Wallis in Love: The Untold Life of the Duchess of Windsor

the huge difference and it will be of difficulty for biographers going forwards is that people in the 20s 30s and 40s used to write those curious things called letters and now it's everything's on the internet so you've got to snag people when they're when they're alive and I say to this I say to people who are we're friends of Diana for example write it down because you've you'll forget about and it's a piece of history hello everyone thank you for coming inside of the library on a beautiful night I promise it will be just as beautiful in here I'm excited to introduce historical biographer Andrew Morton Morton studied history at the University of Sussex with a focus on the aristocracy and the 1930s his written biographies of members of the royal the British royal family as well as celebrities including Tom Cruise Angelina Jolie and my favorite Madonna he's probably best known for his biography of Diana Princess of Wales Diana her true story and most recently 17 carnations the Royals the Nazis and the biggest cover-up in history I'm so excited to talk to him tonight please welcome Andrew Borden well good evening everybody don't ever say the Brits don't bring the good weather and I promised a good crowd and Thank You Boston for always delivering excellent readers here so I'm gonna ask some questions and then I'm gonna throw it to you guys so you can be thinking of all of your excellent questions that prove this is the best city to have a reading I just want to start by talking about the origin of this book and and when you dove into this topic and this character well some of you may have bought 17 carnations which is my last book I was about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor they're links to the Nazi Party and how the British and American governments had conspired to cover it up and when I was researching that book I got to know the family of a chap called Herman Rogers and he was a man who was very close to Wallace and I wanted to explore that relationship further in addition when I was writing 17 carnations I realized that the kind of the page came alive when Wallace entered the stage because she was an intriguing character and I wanted to know more I wanted to explore more about her relationships and especially her relationship with them with Herman I imagine that happens often in your line of work with your level of research that you start looking into something and someone seemingly minor in a story you might say I'm gonna put a pin in that for later yeah absolutely but you more and more it's it's like you're a film you're doing a film and there's in a you you set up us mmm is there I don't know if it's this always pose but a lot you know so many films it's just they said over like a small city and then they break it down and everybody goes their own sweet way and all that effort goes to waste and I often feel that I mean I get to know people I build up contacts say it's about Tom Cruise or Madonna and then and then you continue your friendship but then you don't write another follow up and this was ideally placed to do a follow-up it also seems like an incredible time to write this book that this character seemed alive to me in the moment that we're in I mean it's just a remarkable time to look at how the world saw a woman and how the how the world might see this woman now yeah absolutely I mean you know when you think that the King abdicated because the woman he wanted to marry was twice divorced with two husbands living and then compare that to May the 19th when you'll see mega Markel biracial American actress also divorced walk down the aisle it's in Jaws George's Chapel I just asked you to do one thing just listen carefully because because beneath the sound of the the choir singing you'll hear a low humming and that hot low humming will be the Duke and Duchess of Windsor spinning in their graves I mean seriously just just listen because they're they're buried at Frogmore which is in the in the grounds of Windsor Castle so yeah so you know in a sense Wallis shows you how far women had to come in at that time because you know she was a little minx she was a flirt Coquet she admitted it so have her friends used to call her the biggest tease alive and she used all her feminine wiles to trap men or to invade them well to seduce men but seduced them in the way that they you know they fell for her well so this is the part that is most interesting one of the things that interest me most about this story is sort of how we perceive as an advice columnist right I'm always looking for love and drama because a lot of it it seemed to pave the way this relationship for a love based Union and and a real desire for a partner that that maybe wasn't always a priority I mean right I mean there are a lot of arrangements of arrangement right that people who couple off because they're of the same place in the world and there's a lot more happening here Queen Victoria insisted that any prince or princess would had to marry a German prince or princess and that was only changed in 1917 when George v issued an order in council allowing members of the royal family to marry people from Britain so when the royal family went from being a cast to being a class they allowed new arrivals to come into it and for the Prince of Wales he was focusing mainly on married women and when you look through his the little his his romantic life what he did was he had a he had a certain technique he would write letters or dripping with passion and love and so on and then he would buy them a dog what what tell me Furness got a Pekinese wallace got a kantaria and then he buy them a little bit of jewelry and all the while when this was happening to wallace she was smiling to herself because she thought this is exactly his schtick this is the way he does it so she thought that she was just one more bright shiny object on the conveyor belt of romance and at some point he will look for it will see another bright shiny object and go for that one so she never really took her relationship with the King as seriously as he took her and this was to prove critical because she just thought it was all a bit a great lark when he used to phone her and in those days remember you knew you had to phone a hotel lobby or a restaurant and and she would hold the receiver out and her friends would listen in as he's simpering away saying how much he loved her mister wanted to desired needed all the rest of it and he shook yes dear and and and and how all her friends would be kind of stuffing handkerchiefs in their mouths because he was he was just such a hoot and so the character of Wallis though she was a woman who girl from Baltimore very strong personality always made the big decisions in her life herself she ignored what her mother had to say ignored what her and had to say hence her first marriage her first marriage was to an aviator when Spencer and this was against the advice of her mother and grandmother everybody but she went ahead and she spent another seven or eight years repenting and the biggest decision of her life was taken out of her hands and that was the application when the King told her on the telephone and she was staying in the south of France I've decided to abdicate she said to him you damn fool and then she she looked for she looked for the nearest boat that was going to China because she wanted to Scarpa she knew that she would be painted as the blackest woman in history for um for in some way encouraging the King to abdicate for those many of you were just getting the book tonight what do you think it was that about her that that changed him in such a way you've all seen pictures of Wallace she's not a looker I mean somebody's somebody said I mean people that I've you know I did so much I did a lot of like hunting for as many pictures as I could possibly find because I was like is that fair and what how are we judging this and but oh so somebody said the other day she looked like Kim Kardashian I said well it's Kim Kardashian without the curves I mean I mean she is pretty two-dimensional but it's that's not the point about her when you see movie footage of it of her and I've I have movie footage of her when she went to Balmoral to stay with the king and she's bright alive she's laughing she's holding court she was very vivacious and she understood that a woman's role was to support encourage her man and as far as and the king was a very edgy nervy character always fiddling these cufflinks or was he in fact one of his mistresses Salma Furness taught him how to needlepoint so he could do something with his hands because he would never settle with a book or a magazine he was always agitated and and Wallace was able to calm him down always treated him with respect but also as a human being and she oh it was always the Duke this to Duke that sir this that but we all know who was wearing the trousers in the relationship it was young Wallace and what did the world have to say about this woman after the news broke that this decision had been made well nevermind before the news broke they thought she was a spy the Queen Mary thought she was a sorceress they they they had Scotland Yard's finest detective following her her husband Ernest Simpson and the Prince of Wales around London they discovered that she was also seeing a used car salesman called guy trundle who was supposed to be a very good dancer also or saw or so he told the police and and so she was a very busy girl she was entertaining the Prince of Wales she was entertaining keeping Ernest Simpson happy and also we have this guy trundle in addition the whole of London was it was a god to know was she having an affair with Hitler's right-hand man Ribbentrop yo King Robin Ribbentrop who was the Foreign Minister and at one time the ambassador to London and he was supposed to be giving her flowers carnations some say roses for every time that they went to bed together in the end he added added up to 17 carnations hence the title of the last book and that that was really quite spurious in a way she always denied it she always denied seeing him but she was already before the abdication seen as someone who was very much below the salt to the point where the the Prime Minister's advisers suggested that they were deported I want to go into the process of this because reading this book you you truly get a sense of how much you have you lived these stories as you're researching them as you're reporting them can you talk a little bit about your process and how it begins for you who do you call first well in this case because I had a hunch that Wallace and her relationship with Herman Rogers this man had mentioned a couple of times I was close to members of the Roger's family they gave me unseen pictures cinema footage of them together and I contacted members of the family for letters and so on and I discovered in the Library of Congress a diary which hadn't seen been seen before about Wallace's time in Washington and the relationship she had with various diplomats including a guy called Philippe s Beal a very handsome spoke six languages knew his wine knew his tennis brilliant golfer and someone who all the ladies was queuing up to date Wallace felt I fell head over heels in love with him had a grand passion and when he was started dating somebody else she went around to his apartment with a pair of sharp scissors and cut all his trousers off at the knee so so so that was an insight into into Wallace's volcanic temper temper so so that so the process that I went through was going to various libraries contacting people contacting relatives I mean the Assembly went looking for letters in his barn in Camden Maine which is well I want to talk about all of the sort of Boston New England entries into this book can you can you tell us I mean I'm originally from Baltimore so I love that this is a well actually this is a hometown story for me in two different ways but can you talk about the ties to Boston that this story has oh the the ties that Wallace has to Boston or this story has to Boston are really deep she spent some time in China for a while she was she was looking for a divorce from her first husband Winn Spencer first of all she went to France it was too expensive there and then she went out to China in the hope of a reconciliation with her first husband that didn't happen and she was dating a diplomat called Jerry green he paid her passage to Beijing or Peking as it was known there she met this woman who was from Boston Boston Brian called Constance coolly she was the diametric opposite of Wallace Wallace was very much a woman concerned with the practicalities of life she didn't give in to romance whereas Constance who was known as the queen of Peking she had several dozen lovers at least four marriages one suitor shot himself several shoots other suitors threatened to shoot themselves she was the first woman to do a loop-the-loop in the whole of China she when she joined there were sporadic the sporadic fighting going on she went to watch it between two warlords she was an extraordinary character and quite frankly she's she deserves her own biography I was just gonna say what we'll wait we'll be here next year anyway so so so Constance becomes a constant in in her life and when she comes back to to America and also to the south of France and the other Boston character who has a profound effect on this book it's Cleveland amery now some of you may remember Cleveland amery he was a very well-known Boston writer humorous writer he he had a cat that he wrote stories about and he became an animal activist but before that he was asked by Wallace Simpson to be his ghostwriter and he agreed I mean he was a pretty handsome salary it's $25,000 which was quite a lot in 1955 and he went off to France and he spent the last the next six months with her but he he walked out on the job because she was she could never keep her story straight and she became more he became more and more frustrated by her so for example as he would say she was here today gone to Italy for ten days tomorrow so he interviewed her made tapes made notes and then he walked out off the he found that she was not truthful she kept changing her story and also you really got a vivid insight into the way that her relationship with Edward the former King the Duke of Windsor had deteriorated and he found the Duke a very weak man and Wallis a very mean-spirited person and he went on to other things he went to - he went to write books about and get involved in animals animal activism and he just put all his papers all the interviews he'd done he went to see the Queen for example at Windsor Castle he had an interview with her he went to see Ernest Simpson her second husband all these major players in Wallace's life anyway he'd he put all his notes forget about it and he was a becomes an animal activist puts all the socialising behind anyway I looked up where these papers were held and his his daughter first of all said well he was I do remember him looking for them in the kitchen and he couldn't find them and so I eventually contacted Boston Public Library and they were not particularly help not in the way they couldn't help me because all the stuff was stored away wasn't catalogued couldn't get it but eventually they sent me to West Roxbury where myself and and Mary bender who's in the audience at the back there who's a librarian we went through a mountain of boxes he he'd left a hundred and sixty-six boxes to Boston Public Library and this place is like the size of an ice rink and he was full of these vanilla colored cardboard boxes so we started dragging them out and there were box there and there was stories about about bison and wolves and and cats and dogs and all the rest of it there were there were reindeer antler heads there were golf clubs golf balls shaving brush I mean it was just like somebody just taking it all to Goodwill and and got lost and dropped it off at Boston Public Library and anyway after about I don't know two hours and it was a miserable wet cold February day not like today and we eventually tried this this this box and we pulled out a folder and there was a picture of Wallis Simpson in a swimsuit then I looked at something else he said picture of man woman and child and that was George the sixth the Queen and Princess Elizabeth or the Thames Queen and Princess Elizabeth then there are pictures of the king in a swimsuit bare chested there were letters postcards there was a half-finished manuscript for me as a biographer it was like finding an Aladdin's Cave of material and for the next week Mary and I went through this stuff photographing it and photocopying it and I went no went off with my satchel full of swag and and there's still more there quite frankly because after after a week we ran out of time and so for me Boston was a very very happy hunting ground can you talk about the difference between researching a book about history from decades ago or centuries ago versus someone right now I imagine that the level of cooperation and participation you get when you're looking into a story like this is different than perhaps pursuing a story about the royal family right this second well the mother the massive difference is that you you can speak to the people for a contemporary biography whereas obviously the Duke and Duchess of Windsor are no longer with us and and also the huge difference and it will be of difficulty for biographers going forwards is that people in the 20s 30s and 40s used to write those curious things called letters and now it's everything's on the internet so you've got to snag people when they're when they're alive and I say to this I say to people who are were friends of Diana for example write it down because you've you'll forget about and it's a piece of history what your interaction with her was a piece of history and because people get very you know very secretive that they they feel that they shouldn't speak well I mean I feel that obviously as a biographer you should actually even if you don't speak about them in the next five years at least when you're gone at least you leave a record and that's always been what something I say to people when that when you're dealing with someone who's alive but as you were talking about this love affair I always have to think well what if these people wrote me a letter or what if they were dealing with it now what their social media might look like and I imagine that now when you're sort of watching a romance unfold or a person unfold as a public figure there's just a very different kind of record that might exist in the world yeah it's very good point I mean I think that now people live in plain sight people will post then you know they're new new makeup on or and there's you know we live in a totally different world where people post the surface but never deal with the interior we mentioned the wedding that is coming up you know can you talk about the cultural moment we're in with royalty in general I mean there's like this an American obsession right I mean just that's a particular thing I can't tell you how many people talked to me about the crown I mean these are these are narratives that don't get old to us we are fascinated by them every time I think that we have aged out of it that we're in an era where there are other things to pay attention to I am proven very much wrong by myself dropping everything to see the white coat that maked Markel is wearing that I want to buy but it's sold out so you're that one I have to say if I had a dollar for everybody's who said to me have you seen the crown I could afford myself a decent meal the that the fascination the the it's a combination of things isn't it it's these the brilliance of the way they've made the crown which is intrigue people and the the other aspect of course is it there's been a preamble to it you've had Victoria you've had the Queen as a as a movie and so you've had an awful lot of cultural references but at the same time that's the reason why that program has proved itself so popular quite frankly it's the sex because they're all having sex all the time well you actually think about it it's just it is it is it is it is a series of bedroom scenes masquerading as history and so you've got the Queen and Prince Philip I mean no British company would make this you have you have you have Law Lord Snowdon in bed with two others a man and a woman you've got you know you've got Margaret the severe some wanton you know it's it is Peyton Place with with Coronets and this book though I mean there's this is a character you know that the central force of this book is a sexual flirtatious vibrant person which felt very this is not a two-dimensional person either I mean there's some of what appeals to me about these narratives it's like I was able to with this book really get into the mind of someone who had a full romantic life I mean do you ever feel when telling these stories especially when you get into that might be from unreliable narrators or narrators who no longer are around here are things I need to leave out here are things I definitely want to put in what goes into those choices well it's a good question I mean what you're trying to do is sketch the outline of somebody's character and so you don't want to end up first of all duplicating issues and you don't want to go and that there are people who many people disliked Wallace and many people believed as I say she was a sorceress Queen Mary thought she was a sorceress she thought she was a Nazi spy so there was but that perception of her even though it was untrue defined people's responses and defined practical measures so for example the Prime Minister authorized Scotland Yard to have her followed because they thought why is this woman this woman from Baltimore with no social standing no title no money what's she doing with the Prince of Wales so in some respects when you're writing somebody's biography and also sketching out a character you have to take the mythology as well because that also is part of the way people react to them you've also written about just American celebrities as we've talked about what how have you chosen those subjects and how might you compare them in terms of how untouchable they are or how unknown they are despite being so well-known as a member of the royal family what's sort of what do they share and what's what's different about that's sort of you mentioned Kim Kardashian and that's similarity and it makes me think of how you know I don't love the idea of thinking of American royalty as as those types those celebrities but that's what we have right these people whose faces we see all the time so I'm wondering what what led you into the choices you made about who to focus on in American celebrity culture well they all differ but that bozo but the one abiding rule was is there a narrative arc is there a change and so somebody like for example Angelina Jolie she was a wild child was living was cutting herself anorexic bulimic living with a boy age 15 no not listening to her father John Voight totally blanked him and yet now we see it the transformation over the last few years into this goodwill ambassador for the United Nations so it's worth so that's the exploration that somebody how has somebody gone through that some Tom Cruise the interesting thing about him is his religion because Scientology is a very is a notorious organization why did he decide to join it what what motivated him he was a vet he was a man at the top of his game this is an organization that normally brings people in when they're when they're falling or or aspiring so you make these kinds of choices I mean I sometimes it's just just by pure accident I ended up writing Monica Lewinsky's biography with her a few years ago and that was because somebody in a newspaper had written this is all this is where myth becomes reality had written a story saying that Andrew Morton's writing Monica Lewinsky's biography that ended up going on the wires her lawyer read it in New York he thought well that's quite a good idea Princess Diana's biographer and he contacted my publisher in London he called me and said we'd like to write Monica Lewinsky's biography and when I'd stopped laughing I you know report ourselves a glass of champagne and went on I went to New York to meet the girl so that was just happenstance I think about her a lot recently as the world is changing and we're having different conversations and how how she was portrayed Monica Lewinsky specifically and how she might be portrayed now and you have taken on the responsibility of telling women's stories in a nut in I think the majority of your books right and and women who have some agency but not all agency women who might be behaving it similar to similarly to their male counterparts but being judged in a different way what kind of lens do you put on to ensure that you're telling a woman's story in a way that takes into account all of these oppressive systems that they're dealing with at the time like I imagine that Wallis was dealing with a different level of scrutiny on appearance than somebody else might if the situation were reversed yes I'm with Wallis Simpson we're dealing with somebody who where the options were very very narrow and very limited when she was a young lady three out of a hundred women went to college now that has been transformed there's probably only 300 that don't go to college I'm sure it's that those stats are wrong so she had to make her way in life with what she had and in this in the system as it as it was but also she was living during a time when that lack of opportunity was was was breaking up well you did have more opportunity with the First World War women were working more so she lived through that period so that is it that that element is described in the book with Diana for example you we have a woman who was the shy rather retiring individual who found herself and who expressed her vulnerability in public and found her courage in public and did so in a way which had a lot of response from when especially women around the world before I start throwing it out to people what's your plan for the wedding like where will you be what is the how do you approach what you know is a monumental moment I mean I've already decided what snacks I will eat and where I might watch but for you it's like a whole other situation well I think I'm commenting on the or commentating on the wedding for them for ABC with them with well hopefully anyway if if I can find my top hat and so I'll be I'll be chatting away about and what the bride is wearing or not and and just again before I turn it over this is as monumental as it seems right for this specific marriage to be happening how are people over there viewing this and watch always your compatriot mega Markel has very rapidly become a national treasure in Britain alongside various comedians and and showbiz characters who was just like Alan John who were beloved and she's hugely popular because people can see in her someone who total contrast for example to Wallis Simpson whose life was designed around marriage this is a woman whose life has been designed around expressing herself in public but also finding a career making a success of a career and making a success of a life that's why what the code okay I'm gonna throw it out to the audience I wonder if you could tell us a little more about what the books about I think a lot of people came here to find out about the book and at this point I don't think I know it well I then I have failed you as a moderator what do you want to just sort of state you know well as I say the book the book stylist well we've talked about this a little bit but the book started out as a result of my previous book 17 carnations about the the Duke and Duchess of Windsor but also it's it's a book that tries to explore the personality of Wallace the relationship between Wallace and obviously the King later to you the Duke of Windsor the Miss nomer of the idea that this was the royal romance of the century because as the papers that Cleveland a Murray had the various interviews with many people the King was besotted with Wallace Wallace was hemmed into a corner she felt frustrated she felt that that her life had been utterly defined by an another person's decision so that going forwards rather than being the love match of the century whilst she was in public very attentive to him and was very respectful towards him in private it was a different situation she was dismissive of him she was sarcastic he would say from time to Karen will you be sending me to bed in tears tonight and so the dynamic between them went from being an affectionate couple to being one where the Duke was still besotted but Wallace was indifferent to the point of impatience and bored could you tell us a little bit about her life what it was how she grew up who her parents were and if she had brothers or sisters what her relationship was for their family yeah she she was she was born well she was brought up in in Baltimore two strands to the two sides of the family the war feels and the Montagues the Montagues were very happy-go-lucky wit he lived life on the fly they were intelligent charming and they would tell you so themselves that they were full of bravado the Warfield side former slave-owners went into commerce banking very solid very straightforward very practical very down-to-earth it's almost like the earth and and the and the sky there were very different families and while this always felt that she had those kind of elements inside her at the same time she had a a very fractious relationship with her mother because it was her mother who brought her up on her own her father died when she was just five months old he died of consumption he died of TB and in fact the poor man never even held her before he passed away and so they were always the poor relations of these two families and they always relied on the the financial support of her uncle uncle Sal he was known as mr. Baltimore and there was fine found his charity grudging and rather less than whatever they were thought they would get so they were so Wallis felt that she was a poor relation she was someone who wanted to be number one she had a great desire to be number one and just imagine this she's a little girl playing with with pictures of mrs. Vanderbilt a mrs. Astor making up stories of kings and queens and that was her favorite topic of of her imagination kings and queens and we all know where that ended up and she went to an all-girls school had crushes on all kinds of other girls and some of the female teachers but her focus as a teenager was on that four-letter word boys she and with one of the Mitford sisters and I was wondering how she got into that circle both with him but also the kind of the rest of the aristocracy because I think a lot of us at least perceived that the English aristocracy really didn't mix with commoners and certainly not with Americans well there were quite a lot of Americans in English society in the 1930s you'd be surprised and in fact what how wallace got into the circles of diplomats and journalists and but minor aristocracy was the fact that you know mega Marvel's got a blog that the the equivalent there was a salon and she she learned how to make decent cocktails she invited people over mainly Americans mainly people who were staying for a short period of time and they introduced her to other people and by degrees she she moved into the circles where the Prince of Wales moved and it wasn't that long before after boasting to her and that one day she was going to meet the Prince of Wales that she in fact did hi could you tell me your opinion about Wallis not receiving the title of Her Royal Highness well the appellation her royal highness was the the biggest blow that the couple faced remember when the King abdicated he thought that the rest of the royal family would attend the wedding that the church would approve of it that it would be generally celebrated by his friends the there around about fifteen people there at the wedding on June the 4th 1937 many of them several of them French functionaries but the the most the bitterest pill to swallow was the fact that the King that the new King George the 6th had decided against giving her that title and ironically when Cleveland amery was asked by the Duchess on the on the first day of their cooperation of their collaboration what title should you give it should I give the about autobiography he said brightly let's call it untitled and because it was a nice play on words and he thought that was great and and as he recorded he was dead silence in there with him so it caused a bitterness between the Duke and Duchess and the rest of the royal family that lasted until the moment they died and you know they they were they were hostile to the other role most of the royal family they were they referred to george de 6 is that stuttering idiot they refer to the Queen Mother or the Queen as she was then as that Scottish cook and they they refer to Princess Elizabeth as Shirley Temple and they they just had a caustic bitter relationship with the royal family till they died no legally she should have had it and the the Duke took legal opinion on it because you know you are supposed to take your husband's title and they deliberately what how they got rounded is that the the Home Secretary initially said fine collar her old house we don't care George de six the new Queen and the rest of the family did care and they wanted some way of have it been worked out so that they weren't blamed but it was seen as the official policy and so what they did they convened a meeting with various ministers and they agreed that the duke of windsor had only been given that appellation his royal highness by by virtue of the king's gift and he could withdraw and as out of respect for his full previous station as king but they said that he didn't have to he wasn't obliged to do that for the duchess of windsor and that they were doing her a favor anyway by calling her duchess of windsor hi my question might not be really relevant to Wallace's life but can you give us more insights about the royal disease or whether it really existed in the royal family you talking about hemophilia Ophelia yeah well that was something affected obviously some of the the royal families of Europe most notoriously the Russian royal family affected the the King Edward the eighth only insofar as he was he was going to marry a girl called rosemary Levinson Gower and they were and he was told that she had a taint in the blood that was to say that she had hemophilia and so he and he was madly in love with her as he was madly in love with lots of women and her and he withdrew his suit if there was one thing you would want someone to know like about this book or about the resource privacy research process what would that be well those it was all original that this book has is just full of new research and new material a quick question based on the nicknames of cookie and Shirley Temple did they know about it oh yes they knew about it and it's one of the reasons why they just did not want them back in London at any price because they realized that every dinner party they ever went to they would they would Mock the royal family every the eighth or the Duke of Windsor even mocked his own mother Queen Mary because she was notorious for going to somebody's house and and admiring an antique and then asking if the person there her her host would give give her the antique and and she would say oh I'm looking at your your chair what a beautiful chair oh I'm admiring it would look so lovely in my drawing-room and and then and then the person would normally say well yes mam we'll send it on to you oh no I'll take it straight away in the car and and and and and that was and I was wondering was it true that Queen Elizabeth or Elizabeth bowes-lyon had a crush Edward which did she set her cap and that's why she liked Wallace is that all true well that's that's what's been said I think she would when you actually look at the the timeline of it the Prince of Wales as was busy elsewhere with other girlfriends so I don't think she would have been setting her cap at someone who was already dating other women hi there so first of all I want to say thank you for using my childhood library with the West Roxbury library it's such a big part of your book thank you my question though is how do you think the world would be today if Edward had spent King well there is a move to put a statue on the fourth empty plinth at Trafalgar Square because the feeling is that if Edward had been King in 1940 when Britain's back was against the wall he would have he would have argued for an accommodation with Germany so that somehow Britain kept some of its powers but relinquished an awful lot of power to the Germans so in a way George the sixth becoming King was the best thing that ever happened to Britain and in a curious kind of way Wallis Simpson was also the best thing that ever happened to the royal family I won't be the person to ask if you've seen the crown but I'm just curious what your opinion of it is how factual how dramatized it is well the there was a scene with the Duke of Windsor talking to the Queen and the Queen basically saying when I'm not going to give you a job because of your behavior during the war his behavior during the war was not by any standards but I very much doubt that that scene happened because the one thing that the Queen hates is a confrontation and of course dramatically you don't want you need to have a confrontation so there's a there's an awful lot of dramatic elements in in the the crown which don't ring true but nonetheless the general sense is there thanks this question comes under the heading of gossip so any idea or do you say in your book why in the world Wallace stayed in this marriage if she held him in such contempt she didn't get the queenship that she thought she was gonna have she didn't get to be called Her Royal Highness and it sounded like they didn't have as much money as they wanted to have so and she obviously wasn't willing to share husbands like many people shed their winter coats so why did she stay in it well that's a good question I think that she stayed initially because she knew that she would be damned if if she didn't damned if she didn't at the same time they did have money enough money to have 26 staff including a telephone operator and she she was quite acquisitive she had the most magnificent jewelry collection of possibly anyone who's ever lived certainly in recent times and for a long time they they really both realized they they had to try and make it work at least in public because he'd and she realized that she had given up the the throne to the greatest empire that has ever existed having said that she did love another man and that man was Herman Rogers and on his second wedding day when it when used married his second wife she went up to that the second wife Lucy and said Herman is the only man I've ever loved and so she nursed a passion for this man who was an avuncular father figure brother surrogate husband for a time for most of her adult life Herman's second wife Lucy believed that if she hadn't have got him first Wallace might might well have left the king for left the Duke for him it didn't happen but then she ambough embarked on this curious relationship within a this outrageous homosexual called Jimmy Donahue and there so they Woolworths fortune so she behaved in in an extraordinary way Jeff during the 50s because of the fact that she found no fulfillment with her husband what can you tell us about Wallace the Nazis in the cover up quite a lot how long he got I mean woloson and the Duke they were in the South of France when the Nazis invaded Belgium and France and they paid villagers to take all their finest linens and they're good thread counts and they're porcelain and their silverware into the mountains and hide it they had two houses one in Paris one in the South of France in kin and during their flight from the Nazis they went through Spain and ended up in Portugal and on two separate occasions they contacted the Nazis via a Spanish terroristic rant and they asked them to look after their houses and yet these houses were rented and they were empty so you've got to ask yourself why did they do it what was their ulterior motive and at the same time you have the the Germans wanted to get all the members of the royal families of Europe under their orbit so that in the old-fashioned way they would say to them that the the king of Norway the queen of Holland and also that you can Duchess that we want you to tell your countrymen to lay down your arms and come under the Nazi influence and they had a system in place a spy system where called Operation Willy where they were going to kidnap the Duke and Duchess from Portugal and they very nearly succeeded it was only Churchill telling the Duke stop messing about get on a boat and go be the Governor General of the Bahamas that stopped that from happening and we could and the Germans offered them 50 million francs this is the Duke and Duchess to sit out the war they offered them as a castle in the south of Spain to sit out the war and they wanted them ultimately to become puppet king and queen of England in nutshell so before our final question I just want to thank you Andrew and Meredith for joining us here at the BPL tonight and remind everyone that afterwards we have tried on books in the lobby who will be selling books and we're gonna be doing an author book signing Andrew it is truly a pleasure to to attend this talk and I have read your biographies and followed you for many years so this is this is wonderful the first book I read a few us was about Tom Cruise and I almost be like a sequel should should now come out because the the sunny man that you portrayed who was at the top of his game and celebrated and you know courting Katie Holmes it's a very dark and a bleak picture now where he is openly ridiculed for his movie choices he has seen as a as a complete you know Scientologist and control freak a derelict father and definitely a star on the wane so like when you when you an angle to write these books do you sort of keep in your mind the idea that the perceptions would change completely later on in life yeah well that's my PR talking that there I am I think there is a the the opportunity to do a second book on Tom Cruise but it won't be me that's doing it because he was it was a pretty hard slog quite frankly and it's quite disturbing when you meet a lot of people who grandmother's who've never seen their grandchildren wives who've never seen their I haven't seen their husbands for years because they've been what's known as disconnected by Scientologists so it's it's a dark weird world that you enter when you look into Tom Cruise and it's a world that obviously he's remained in for most of his adult life thank you all for such wonderful questions I just have one last one you're casting the movie today who is it Wallace oh that's a good one isn't it [Music] all right maybe you think about it while you're signing but I you know tweet it or something it's hard I spent a lot of time thinking about it while reading I challenge you all to do with the most well Kristin Scott Thomas would be her sister Serena played Diana in a movie based on my diner her true story and at the time they all thought that she was going to go on to be the biggest star and believe us Kristen who's now the one hope for the accolades thank you so much thank you [Applause] thank you very much thanks for coming [Applause] [Music]

Channel: GBH Forum Network

Views: 229,828

Keywords: Boston, WGBH, BPL, boston public library, book talk, andrew morton, wallis, windsor, royalty, biography, monarchy, england, WWI

Id: kcYfOWV9Zn0

Length: 57min 18sec (3438 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 26 2018