Dan Snow's History Hit - Edward VIII & Wallis Simpson

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

In this episode, we explore the dramatic love story between King Edward VIII and the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson - a romance that shook the British monarchy to its core. Set against the backdrop of rising tensions in 1930s Europe, the scandal divided the government, the public and the royal family. And ultimately, Edward chose love over the crown.To hear all about this, we're joined by Kate Williams, a historian and broadcaster who specialises in Royal history. She unpacks how their romance spiralled into a constitutional crisis.Produced by Beth Donaldson and James Hickmann, and edited by Dougal Patmore.Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcastSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No royal scandal has rocked Britain quite like this one. Well, unless you include Richel III possibly murdering his nephews, or, well, at the time John starved his nephew to death, or that other time when Henry II's children all hooked up with the French king and tried to pose that, well, okay, no royal scandal in the modern era has rocked Britain quite like this one. Well, unless you don't particularly believe a pizza express in Woking as a valid alibi, But anyway, it's one of the greatest scandals in the history of the modern monarchy, okay?

A member of the monarchy defies expectation and family, takes on social convention, and marries a divorced American woman. The couple faced a brutal media storm. They're exiled from their family. They're chased out of their country, and they reinvent themselves with other media project to survive. I am, of course, talking about the marriage between Edward the 8th and Wallace Simpson. the American socialite for whom he abdicated the British crown in December 1936.

He chose love over duty and caused not just a familial riff, but a constitutional crisis because he was head of the Church of England, which was against remarriage after divorce, and she had been divorced twice. His choice was unacceptable to the old fogies in the British government and many people within the British public. It was unprecedented. The scandal reshaped the monarchy made public the tensions between royal duty and personal desire, something that we still see today. So if we explore this infamous episode in the monarchy's recent history, I'm joined by the wonderful professor Kate Williams, who hosts the excellent Kings, Queens and Dastity Things podcasts.

This is Dan Snow's history and the story of the scandal that rocked the royal family. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black, white unity, till the royal family. There is first and blank unit. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the subtle has cleared the power. Kate Williams, great to have you on the podcast. Good to see you, Dan. Oh, it's good to see you. This is one of the great stories. Give us a sense of just how the Prince of Wales was a pretty cool character, wasn't he? The Prince of Wales was popular. He was loved. When he came to the throne,

there was a lot of optimism about what a great king he might be. Of course, he'd had this investiture in 1911, Prince of Wales to show off he was loyal to Wales and going to be a marvellous king, best king ever. Not quite that story. No, it all goes wrong pretty quick. But he has movie star looks. His dad, George V, not the most charismatic guy in the world. So is there a sense he could be a king for this new age where kings were able to broadcast across the empire? There were film cameras, there was radio broadcasts. He should have been the right man in the right place. He was the king for the modern age, just as you say. Seen as an early adopter of technology, George V was popular, but he was very much seen as a stolid old person

who pretty much belonged in the Victorian era. But then we have this young, exciting, vibrant person who's going to lead the country into this exciting new technical age. We saw so many incredible inventions during the 1920s and 1930s. We see the growth of the airplane. We see medications developed. We see building technologies. All these new technologies, the car is becoming dominant.

and Edward seems like just the king to lead Britain into future dominance. So what's okay, then what's the reality? Because as we know with royal families, there can be a little bit of a gap between what the public sees and what the reality is. Tell me about him growing up family, brothers, dad and mum, what is his situation? Edward is born in 1894,

and he's the eldest son of George and Mary. And of course, that means he's got his lineage right back to Queen Victoria, his grandfather is Edward the 7th, his great-grandmother is Queen Victoria. She should have bounced to my lap, she was still alive. She was, didn't die until 1901. So he would have met Queen Victoria and he would have known her as a small boy.

So he really has all the royal blood, all the royal glamour. He's there to take the throne. He's Mr. Popular. They have quite a difficult childhood. I think George V in Queen Mary aren't the most, we might say, modern loving of parents. It's a very strict upbringing.

They have some rather cruel nannies who pinch them to make them cry, which will annoy their parents. But actually, you know, when he becomes a young man, he really throws himself into the world of a prince. And as we've seen with so many princes before, the Prince of Wales, Edward I was a glamorous man about town. And the sons of George III, they spent every little penny they could on being on fast carriages and women and diamonds. Edward comes into this role of the Prince of Wales. And he's seen as a real glamour boy. But what he also wants, which is very significant, is he does want to go to war with the other young men. He really wants to fight with the other young men.

And that's denied, really, because he would be too much of a kidnap risk, too much of a security risk. Yeah, so he wants to go to the trenches. His brother goes and fights the Navy. His brother's at the Battle of Jutland, the future, George the 6th. So he feels a bit insecure about that. He's not allowed to go and get involved. Yes, he tours and sees the suffering firsthand, but he's not allowed to be part of it. Okay, so he's not happy about that.

And as Prince of Wales, is he doing those kind of photos, he's visiting the troops on the front line? What's his role through the 20s and 30s? Prince of Wales, his role is one of royal visits, and when he comes, he's so popular. And there is this thought, this thinking, that he sees more of the suffering of the working class. Because, of course, we see post in 1926, the general strike, just before the birth of his niece, Elizabeth II, the general strike and the suffering of the working classes, the working classes who fought so hard in World War, they're now saying, what do we get back?

So it is generally thought that he is someone who hears the working man. He understands the working man. It's famously said that when he's touring and sees poverty, he says something must be done. So there are great hopes that he's not just a modern, technical advanced king. He's also very intelligent king, very handsome movie-star looks, as you say, but also that he's the kind of king that's going to give something that help the working classes and really pay them back for this huge sacrifice they made in World War I.

Is there something modern about the way that his mum had been a European princess? You're coming off a period where monarchs are just, and heirs to the throne, are expected to marry European royalty. Is he expected to do that? What's going on with his love life? Is his dad trying to hook him up with some German princess? Edward really is quite a modern man and I think the idea is

he's going to be allowed to make his own choice he's going to be allowed to make his own choice among the British aristocracy just as George the 6th does the future George 6th when he marries Elizabeth Bowes lion so I think that's going to be the vision that he's going to make this kind of alliance

because post World War I the idea of making a German alliance is going to be... Well there aren't many royals left There aren't many wars left you can't have the Catholic ones Most of the world's are dead. And the other ones that are still there are seen as the enemies.

So the idea that Queen Victoria had that marrying all her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren into the royal families of Europe was going to create lasting peace, had been shattered by World War I. Quite the opposite. So the idea, yes, quite the opposite.

Quite the opposite actually made it worse. So the cousins war. So really what you see with Edward is that David, as the family called him, is that, you know, you can probably make your own choice, but the right type of young lady. And that would mean aristocratic, that would mean young, that would mean a virgin. Okay. And that's not who he wants to date. And so who does he want to date? He wants to date the older, married woman. And in that he's

taking off to grandpa. Grandpa, Eddra the 7th, he liked a married woman. He liked a nice, older married woman, because you know what's really great about a married woman? I can't answer that question. You tell me. You can hide the pregnancy. Okay. If she gets pregnant, you can hide it. And you can pay off the gentleman, the husband, with various estates.

And that's the marvellous answer. So he likes a married lady. But increasingly, he doesn't necessarily choose the married ladies of the British aristocracy whose husbands turned a blind eye when it was Edward the 7th, including, of course, Mrs Keppel's husband turned a blind eye. He likes the American lady. He likes these glamorous fun, rich Americans who are, I would say, really almost flooding into London at this point in the late 1920s, early 1930s. They are coming into London.

They've got money. They've got glamour. They've got all these wonderful innovations in America. And he's fascinated by them. But they have a huge weakness for a prince. They have a weakness for a prince. And do you know what he apparently, his... chat upline to Wallace Simpson is.

No, I don't. He says, I hear you've got good central heating in America. And she says, I love this. She says, everyone asks me about central heating. I don't want to talk any more about central heating. Find something better. That's how he sees Americans, you know, new, fangled inventions. And she is, there's no deference.

Yeah, they answer back. None of this deference. I expect you to entertain me. So he gets very fond of all these American ladies. and he has a mistress. Well, he's got a few mistresses. So various married, older, intelligent hostesses, the great hostesses, that's who he likes.

I've just realised that I brought into the British propaganda about him that he was a complete ne'er-do-well. But actually, that shows enormous taste. Rather than, like, chasing these teenage, aristocratic English girls around, he likes sassy, intelligent, opinionated older American women. That's what he likes. That's what he likes. Yeah, absolutely.

So I think that shows... He makes, what do you call a cougar prey? A cougar, I don't know, and they're not very much older. They're not very much older. But in the perceptions of the time when a girl has to be so young and very much younger, it is pretty revolutionary. Right, okay. And he likes emancipators, it way, women that can answer back,

have intellectual discussion, talk about technology. And also, I think the benefit to him of married ladies is not just that you can have sex with them and hire the pregnancy, but also that he can have various ones going at the same time. So he's usually got quite a circle of ladies. I guess we call it a thruple or in the modern languages. So he's more modern than I ever knew. You know, a collection of American ladies.

Now, we might say that he's not spending an awful lot of time preparing for the throne. And his father, George and his mother, Mary, who are obsessively moral, they're devoted to each other. They never had any other thoughts of anyone but each other. They find it totally baffling the behaviour of the Prince of Wales. And it's kept out of the newspapers because it's not really appropriate. This isn't what the Prince of Wales is supposed to be doing. you say that, but every single descendant of George I was, well, nearly all them were complete wrongens.

Complete wrong ones. When it came to their romantic lives. You thought it wasn't appropriate. You should have read a family history. Read a family history. Okay, anyway, so we've got Prince Edward, whose real name was David. They family called him David. It was his middle name.

That was middle name. It was his middle name. Always complicated. Because you obviously have five names and then, five or six names and then the last name is your real name. So it was like me being called Catherine and then six of the names and then saying, well, actually my name is the sixth name and that's what I'm using, leaf or whatever it might be. So we've got Prince Edward, also known as David.

He meets Wallace Simpson. You've already teethed up with that terrible chatup line. Where and when do they meet? Well, he meets Wallace in 1931. And she's born in 1896. She grows up in Baltimore, Bessie Wallace Warfield. Her father dies and her mother is a bit dependent on relations. Then her mother remarries.

There's a wealthy stepfather. She goes to a good school. And Wallace marries age 20, Wynne Spencer and Naval Aviator. Now, he seems great on paper. But it's not a good marriage. She drinks. He's abusive. So she does divorce him in 1927, which is very radical. She divorces him in 1927. And there are some talks of various affairs. She goes to China and has a period of living in China. And then she meets Ernest Simpson, an Anglo-American shipping executive who's a very different man to her first husband. He's kind. He's very thoughtful. And they marry. He divorces his wife. They marry. And they're in London. And they are making their way. in high society, getting in huge amounts of debt as they do. But you know, you can find this sometimes, can't you? And I've certainly had friends who've gone to live in other countries who've found this, that you can live in other countries and the hierarchies and the networks

that are so important in your home country are overturned. And perhaps you can head faster at the social scale if you're an expat that you wouldn't be allowed to do in the United States because you're not part of the right social grouping in London. You can be free. So they are having these gigantic parties. They have a huge flat in Mayfair. And she really gets very friendly with the in crowd around the Prince of Wales. There's sort of propaganda around her that she was almost sort of sex worker whilst in China. Is there any, she just sounds to me like she's a normal person going through life, but has had these two relationships. Recent scholarship has actually gone into Wallace in China and said, no, there isn't any idea.

Although all these rumours weren't there, that she'd been a sex worker there and she'd learned techniques there. These mysterious techniques of the East. So it's all very orientalists, She learnt these sex techniques and that's what Edward was so gripped by. And when we see a similar conversation about Ambelin, don't we, they say about Ambelin, that she learned techniques at the French court, including her perhaps all sex.

And that was what tempted Henry the 8th, which is no evidence for it. But she was in China. But certainly she's much more international. She's been worldly. Worldly than any woman he's ever met before. He meets her in 1931. He makes that terrible question about central heating.

And of course, that's a shock to a royal, because royals expect the most boring question or terrible joke to be met with hysterical laughter. Oh, you're so funny, sir. Oh, how interesting. How brilliant. And Wallace says, oh, not the central heating again. Now, she has a friend, Thelma Furness, who is the established partner. I don't really like the word mistress. Established partner. She's married, of course, and they all are. Established partner, along with Frida Dudley Ward of the Prince. And Thelma, in 1934, has to go back to America to look at some of her investments for three months. And she knows that our prince, our Edward, has an attention span of a flea, and he needs

entertainment. And she doesn't want any other girls coming in and seizing him. So she thinks, who shall I give him as a babysitter? She's not, oh, I know. I'll give him my most plain, my most boring, my most ill-dressed and actually impoverish friend, Wallace, I'll give him Wallace to look after him because she's so plain and boring, he won't like her. Wow. Whoops. So she wasn't Super glamorous, conventionally. Not as glamorous as the other women around her. Not as glamorous, not as well-dressed, not as well-connected, not as rich, and not seen as as witty, even though she was actually very witty.

I think actually she was these things, but everyone rather looked down a bit upon her because she hadn't got particularly glamorous marriage. So Thelma says, Wallace, look after David while I'm away. Are back in three months. She gets back, three months. Whoops. they apparently go for lunch and Wallace does something to Edward's food cuts it up or, and that's really the signal to Thelma that she's out.

And also she also finds that she doesn't have a direct line to his telephone anymore. She is ghosted. And Wallace sees off Thelma. Thelma is out. And she also sees off the other lady. Frieda Dudley Ward. She is out. Wallace sees them both off very fast.

David is infatuated with her almost immediately. Really? we could say they fell in love. It can't just be jokes about central heating. It must be something more. I think that's why it's often credited with the idea that she must have these secretive, amazing sexual techniques. But simply, I think he was fascinated by her.

She was very irreverent to him. She refused to bow to him. She refused to defer to him. She was often actually really satirise him and sometimes taking the Mickey out of him and that often got more than taking the Mickey actually sort of, you know, picking on him. And I think he found that very refreshing.

I bet he did. Did she want to become queen? This is the million-dollar question. Does Wallace want to be queen, or really was she tempted into this relationship? And you can't really say no to the prince. Was she in this relationship? And it was a tiger that she was riding that was more out of control than she ever could have imagined. Because, you know, he's got form. This is not a man, a lady dates, thinking he's going to be a long-term guy.

You think, oh, he's not reliable. He's not reliable. Maybe I'll stay with him for six months. Get a few nice jewels, a couple of hats, and he'll move on to another younger model. Anne Seber's very good book, That Woman, about Wallace. This is what she's researched and looks into this and said, you know, it's very much the case that I think Wallace thinks, well, I'm pushing 40. You know, I'm not young anymore and I'm not beautiful and glamorous. So he's just going to have fun with me for a while.

And this man with an attention span of a flea is going to find a younger model. So she'll stay in it for a while because they get entree in high society. Ernest Simpson is really quite pleased about this. Entree in high society. Oh, he's happy that his wife. Yes, he doesn't really mind at this point. presence, he showers jewels on her. So at this point, it seems win-win. And very much Wallace, I think, doesn't realize how much he just becomes fascinated by her. So they meet in 1930, they meet in 34.

So they meet in 31, in 1934, Thelma Furness makes a fatal error. So never ask your friend to babysit your lover. I don't know what we're supposed to, what we do with you? I guess we, what did we do, lock them up in a cage or something and say they, yes, we never ask your best friend. It will just tell them to tuck themselves up and watch Netflix until you get back. Exactly. This is Dan Snow's history here. More after this. Okay, so the timing's interesting.

I see, so 9.34 they get together, so they're still in that bloom, that sort of infatuation of early love. When his father dies? You are so right. So 1934, they get together. She thinks it's never going to last. She goes on a holiday with him to 1935, and by this point, Ernest is having enough. I mean, it's one thing going to parties with him.

But going on holiday, the prince and his wife going on holiday, Ernest does not like that. And then everything is turned upside down. It is January 1936. George the 5th dies, as we know, dispatched rather quickly by his doctor with a small combination of a cocaine and morphine and bunged in, so he dies much faster

and they get the news in the morning papers, not the infidig evening papers. And George dies. And Edward is devastated. And it's fascinating because George dies, the king dies. And the minute he dies, Queen Mary, she turns and she kisses her son's hand. He is now the king.

She defers to him. And Edward, he's heartbroken, the new Edward VIII. He's heartbroken. He weeps over his father, even though his father hadn't been very happy about the whole Wallace business. He'd heard about it. He'd told him to stop. He'd forbidden Wallace ever to come to the palace. He'd been furious when she had been in the palace.

And he was very angry about it. But now, Edward is heartbroken. He plans his father's funeral. he really is playing the role of the best king in history. And of course, Wallace is married. So he's going to have to find some more suitable young lady. Perhaps Elizabeth Bowes-Lyner got a spare little friend that he might throw over to him. So Wallace is married. Everyone says, well, we know that the king has this friendship with Wallace. Everyone knows the royal household know, the politician knows, the royal family know. Everyone knows that the king is obsessed with Wallace. But they think that now he's the king, she's just going to melt away. But it is an astonishing decision by him to try and make it official. And what pushes him into it is Wallace's divorce. Now, Wallace feels rather bad for poor old Ernest Simpson, poor old cookold. And so you know what she does?

She asks her old school friend Mary Kirk to look after him. And what happens? He falls in love with Mary. Wow, a lot of looking after you. Yes, I know. Extensive 1930s babysitting. Yeah, so never, as we say, if your husband or a spouse or your love, or your wife is going away yet tell us, stay in bed and get takeaway. Mary and Ernest fall in love

and Ernest decides he's had enough of his wife with the king and he says, we've got to get divorced. He actually goes to Edward and he says, surely you'll never marry Wallace. And Edward says, oh, I will. I will marry her. And that gentleman's agreement between two men, when Ernest realizes that if he divorces Wallace, she's not going to be out on her ear as a woman abandoned by society, he agrees to the divorce. So they get divorced in October. As we know what happens in the 1930s divorce, it has to be adultery.

And Ernst agrees to have that whole setup in which you are discovered in a hotel room and that means it's adultery. So this is what they all have in the 1930s. If you want to get divorced, you have to go to a seaside resort and get discovered in a hotel room. And that's what happens to Ernest.

And then the judge will say fine. The judge says fine. So the divorce, the decree, Nisi, comes in October 1936. And now the king, can marry Wallace and the government begin to panic. They think, he's going to marry her. What are we going to do? Baldwin, who's the prime minister, who was hoping for a nice quiet. He's a gentle old conservative. A gentle old, you know, trot into the sunset.

He's thinking, no, no, not on my watch. And then the government have to deal with this. And the government, Baldwin says to him, you can't do this. And his private secretary says to him, you cannot do this. The government will resign. And you'd think, Edward might say, oh, I don't want the government resigning. That will look bad. He says, no, I want to marry Wallace. I really want to marry her. I'm determined to marry her. And so we have a gigantic constitutional crisis on their hands that he wants to marry her.

And the problem is that he is head of the Church of England and she has two husbands still living. Perhaps if they've been dead, it might have been a different matter. But she is twice divorced. She cannot marry a divorcee. And therefore... And is the fact that she's an American issue? It is an issue because there is anti-Americanism coming at the this point. So she's not popular. She's an American. People think she's too old. There are all kinds of

reasons why she's disliked. But the actual constitutional crisis is that she has been twice divorced. Had she not been divorced, it would have been a very different matter. Isn't that interesting? So it's the fact that she's twice divorced. That's against Church of England doctrine. You can't marry a divorcee in the Church of England. Divorcies were not welcome at court and they weren't welcome at all in society. And therefore, Wallace had been very radical in what she'd done. But this is absolutely important. possible. He's told you can't marry her and he won't listen. So this is almost on a scale a generation or two ago of a monarch saying that they were gay? Yes. Okay. This is a huge moment. And you see things moving very far. So the divorce of Wallace and Ernest comes in October and

everyone knows the press. No. They've seen them on a holiday together. The European press has talked about the King's friendship, but not the British press. And they've kept it out of the story. is. And in fact, the private secretary says, oh, the press has been silent. And I think that's two reasons. Number one, there's been pressure on them to keep silent. But also, I think, I wonder whether it's been shooting the messenger, whether they think that if they print this big story that the king is dating a divorced woman, that the papers will be in loads of trouble, that this continued silence can't be relied on. So the government are arguing. Edward's saying, no, he's saying, absolutely, I won't. And then there's actually a sermon, a bishop gives a sermon, saying that he hopes

Edward will be a better king. He'll work harder. Now, I think that poor bishop doesn't know anything. He's just talking about work. But this is really seen by the press as, here we go. It's been talked about. And in it goes into the press and therefore Baldwin has to do something about it. Suddenly the people are made aware of it. Everyone knows about it. Wow. So Baldwin has to do something about it. And Churchill, as we can imagine, Winston Churchill is putting his awe in. He's getting his nose in. He doesn't like Baldwin. He's trying to bring him down. and he sees an opportunity here. And he's very fond of Edward VIII.

And he says, let's come up with a solution. Come up with a solution is that Edward will marry Wallace, but it'll be a Morgonatic marriage. So that's a marriage by which she's a wife, but not a queen. She's not going to be queen consul. She's just going to be a morganatic marriage. A little bit like Franz Ferdinand. This is the plan.

Yes. Yes. This is the plan that's happened a lot in Europe. So the idea is that this is what's going to happen. After the statute of Westminster in 1931, he's got to go to the Dominions. And he says, okay, I'll go and see what the Dominions think because they're the empire, but they're running the show. And unfortunately, the Dominions all say no. South Africa, Australia, they say no, no, no, no more galactic marriage. New Zealand says, or maybe, and Ireland says, we don't want to be the empire anyway. So essentially, it's a no. And what can then Baldwin do? And he says, we're going to resign. And actually, he speaks to his liberal and Labour counterparts and says, if I resign, would you not form a government? They say, well, no, we don't want to form a government. We agree. This is all terrible. but whatever they try, Edward will not be shifted.

He doesn't want a Morgonatic marriage. He says he wants her to be Empress of India and the whole bag of tricks. I mean, that's why that the empire is a bag of tricks. And so he's determined to abdicate. And she begs him not to. Wallace says, please don't. She's fled to France when the news broke. She's being, please don't.

Please don't. Because she knows she'll be so attacked. And maybe she never really loved him that much. She just thought it was an affair that would last. She's not obsessed her. and perhaps that's why he's so obsessed with her, because she was always a bit at one reserve. You hear stories about Romanoff's weeping

when they were, I said they're next in line to the throne. Do you think there's a part of him that did not want to be King Emperor? Do you think part of him thought, A, I'm in love with this Roman, B, actually, this is my way out? I think that's a really good point. I think he did see it as his way out. He was vitally stuck on marrying Wallace, and she begged him not to, and she tried to give him up,

and he wouldn't have any of it. She's actually, by this point, writing to Ernest Simpson, saying she's still very fond of him, She still loves him, even though he's married to her school friend by now, swings a roundabout. And Edward, he has this vision of what, if he abdicates, then he can push away with all this boring ribbon cutting and all the boring jobs of being king. He can marry Wallace and he can be that glamorous Prince of Wales again. So he has his vision of what he will be abdicating.

And essentially, you're right. I think he just thinks, I don't want to do this job. I'm young and fun and glamorous. I don't want to be like my boring old friend. father and do this job for the rest of my life, ribbon cutting and shaking hands with the prime minister, I want to do something fun. And Wallace is a way out. Right. And so he extraordinarily abdicates the throne. His little brother takes over, who he thinks is a bit more boring and likely to want to cut ribbons and do all that kind of thing. What do you do next? Does he get to

live that life that he'd so hoped for? No, he does not. He is not going to be allowed to stay in the country. The king, George Sixth and Queen Mary are allied on that. He's He's not going to be allowed to stay in the country. He has to go. Does that come as a shock to him? It does come of a shock to him. Hang on, my little brother's treating me. What's going on?

He thought his little brother was very under his thumb. Everyone always underestimated George the 6th. He thought he was a very lacking in intelligence, young man, and he could just tell him what to do. And therefore, it's a big shock to him when he is told out. And the government agree. The government wants him out as well. He goes to Austria. And there he spends the whole time, Andrew Lowney, wrote about this very well in his

big good book, Trader King. And he spends the whole time on the phone saying, how much money can I have? I want money. Give me more money. And he's basically used to blackmailing the royal family. He also ran off with bits and pieces of jewelry when he left. He ran off with the Prince of Wales coronet.

So he runs off with the Prince of Wales's crown that he was crowned with in 1911. He runs off with that. So when Prince Charles gets invested as Prince of Wales in 1969 in Canavan Castle, they haven't got a crown. They have to make a makeshift one and put a ping pong ball and spread gold on top because they haven't got one. because Edward's run off with it so they don't want to ask it back. So he's in Austria. He can't be with Wallace. She's in France. Her divorce is not fully through yet. So he's in Austria, complaining,

ringing up, saying, I want more money. And then finally her divorce goes through in May 1937. And they marry in France on June the 3rd. Oh, that's quick work. It's quick work. He marries her super quickly. And now he's a newlywed. And now he's out on his ear. What is he going to do? He won't do Prince of Wales. And he's out on his ear. But of course, he marries. there's a regime in Europe who really want to see him and see that use can be made of him, and that's the Nazis. There's a Dan Snow's history.

There's more on this topic coming up. This has been written about ever since it happened. What is your judgment? What do you think? Do you think that actually he was seen by Adolf Hitler as quite a useful figure, like a puppet, like the Jacobites, you know, if we invade Britain or if we come to deal with him, we stick our man back on the throne? And do you think he was willing a participant in that sort of however loose conspiracy it was?

So this is the question about Edward. Does he know what Hitler's plans are for him? Hitler's plans are when he invades, he'll put Edward on the throne, he'll be a puppet king. Does he know that? And does he support Hitler in that? And there are so many different questions about this. But I think it's very clear that certainly in the 1930s in 1937, October 1937, when he and Wallace go to Germany and they meet Goebbels and they meet Goering

and then he meets up with Hitler, has a private meeting with Hitler, that he loves the accolades. He loves what he gets in Germany. They treat him like a king. They treat Wallace like a queen. And that is very important to him. And that's what he wants.

He wants her. She can't be HRH. She hasn't been allowed to have that. She's treated as a queen as HRH. It's all marvelous. And so he has this private meeting with Hitler. And we don't know what's said there. We don't know what they discuss.

But there's a photo opportunity. They go all around. Nazi Germany. And of course, by this point, Jews have been excluded from professions. There are restrictions, the idea of the anti-Semitism, it's become a policy. You know it's happening. And it's only going to be a year later when there's Kristallnacht and all the Jewish businesses are vandalised. So it is there. Everyone knows about it. And yet on, he carries on. Now, Edward himself says later, he says, I was taken in by Hitler. He took me in because I believed he was the only ballast against communism. That's what he says. But certainly, he loves the accolade.

that Hitler gives him. And when the Nazis invade France, Edward and Wallace flee, they head down first to Spain, then they head to Portugal. And this is the question, is he involved? Is he giving information to German spies? They stay with a banker who actually is a German asset. And is he passing on information? And there are these many files that are found in 1945 in which there's all about the Hitler's plans and the German's plans in which, you know, it suggests that maybe he could encourage Britain to a peace and the idea of doing this would be mass bombing of Britain and then they'll come to a peace with Germany. How much the Duke knew about it or not? Andrew Lowney says he does. Many other biographers is he doesn't really know about it. It's a question I think

will never know. But it's interesting, isn't Dan? Because this is a different story. But Anthony Blunt, who's later unmasked as the spy, who gave away so many secrets in World War II, he goes over on a secret mission after World War II for the royal family, accompanied by the Royal Librarian to get documents. And they say they're all about Princess Vicky, Victoria's daughter. I mean, I don't know why they would be her letters and a few crowns. But I think what he's really going to try and find are those files about the Duke of Windsor. That's what he's really supposed to be looking for. And obviously, many of them he doesn't find, and they are found and exposed and found by American officers. So the Brits send a special expedition to the ruins of Berlin

to comb through them and try and find these files. And then, yes, what they want. Because they want to protect the reputation of Queen Victoria's oldest daughter. Yes, that's right. Come on. Come on. Yes, Princess Vicky and Victoria might have said a few. Casabaham's mum. They might have said something.

So they're extensive correspondent. That's what this secret mission is for. They want to go to all these castles and get hold of them before the Americans do. They also bring back a few bits and pieces of treasure, I think, that they want to make sure that aren't taken. But that's what I think they're really looking for, is Duke of Windsor letters? because is he actually giving information to the Nazis? There's lots of stories around about Wallace, some of them very malicious. Do you think she was a Nazi sympathizer?

Do you think she was, in fact, people say she was romantically engaged with senior Nazis? That is the question that most kind of condemns her reputation. Was she involved with Nazis? Was she part of the Nazi groupings? And there was talk that she was a lover of Ribbentrop and he sent her flowers. Hitler's foreign minister. A foreign minister. And so that she was a Nazi spy as well.

Now, was this the truth? Now, Anne Seba, she really argues it is not the truth. There's no evidence for this whatsoever. There's really no evidence for this, as there are many rumours about her. But certainly, there is absolutely no doubt that when she and Edward went to Nazi Germany, they appreciated the welcome they got. And if they went back when there had been even more severe and horrific restrictions on Jews, would they have been condemnatory? I think we could possibly say that they would not. Well, what we can say about that is that they were not alone in the British elite. No. Wide sways the British conservative elite in particular were quite, you know, prepared to... And that footage came out a couple of years ago, didn't it? Of even before Edward abdicated, there he is doing a Nazi salute and encouraging the Queen Mother and the Princesses to do as... Of course, you know, Elizabeth and Margaret were children. They didn't understand.

But there he is already seeing Nazism as... As he later said, he thought it was some kind of liberation from communism, this total disaster. So I think Wallace probably wasn't a Nazi spy or a Nazi agent. But if the Nazis had invaded, I really can't see her in Edward saying, absolutely not to be put on the throne. So after going to Spain and Portugal, he was then sent by the British very deliberately to the Bahamas. That's it.

They can't cope with all the chaos he's causing. Off he goes to the Bahamas. To be governor of the Bahamas. Complaining all the way. They complain. He said it's too hot. And the government said, I'm sorry. People are being bombed.

people are suffering, you can stop complaining about being in the Bahamas and it being too hot. Now, Wallace actually does do war work with the Red Cross and she does actually do work for infant mortality, but she does use racial slurs in her letters. I mean, I'm sure he does as well. So literally they are in Bahamas playing the life of the wealthy elite and all the government wants is then to be out of the way and they are sitting there complaining about their suffering during World War II when the whole world is on fire. What happens after the war? Does this energy, is difficult energy with the royal family continue after 1945? After the war, they go back to France and they live in exile in France.

And there is no connection with the royal family. When Elizabeth II comes to the throne, she is crowned in 1953 and Edward is not invited to the coronation. He's not invited and he sits and watches it in Paris with a hostess. She gives him a special gold chair to sit and watch the coronation on TV because that's the only gold chair he's ever going to get. So he has no relationship with the royal family whatsoever. But in 1965, he comes over for an eye operation in London. And then he does meet the Queen.

He does meet Elizabeth II. And they do invite him to a family occasion. So we do see a sort of thawing of relations between Edward and the Royal Family. But that is after the King's death and the Queen Mother, when she sees Wallace again at this occasion, because the Queen Mother and Wallace were at Daggers-drawn. they hated each other. And Wallace apparently called the Queen Mother Cookie

because she said that she was always lucky to eat lots of food. So they hate each other. So that was not a good friendship. But I think Elizabeth II tries to create a relationship. And then not long after in 1972, the Duke dies and then the Prince of Wales coronet comes back to the crown jewels. And Wallace Simpson, usefully for the British firm, the monarchy, does not have any children.

You're exactly right. She does not have any children. So there's no pretenders. That would be the constitutional question. If they had a child, that child would always be there popping up, popping up, and could be a possible pretender. A king over the water. Even though he abdicates, his son would still be theoretically superior to Elizabeth II.

It's very true. He abdicated. He abdicated. And then you're exactly right. And then it still has the royal lineage. And it's so interesting, isn't it? Because you know what we're saying, that does he see Wallace as a way out? of being into king, does he think about that?

He's thinking she's probably not going to have a child. There was some talk that an early procedure rendered her infertile. We don't know the truth of that or not. But certainly she didn't have a child with either of her husbands. And by the time that she was with Edward, she was well under the way of 40, which was seen as too old for having children. So maybe that was something else that was appealing,

that she wasn't going to have the air so he could completely abdicate himself from royal life. this used to be the greatest royal scandal of recent history and now it's been superseded by another one. But that's another very different podcast, a different later historians can look at that one. Kate Williams, thank you very much for coming on this show. Thank you so much for listening to this episode

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