Wales? AM: Well as I chart in the book, this is a
curious love affair. A distant, but intimate relationship between
the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII and Adolf Hitler. I think the only thing they had in common
was that their fathers were very distant. Adolf Hitler's father used to beat him when
he came back from the beer garden. But Hitler had a very Victorian point of view
when it came to dynastic unions. He thought, "Well, what's good enough for
Queen Victoria is good enough for me". She always used to rule that an English Prince
had to marry a German Princess and so Hitler looked around and thought "Right. Princess Frederica, she's 17. Duke and Duchess of Brunswick, ardent Nazis. Prince of Wales, bachelor. Let's put them together and then we've got
an ally on the throne of England." The Brunswick family, the Duke and Duchess,
were horrified at the idea of this because there was what? A 23 year age difference. The Prince of Wales is rapidly approaching
his 40s and Frederica was only 17. AM: So Hitler really saw Edward... He was almost like a cat idly watching a mouse
at play. He was kind of almost like Tom and Jerry. One of these cartoons. 'Cause Hitler used to watch all these cartoons,
all these Disney cartoons. Watch Mickey Mouse and the only time that
he wasn't doing that, he was watching Pathé newsreels of Edward the VIII, of the Prince
of Wales, of Edward. And Goebbels used to bring his propaganda
minister, who used to bring these canisters of film to his mountain retreat and he'd sit
there in his leather chair and watch Edward. It was a kind of a curious relationship. JH: Wallis Simpson was American, she'd been
married twice and during the time she met the Prince, she was having an affair also
with a Ford used car salesman. She wasn't pretty, she wasn't rich. What was it about her that dazzled Prince
Edward? AM: That's a good question. I got some... When I was doing the research for this book,
I got some newsreel or some film made by a chap called Herman Rogers who was a great
friend of Wallis Simpson. I actually believe that she was rather in
love with him. He was a very attractive American playboy,
really, who was married to Catherine Rogers and he took lots of footage of Wallis Simpson. And I agree with you. When you look at pictures of Wallis, she doesn't
look too great. She's a very manly, there's nothing particularly
vivid about her. But then you look at the films that he made
on board the cruise ship at Balmoral, and she's vital, she's alive. She's full of fun. I think that's what attracted Edward to Wallis. Of course there was all these rumours around
that when she was in China, in Shanghai and Peking, during the 1920s, she worked in a
brothel to make ends meet so to speak. [laughter] AM: And she learned all these, shall we say,
exotic techniques. Is anybody under 21 here? And she learnt these exotic techniques which
she applied to Prince Edward. Now let me say this. [chuckle] AM: When Edward and Wallis were about to marry,
there was a book out called "Coronation Commentary" which suggested that Wallis and Edward had
been lovers before they married. Now, Edward was prepared to sue. He said, "I did not have sex with that woman." [laughter] AM: This is the curious thing. Wallis Simpson is supposed to be the sexiest
woman alive and yet, they seem to have a very platonic relationship. Genevieve mentioned Guy Trundle this dancer. Sorry, used car salesman who was a very good
dancer. At the time, hence the title of the book,
"17 Carnations," at the time, she was also supposed to be having an affair with Hitler's
right hand man, a chap called Joachim von Ribbentrop, a rather pompous, self-important,
but charming diplomat who was sent to London to woo Edward. Well, apparently, he also wooed Mrs. Simpson
and used to send her 17 carnations, a bouquet of 17 carnations, these big bouquets of flowers
everyday to her place in central London. She was throwing these bouquets of flowers
out all the time because Edward was also sending these flowers as well. So, she was a very busy girl. That's all I can say about Wallis Simpson. JH: The 17 carnations, I was gonna ask you
about that, but the number of carnations, like it wasn't a dozen carnations or two dozen. It was 17. AM: It was 17 carnations because that signified
the number of times that they'd actually done the deed and in fact, this wasn't just hearsay. It went wildfire around London, around the
diplomats in Berlin. In fact, Hitler summoned Ribbentrop back to
Berlin to explain himself and you can imagine the scene because Hitler did not have a great
sense of humour, but even he found it amusing, but he was supposed to be having an affair
with the King's lover. So, he was going above and beyond his duty. JH: Someone said to me, "Couldn't he afford
roses?" [laughter] AM: Well, I have to say, speaking for myself,
I do not find carnations the finest of flowers. They're okay if you are a used car salesman. [laughter] JH: When... AM: But let me just finish this. Guy Trundle, this guy who's allegedly the
lover... Now, how did they know about this? Well, the King and the Prime Minister, Baldwin,
were so concerned about what was going on with Edward and Mrs. Simpson, and Ernest Simpson,
they thought that Edward was being blackmailed, because here's this couple of American arrivistes. Nobody knows anything about them. They've arrived here. Edward's buying diamonds for her, sapphires,
furs, the rest of it and so, they sent Scotland Yard's finest chap called Superintendent Canning
to follow Ernest and Wallis around. Now Ernest, was boasting to people in the
pub, "I'm gonna be made a baron." Wallis was out shopping with Edward and calling
each other darling. And he made this pretty pungent report to
the commissioner of police and this was believed. At the time, 1935, silver jubilee... King George V silver jubilee, and they thought
that Edward was being blackmailed by these two American arrivistes. JH: When the prince became Edward VIII, he
renounced his throne for the famous quote, "The woman I love," but this really irritated
Hitler and the Nazi hierarchies. So, tell me a bit about that. AM: Well, Hitler thought he had a guy in place. He had the man in the top job. He believed that by being on throne you also
had incredible political influence and these are what the historians call the respectable
years of the Nazi Party and Hitler. He was, basically, softening up British public
opinion, softening up the high society, softening up politicians, and also softening up Edward
so that when he invaded the Rhineland in March 1936, in direct contravention of The Treaty
of Versailles. AM: Remember, Germany lost the war and Germany,
very cleverly, made it seem like they were equal partners between Britain and Germany
by using people like Edward VIII to invite Ribbentrop and others for dinner and so on. Hitler thought, "Well, this is great. I've got my man on the throne." And after the invasion of the Rhineland Edward
summoned Baldwin, the Prime Minister, and said, "I don't want you to do anything. I don't want you to interfere at all." Now, it meant that Hitler was home and hosed,
because the week before he ordered the occupation of the Rhineland, Hitler had spent the weekend
in his mountain retreat, pacing up and down trying to decide what to do. You can imagine Hitler and the Nazis weren't
as powerful as they became. They had faced a lot of internal opposition. Their military units were not very strong
and they didn't have much Petrov. The whole thing was pretty ramshackle. It was an audacious move on his part, a really
audacious move. AM: He put all the money on getting Seven
and he got Seven because France did nothing, the British did nothing. And historians say that if the British and
the French had acted against Hitler, goodbye. So, it was very important that Hitler sees
Edward on the throne. So, he was devastated when his pal Edward
abdicates, and he's baffled. Hitler's point of view is he wants the Third
Reich to be the greatest German Empire the world has ever seen. Here's a man who already rules over the greatest
empire the world has ever seen and what's he doing? Walking away from it for a woman he'd never
had sex with. He never even... [laughter] AM: Call me old fashioned but it's not a very
good bargain. JH: The Windsors, the family essentially turned
their backs on Edward VIII after he gave up the throne and he married Mrs. Simpson. His successor, our Queen Elizabeth's father,
George VI did not want his elder brother to even live in Britain. They refused to accept Mrs. Simpson or give
her a royal title. In fact, Queen Elizabeth's mother, also Queen
Elizabeth, called her "That woman." None of the royals would attend the wedding
and his family just turned their backs on him. AM: That woman was a compliment compared to
some of the things that was said. "Lowest of the low."George V's right hand
man, his private secretary thought that Wallis Simpson was a vampire. Another courtier, and this is all serious,
thought she was a witch. Queen Mary went to see a psychologist who
convinced her that Wallis Simpson was a sexual hypnotist. Well, I'd love to meet one of those. [laughter] AM: So, the royal family blamed Wallis Simpson
for everything. And to give Wallis Simpson her due, "Here's
this woman from Baltimore. What does she know about British society? What does she know about European politics? Not an awful lot." As you know most Americans think that London
is a suburb of Paris. It's not really within her bailiwick to know
this kind of thing, yet the royal family blamed her. And she very presciently said, "They'll blame
me for it," which is one of the reasons why she'd never wanted to marry him. And Edward was besotted with Wallis, but Wallis
could see the trapdoor opening, and she could see no way of escaping it. Because yes, she was enjoying all the diamonds
and the sapphires and the furs and the rest of it because as far as she was concerned
he was a very generous host and she was acting as his hostess. AM: But at the height of the abdication crisis,
she said, "No, I don't want to... I will step aside." It's Edward that pursued her, but it's Edward
that was not blamed by royal family. The royal family loathed Mrs. Simpson and
quite frankly so did most of the British public. And she did not have the face that launched
a 1000 ships, so as a result she was seen as the other woman, this woman who'd somehow
used her sexual magnetism to draw him away. When actually as we said earlier on, he never
wanted to be king. His nanny wrote to Queen Mary and said, "See,
I remember him as a little boy saying he never wanted to be king." And we forget that he'd had these grand passions
before with Freda Dudley Ward and Thelma Furness, where he'd written endless love letters to
these two Americans. "I'm so DIPPY to die with YOU," and all that
kind of stuff. It's kinda of embarrassing to read, never
mind to write. [laughter] AM: And so, Wallis Simpson, to be fair to
her, she never expected he would renounce his throne. She never even considered for a moment she'd
be queen. She just thought that she was one more lover
on the conveyor belt of his life but the conveyor belt stopped December 1936. JH: And her husband just seemed to step aside,
too, Ernest Simpson, he didn't block the way. AM: Well, as I say in the book, I think that
Ernest Simpson had been having a long-term affair with Mary Raffray. Mary Raffray was this old school friend of
Wallis Simpson, and had comforted Earnest on his business trips to New York. So, I rather think that what happened is Earnest
decided, "Okay. I'm gonna leave Wallis. I'm not gonna pay for Wallis. I don't have the money. It's the Depression. My shipping business isn't doing well. I'll ask... " And this is extraordinary scene between
the King, the new King and Ernest Simpson where Ernest Simpson says, "Will you take
my wife off of my hands?" [laughter] AM: And he kind of gets off his chair and
he says, "How do you expect me to rule without her by my side?" "Okay. Just write me a check." [laughter] AM: And that's roughly how it went. JH: Now, that the new Duke and Duchess of
Windsor were very enamoured of the Nazis. In fact, many of the privileged English aristocracy
were enamoured of the Nazis. And they believed that Nazis were good thing,
because the economy of Germany have been fractured after World War I and the Nazis were doing
things to improve the economy and build Germany. Today, this seems like a very strange and
disturbing point of view to think that the Nazis were a positive force the way the British
thought of them. AM: Well not really. Look at the devastation caused by the first
World War. I don't wanna talk about today's foreign policy
but we all think "Well what's happened in Iraq and elsewhere, do we wanna send our troops
into harm's way again?" Well, let's have the same argument but there's
been millions of people killed on the battle fields of Europe during the first World War. Do we want to have another European conflagration
some less than 20 years afterwards? Well the answer is a resounding "No," and
so Edward had seen the horrors of World War I at first hand. There's a famous story where he's steps away
from his chauffeur driven car, goes to look at a no man's land, by the time he gets back
his chauffeur's been killed because there'd been a shrapnel burst. AM: So he sees how the difference between
life and death is very slender. And also Hitler was seen to have brought stability
to the Weimar Republic, which was as we all know they were carrying their wages home in
wheelbarrows because of inflation. He hated the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks remember? They shot Czar Nicholas II and his family
during the Revolution, and Czar Nicholas was Edward's godfather, and he saw that Hitler
had brought stability to Germany. It was a bulwark against the Soviets, and
so he hoped that they would one day slug it out and leave Britain to have the empire. JH: The Duke's relationship though with Hitler
went beyond what was socially and politically accepted. He went so far as to even meet Hitler, I think
was it at Hitler's home in the mountains? AM: YeAM. JH: Summer home? And gave him a Nazi Heil, and he liked the
deference that the Germans paid to him. Hitler had bold plans for the Duke. AM: Absolutely, yes. The first major visit that the Duke and Duchess
made after they married was to go to Germany and she was treated like a queen. It was a royal visit. So here's Edward thinking "Well I've given
up my throne but I'm not gonna give up the trappings". And so what does he do? He goes to Germany where they call the Duchess
"Your Royal Highness" a title that George VI and the rest of the royal family refused
to confer on her. They were curtseying, they were bowing, they
were meeting the local German aristocracy, they were deferred to, there were big crowds
in the streets. And let's not forget Edward was a terribly
charismatic man. He had great appeal and that's why the royal
family was so horrified that he'd gone because quite frankly George VI was... Did not seem physically or mentally up to
the job and they were horrified that Edward who had all the attributes of being a glowing
King had walked away from the job. AM: And then they see him going to Germany
and parading himself through the streets doing modified Nazi salutes as though he's kind
of like a shadow king. And then they... Then finally this kind of relationship between
Hitler and Edward is consummated when they meet in his mountain retreat and speak for
some 50 minutes. As they were leaving Hitler turned to an aide
and said "Well Wallis would have made a very good queen." And they were never off his radar, ever. There was a moment during this and maybe we
can come back to this in a minute. But there's a moment during the Second World
War were Hitler, Ribbentrop, and Göring went to Chateau Conde which is where the royal
couple married in 1937 and they went to the library, there was two portraits of the Duke
and Duchess and they stood there solemnly and gave them the Nazi salute. So it was respect from one group of soldiers
for another. JH: But the Brits were very upset about this
and in your book you quote Lord Caldecote, Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, who
wrote that "There was a grave uneasiness about the Duke's inclinations, because he's well
known to be pro-Nazi and he may become the center of intrigue. We regard it as a real danger that he should
move freely on the continent. Even if he were willing to return to this
country, his presence here would be most embarrassing to His Majesty and the government." In fact this was true, the Duke had become
the center of intrigue and the Duke and Duchess sought refuge in Portugal during the war,
but Hitler tried to lure them to Spain and that was part of the intrigue." Can you explain? AM: Yes, yes indeed. Edward and Mrs. Simpson were the center of
a group of intense Nazi machinations. What happened is that they were in the south
of France, they had a villa down there and the Nazis were coming down through France,
the Italians were on the French border. And so of course as you do when you're ex-king
you call up the local British embassy and say "Can you send a destroyer to pick me up?" [laughter] AM: Bizarrely there were no destroyers available. For some reason they were on business carrying
troops from the shores of Dunkirk, and worrying about the fact that the Nazis were 30 miles
away from Britain's shores. So he was told to make his way to Spain. He makes his way to Spain. Of course it's a three car... Four car convoy, one van is just for their
luggage, 266 pieces. I don't know why they travel so light, quite
frankly. But anyway, they get to Spain and, of course,
Franco's fascist Spain was kind of a neutral but ally of the Germans. And then, starts a series of haphazard incidents,
which culminate in this plot to drag the Duke and Duchess into the Nazi orbit. The plot is called Operation Willy. And the idea is that the Duke and Duchess
will be inveigled away to stay in Spain and the Duke, who they all saw as a man of peace,
would stand in readiness for when Hitler wanted to use him and restore him to the British
throne as King. AM: Now, Edward did everything but say "Yes,
please," because his behaviour was extraordinary, to say the least. First of all he made... Remember he's a Major General in the British
Army. He made silent and sly and very secretive
contact with the Nazis and said "Would you please look after my rented home in Paris
and in the South of France for the duration of the war?" Now, he didn't even own these houses, he was
just renting them. And then, Wallis got in on the act. She said to the local American consul "Look,
I've got a really nice swimsuit. It's in the chateau in the South of France. Can you send somebody around to pick it up?" And so somebody goes goes around, picks up
the swimsuit, brings it back, and that operation was known as Operation Cleopatra Whim. [laughter] AM: And not to be outdone, Edward then asks
again through a contact, asks the Nazis "Can we send our maid to Paris. We've got some wonderful silverware and some
very fine linen that we need to be picked up and brought back for us." So, the Nazis... Now remember this is at a time when in the
bigger picture Halifax, Butler, other British politicians are quietly seeking a peace deal. So, what are the Nazis thinking? "Oh, we're thinking that Edward is all part
of this. He's contacting us, he's also talking garrulously
around the dinner tables of Madrid and Lisbon." "Well, only heavy bombing will bring Britain
to the negotiating table. My brother, George VI is stupid. The Queen is conniving." Very disloyal, treacherous, some would say
treasonous. So, all the signals were going out to the
Nazis. "All you've got to do is knock on the door
and they'll come running." They offered the Duke a castle, a palace in
Rhonda, in the South of Spain, very nice, too, 50 million Swiss francs, about $200 million
today. Although I've noticed the Canadian Dollar's
down a bit, so probably about a billion. [laughter] AM: Anyway, so the Germans took this very
seriously indeed. And at the time, the Windsors were totally
in the doghouse with the British government. Churchill wrote to Windsor and said "Unless
you obey orders, you could face a court martial." And the orders were "Get your asses out of
Europe and go to the BAMamas where you're gonna be governor." Effectively into banishment. And that was a word that Churchill used. And so, during this period, there are all
kinds of skullduggery. Hitler, who took this plot, Operation Willy,
very seriously, he sent his top spymaster, a chap called Walter Schellenberg, to kidnap
them from Lisbon, bring them to Spain, where they would be kept under armed guard, under
arrest. AM: And Edward and Mrs. Simpson were in very
bad order with the British embassy. They kept away from the British embassy, they
thought they were going to be arrested. The British embassy held their passports 'cause
they thought they were gonna flee. So, relations were at an all time low. And then, the Nazis started feeding information,
which the Duke and Duchess believed, that they were about to be assassinated, that the
British government were sending them to the BAMamas so that they could be bumped off,
and they believed this. So, at this critical moment... It could have gone either way, but as it was,
they agreed to go to the BAMamas but only after the Duke had insisted that two soldiers
would be withdrawn from the British Army to act as his manservants whilst he was in the
BAMamas. Well, you know what it's like for you in the
tropics. It's hell's own job to dress. You need a man to help you. [laughter] AM: And that's why he got these two manservants. Of course, forget about the defense of Britain,
and Dover, White Cliffs. No, we need our manservants to look after
us. JH: They seemed to be, the two of them, in
la la land. The fact that she's asking for her bathing
suit, her green bathing suit, I think... AM: Nile green. JH: To be delivered, and her linens and he
wanted... AM: What some people will do for 600 thread
count. JH: After World War II, everyone discovered
that the Duke never believed the British could win. And he even... You talked about this a bit earlier, proposed
replacing his brother and becoming a sort of Presidential King of a sort. Can you tell us a bit about that? AM: Edward said all kinds of things. He believed that he could be restored to the
throne. He was standing in readiness to act as Edward
the Peacemaker, and I can not emphasize enough what a talisman for peace he was. George VI had negative charisma. Edward VII was an international figure. And for example, at the start of the war,
a wildfire rumour went round Germany saying that Edward had replaced George VI as King
and that he was suing for peace. Factories stopped, people ran into the street. They were embracing one another because they
believed in Edward and during the 1930s, he was a very, very popular figure. And so, for him, he just thought he was doing
the right thing by acting as a kind of peacemaker. Forget the fact that his brother was the King
and that he was basically living in exile but he pursued that aim. JH: I'd like to get a bit to the subtitle
of your book, "The Royals, The Nazis and the Biggest Cover-up in History". So, I wanted to ask you about the biggest
cover-up. AM: YeAM. It's an understated title I think. [laughter] Basically, what happened all this
may have... We may never have known this but for the fact
that the Germans kept very meticulous records. The German Foreign Office and the various
ambassadors in Madrid and Lisbon sent their reports back to Berlin and they were... So, all this information about the Duke and
Duchess was there. And what happened at the end of the war a
file, a microfilm was discovered in a battered tin box in a country estate in Germany. They went through the microfilm and here's
conversations between Ribbentrop and Molotov, the Russian Foreign Minister, between Franco
and Mussolini and the Japanese. And the British and the Americans thought,
"Whoopee. This is pay dirt. We've got all the evidence we need to show
that the Germans were behind the Second World War. They orchestrated it. They're the ones to blame. Our sacrifices have not been in vain. And the rest of the world will see the justice
of our case." AM: And then they're going through it. "AM-oh! What's that? Windsor file. Oh dear, now what do we do?" And so, there then started this enormous cover-up. How do we stop these documents about the Duke
of Windsor, which would be terribly embarrassing for him. Remember this is 1945, the concentration camps
had just been emptied, the hideous contours of the Nazi regime had just been unveiled
and people are really beginning to appreciate what this war's been about. And the awfulness of everything. And that would have been devastating both
for the Duke of Windsor but also for the Monarchy, because they did not want the Monarchy to
be stained by association. Remember he's an ex-king. So, Attlee, the Prime Minister, Churchill,
the war leader, Dwight Eisenhower, the head of Allied Command, Foreign Office Minister
Bevin, all agreed "These files are toxic, these files do not represent what the Duke
of Windsor really felt, let's destroy them". AM: But the Americans had a copy. There were two copies made and the State Department
had it and various historians and academics, who were deputed to the State Department said,
"Hang on a minute. You can not be destroying history. You can't destroy... This is the historic record. It's against the law." And it was against the law. So, the State Department said, "Well, sorry
chaps but we can't destroy it." And it started a long process where the special
relationship started to be strained and stretched as academics and civil servants and others
were pitted against one another. This is an awful lot of distrust then because
the British were disbelieved. Every action that the British took, the Americans
thought, "AM, it's 'cause they're trying to hide the Windsor file." JH: When did the world learn of the Duke's
perfidy? When did that become public? AM: Well, what happened is that they in conjunction
with trying to destroy the file, they also decided to publish many files and it took
12 years before they got round to publishing this file. Now that was in 1957 and by then obviously
George VI had passed away. Queen Elizabeth was on the throne. And the Duke of Windsor by 1957 was a fairly
marginal figure, a playboy prince. People counting how much luggage he took with
him from Palm Beach to Paris to the South of France. So, when it came out, he was portrayed very
cleverly by the Foreign Office as the victim of all this, but not someone who was in anyway
active. That he was... That the Nazis had this terrible scheme to
lure him away but he'd been a stalwart defender. And you have to ask yourself the question,
if it was irrelevant, if these files are irrelevant, if indeed the Duke of Windsor had nothing
to answer and nothing to fear, why on earth did the British spend so much political and
diplomatic capital in trying to destroy them? And that is what I found the most fascinating
thing about this book. That they spent so much capital in trying
to destroy these files. JH: It was really historians who put a stop
to it though, they started to write about it. AM: YeAM, it was a Stanford University professor,
called David Harris, he took on the government Goliath, as it were, and said, "We're not
gonna have this," because we've seen what the British did in the past, they've destroyed
important documents relating to Queen Elizabeth I's love life under the orders of Queen Victoria. You cannot destroy the historical documents. And we've seen the terrible events in Syria,
where ISIS have been destroying these statues and so on, destroying history, and this is
what the British were trying to do, they were trying to destroy history. And as a historian, it's something that it
is sacred. And in fairness to the translators and the
archivists of Germany, they were ordered to destroy the documents on pain of death and
the SS were there looking over them and making sure that they did it, but what they did,
because they believed themselves that the archives were the bones of a nation. What they did was, they burnt the duplicates
and hid many of the originals, and that's why so many of the war criminals at Nuremberg
were found guilty, they were found guilty on the basis of their own evidence, on their
own documents and on their own papers. JH: Which had been hidden. Finally, what do you want us to take away
from this? What understanding do you want us to have? AM: Well I think that one of the themes of
my working life has always been the difference between image and reality, the fairytale and
the lifting up the stone to see what was underneath. And it's the same with this, that initially
you're thinking about this is the great love story of the 20th century, the man who gave
up his throne for love, these two royal lovers. And we're not talking about Kim Kardashian
and Kanye West, we're talking about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and then you see what's
really going on with their relationships with Hitler, but also with the British establishment. Because you see that the British mentality
is always to reach for the blue pen to censor, and the American's is far more towards disclosure. JH: Okay. I think we should turn to the audience now... Speaker 5: Andrew, thank you for being here,
it's just terrific, as you can see from all the crowd. Hypothetical question, if the Duke of Windsor,
Edward VIII stayed on throne. When he died, George VI had died, would it
have then gone, I've always wanted to know this, would it then have gone to the Duke
of Gloucester, and then the Gloucester sons, and so our Queen would never come into the
thing? Do you know the answer to that? AM: Oh that's a good one. I always hate those kind of questions. [laughter] AM: 'Cause I'm rubbish on all these family
trees. But I would have thought it would go to Elizabeth. I think it would go to Elizabeth. S5: 'Cause it went through the brothers first,
didn't it? AM: YeAM, if he'd of stayed on the throne,
would we be sitting here today, I wonder? S5: Oh, I know. [chuckle] AM: In fact, there's some of you, if you've
been to London, you know Trafalgar Square with the four plinths and Nelson's Column,
there's a forth plinth that's empty and there's a theory that because Wallis Simpson did us
a favour and took Edward VIII away from our shores, we should have a fourth plinth dedicated
to Wallis Simpson. [laughter] S5: I was there last week and it was a blue
cockatoo, was it? That was on that corner. AM: That's right yeAM, that's right. Thank you. S5: Thank you very much. Speaker 6: Andrew, thank you. What I'd like to know is what was the most
startling fact that you uncovered that really shocked you? AM: Well what shocked me was what I've just
been talking about, the fact that it's 12 years that Churchill... In fact, I was shocked by Churchill, quite
frankly. Because here was a man who had really fallen
out with the Duke of Windsor, he saw him as a surrogate son like his son, Randolph, he'd
always given him great leeway. And Edward behaved really badly during World
War II, and Winston Churchill was sick of him, but in 1945, he was prepared to destroy
the historical record out of deference to Edward VIII, even though he used the historical
record himself, cabinet papers and so on, to write his story of World War II, which
eventually won him the Nobel Prize for Literature, I think in 1952. S6: Thank you. AM: Thank you. Speaker 7: Hello Andrew. AM: Hi. S7: I feel very privileged to be here this
evening and my question to you is, it's been a fact that as far as, I'd heard even from
childhood, that Edward obviously was an advocate of the Nazi Final Solution, and was an antisemite
himself, and I'm wondering if you would be kind enough to elucidate about that very important
aspect of the war and Edward's compliance. AM: Well, I think Edward and antisemitism,
his antisemitism was similar to that of many of the British aristocracy, that they weren't
allowed in their clubs, and neither were Roman Catholics. And, quite frankly, it wasn't until well into
the Queen's reign that any Jews and any Roman Catholics were employed. So he... There's a quote from one of George V's friends
who said, "I don't consort with Jews and Asiatics." It was an easy racism, and the British aristocracy
and Edward was no different from many aristocracies around the world. S7: But I'm more interested in as far as his
attitude or anything that would place him as encouraging or at least applauding Hitler's
motivation for the Final Solution. AM: First of all the Final Solution was not
agreed until the Wannsee Conference in 1940. So and by then Britain was at war and so I
don't think that that would really apply to Edward. What I'm saying is he had a general view. To kind of conflate that with the Final Solution,
I think is a bit of a stretch. S7: Thank you very much. Speaker 8: Yes. I just wanted to ask, if in your research,
you discovered about anything about the death of Prince George and the connections to the
Nazis, and also the relationship between King Edward and Prince George? AM: That's a good question. We're talking about the Duke of Kent who died
in 1942. His relationship with Prince George was very
close until the abdication, and the irony is... And also, Prince George was acting as a kind
of a backdoor peace negotiator on behalf of the King, George VI. And I've always thought that if Prince George
and the Duke of Windsor had worked together they may have had some kind of influence,
but what was happening is that Prince George was working on behalf of the King trying to
bring about some kind of peace negotiations before the war started with the Germans. They had a great relationship before he abdicated,
after he abdicated they never saw one another again apart from a very brief period, a week
in Austria. And in fact he was in Lisbon at the same... At the time that Duke of Windsor was sent
there, and when he was asked, "Do you want to see your brother?" He said, "Good God, no" and that was it. JH: Over to Yvonne now. S1: Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank
you very much. Andrew's going to be signing books at the
back of the room so there may be an opportunity to quickly bring a question to him if you
still have one when you're at the back. Please join me in thanking Jennifer Hunter
and Andrew Morton for a very good evening. [applause]
