THE DUKE OF WINDSOR, HIS WIFE & ADOLF HITLER

On Wednesday 16 February 2022, The Sydney Institute conducted a Zoom meeting with internationally acclaimed historian and author Andrew Lownie from London. The discussion centred on the analysis and expose in Lownie’s most recent book – Traitor King – The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Lownie’s work, using a vast collection of sources and archives, details the many factors behind the exile and rejection of the British king who was never crowned – King Edward VIII. Apart from his unwillingness to give up the twice divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson, whom he wished to marry, Edward was also – willingly or unwittingly – a collaborator with the Germans as they conquered France and sought to take Great Britain. The discussion with Andrew Lownie was chaired and moderated by The Sydney Institute’s Executive Director Gerard Henderson.

THE DUKE OF WINDSOR, HIS WIFE & ADOLF HITLER

ANDREW LOWNIE

Gerard Henderson: Let’s start off by briefly telling us about the Duke of Windsor and his wife, who starts off as Mrs Simpson.

Andrew Lownie: The Duke of Windsor was the heir to George V and Queen Mary. He was born in 1894 and came to the throne as Edward VIII in January 1936, when his father died. Most books concentrate on his abdication in December 1936, when he chose to abdicate the throne to marry an American divorcee called Wallis Simpson, who had two husbands living at the time. Where my book differs from all the previous books is I begin the story in December 1936, and I look at the period after the abdication, and what happened to him in the next 50 years. Which is often bypassed by biographers or covered in very few number of pages. The theme of the book is my argument that he was not just an innocent dupe of the Nazis, but, in fact, was an active intriguer with them. That’s why I called the book Traitor King.

Gerard Henderson: Let’s talk about a couple of other books. Going through my library last night, I’ve got a copy of Edward VIII’s book A King’s Story, Memoirs of HRH, The Duke of Windsor. You quote Edward’s book on your first page, and elsewhere. What’s the difference between your book and his book? He has about six references to Adolf Hitler, you have many. His book published 1951, your book published 2021.

Andrew Lownie: His was a memoir, it was ghosted. As you say, it was written 70 years ago. The story only really goes up to 1936. It’s not an entirely honest book, it’s a curated narrative of the life. It bypasses a lot of the material that I deal with. My book is a full biography, over a thousand footnotes, almost all of them from primary source material from archives around the world. They’re two very different books, and one of the ironies is that Wallis also wrote an autobiography published in 1956; The Heart Has Its Reasons, which doesn’t even agree with her husband’s book about events. So, I think they should be filed under fiction, those books, rather than under memoir.

Gerard Henderson: I read, many years ago, Francis Donaldson’s book, Edward VIII, and I found that a very good biography, but it focuses on the early part of his life, that is true. But I think she probably regards him, as you were saying earlier, a bit of a dupe in relation to Hitler. But then I guess, the documents you’re using, some of them became available more recently. So, tell us a bit about the documents that you located that others probably, didn’t have before you, particularly in relation to the King’s attitude to Adolf Hitler and Germany in general.

Andrew Lownie: I was very fortunate during lockdown, because a lot of the archives were closed, but a lot of this material comes from the Churchill College archives in Cambridge, where I was given access to all of Churchill’s correspondence. Though the National Archives here in Britain were also closed, they were making material available, and I was able in brief moments when it was open, to go and look at some several hundred documents there. From the foreign office, the colonial office files, cabinet office files, metropolitan police – because his police detective was reporting on him and filing reports back. There’s also an important source in the diary of an M5 officer called Guy Liddell. That diary has only just been made available. We also have the diaries of Tommy Lascelles, who was the private secretary to Edward VIII, which again, had been made available only in the last two years. So, a lot of that material wasn’t available to Francis Donaldson. What she had – and I also found – were the diaries of Barbara Metcalf, who was married to the ADC to the Duke.

So, there’s also been a lot of material now that’s appeared in Portuguese archives, for example. Secret service reports there – I found secret service reports in the French archives. There are some materials now in German archives and there’s some Spanish and Russian archives. So, that material wasn’t available to Francis Donaldson, but she was relying on interviews with many of the participants in these events, particularly the abdication. They didn’t always tell her the full story, but she had a lot of very good first hand material there. What struck me with all the writers up to my book is, they’ve seen all this material about the links with the Nazis, but they’ve put two and two together and made three. When, in fact, it’s blatantly obvious that it’s four. I was gratified when the DLS reviewed the book. They said, “You have made the case that he was a spy”. In fact, I had a Cambridge historian, even today, saying “You’ve nailed the story”. So, that’s rather nice. I think the material was there, people just weren’t putting it together.

Gerard Henderson: What is the essential charge against Edward VIII with reference to Nazi Germany, that your book establishes?

Andrew Lownie: He was a 1/16th German. He was always very pro German and believed that there shouldn’t be another war. But it’s very clear now that he went beyond that. One of the great concerns, even before the abdication, was his very pro German feelings. He tried, for example, to downplay what the Germans were doing during the remilitarisation of the Rhineland. He tried to interfere in politics with the 1935 Anglo-German navel agreement. There was great concern, even before he became King. After that – I think partly because he felt rejected by his family, he basically was sent into exile – he was drawn into the ambit through various German agents to, for example, visit Germany on a propaganda visit in October 1937. He met and had tea with Hitler, he met all the Nazi leaders, he gave Nazi salutes. He was a great believer in the Fuhrer Principe. After that, even after war broke out, he was intriguing with Beaver Brook for peace overtures.

Then, when he was brought back from France through Spain and Portugal to be brought back to Britain, the Germans approached him and asked him if he would become a Gauleiter, if Germany won the war and occupied Britain, that he would be restored to the throne. It’s very clear from the correspondence that we have – particularly from documents that Francis Donaldson would have been aware of but didn’t make much use of – what we call, the Marburg File, which were captured German documents, at the end of the war, which are all the correspondence of the Foreign Ministry with the ambassadors in places like Spain and Portugal. Which makes very clear that the Duke was actively being approached by these ambassadors to work for the Germans, and that he responded in a very favourable way. After the war, the British were very keen, together with the Americans, to suppress these documents, they should not be publicly available.

There was a big fight between the politicians and the academics about those files becoming available. But a lot of the evidence comes from the diaries of Tommy Lascelles, from Guy Liddell, the M5 officer, and from the correspondence from Churchill to, for example, the dominion prime ministers. So, as you say, it builds up. And, of course, he was being monitored not just by the British, the French and Portuguese, but also by the FBI. So, we have the FBI files on him, when he was in the States. One of the accusations was that, when he was sent off to the Bahamas, as Governor General, during the war, to try and mow the way, that he should be kept away from the Americans because he was espousing isolationist sentiment. It was worried that he would encourage that at a time when we wanted to bring America into the war. That period really went on until America came into the war. But even into the end of his life, he was saying that Hitler was a great man.

Gerard Henderson: You also documented in his book that he had a strong antisemitic tendency. He blamed the “Jews”, as he called them, for all sorts of world problems. How deep was his antisemitism? Or was it just of the kind that prevailed in certain upper-class circles in Britain at the time?

Andrew Lownie: No, I think it was more than casual antisemitism. He was friendly with very right wing, anti-communist businessman. He sponged off a lot of them. In fact, one of the reasons the French didn’t want him to go back to France after the Second World War, was his involvement with various collaborationists. So, he generally was antisemitic. One of his best friends was Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British fascists. One of the concerns was that many of the supporters of the King, in terms of restoring him back to the throne – both in ’36, when he abdicated and later on – were fascist supporters, members of the British Union of Fascists.

Gerard Henderson: As I recall, Francis Donaldson examined Wallis Simpson in this regard, and felt that her links with Germany were probably unintended, of little consequence. But you argue that she was also very soft on Nazi Germany. What drove her in that direction?

Andrew Lownie: She was friendly to Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister. The Germans had realised that she was sympathetic and pro-Nazi, and she was targeted by an agent called Stephanie von Hohenlohe, who took an apartment next to her in Bryanston Court, in London. There was pressure put on Wallis, and through Wallis, in the sense, put on the Duke. But it’s very clear, from looking at the diaries of the period like Chips Channon, Robert Bruce Lockhart, and others, that there was great concern in official circles about both of their Pro German views, and their indiscretion. Secret papers stopped being sent to the Duke shortly after he became King, because he was leaving his red boxes around with German diplomats, entertaining them at the same time. Even before George V died, he had his own son put under surveillance by the Domestic Intelligence Agency, which is pretty unique in British history.

Gerard Henderson: Mrs Simpson’s involvement seems to be clear, but what’s her motivation? Just that she’s married to the King?

Andrew Lownie: I think she was sympathetic to the Germans. She was supposed to have had an affair with Ribbentrop, there’s that connection. I think she believed in many of the same things that he did. That she was very anti-communist, and therefore that the important thing was that Germany should focus on Russia as a real threat, rather than fight Britain. That there was a common bond between them. I think she believed in strong government. We’d had the national government; we’d had coming off the gold standard. There were many concerns, and many people turned to communism, but others turned to fascism. Of course, as you say, many of the aristocrats, people of the circles she moved in, were very pro-German. Banking circles – for example, the Duke of Wellington, remained very pro-Nazi even up to the war. The difference was that almost all of them realised by the autumn of ’39, that one couldn’t negotiate with Hitler, and that war was inevitable. The Duke continued to feel that he could talk to the Germans and that you could do business with them.

Gerard Henderson: You mentioned the visit to Germany, and you make the point in you book, that there is no available documentation of what discussion took place between Hitler and the King, which in itself is rather suspicious. You would expect some kind of document to be around. Can you comment on the German visit and the various countries he spent time in before ending up where he ended up.

Andrew Lownie: He makes his tour of Germany in October ’37, which is a propaganda disaster. The Germans make a huge amount of it. He visits concentration camps, SS headquarters, all sorts of things. That’s a huge embarrassment for the royal family, when it’s already becoming a desperate situation in terms of dealing with Germans. Then, something has to be done with him during the war, he’s given a job as a liaise officer to the French first army. He inspects their defences, and then it’s realised that he’s feeding back this information through the man who had lent him his chateau in France to get married. A man called Charles Bedaux, who was a Nazi agent.

Bedaux was passing this information, reports of the French defences, back to the Germans, through the German ambassador in The Hague. That’s one of the concerns. Then, when Germany invades France, and there’s some suggestion the Duke betrayed weaknesses in the French line that helped the German advance. He flees to the south of France, back to his home there, and he instructs a matron to go to Portugal where he’d be flown back by flying boat. There, he is approached by the Germans to act as a Gauleiter, and he stays there and delays his time there, while various negotiations are going on with the Germans about whether he might take on this role of their British king. He uses all sorts of excuses; they have to collect things from the house in Paris, he wants to have his driver kept on rather than called up for military service. Churchill, of course, is monitoring all this. In fact, has spies in his household.

The Duke is actually with a German agent, a man called Esporito de Santo, in Lisbon. He’s then offered the post of Governor of Bahamas and sent off there. But even on route to the Bahamas, he sends back, in code, messages to Esporito de Santo, that if the moment comes for him to be called upon as a Gauleiter, he’s very happy to come back. We know from German documents that he, for example, was encouraging them to bomb London, that was the best way, to bomb them into submission. He was making rude comments about his brother, the King, and his sister-in-law. He was extremely disloyal and was going into the German embassy. It wasn’t just that he was passive. He wasn’t reporting these approaches by the German to anyone; he was doing them in secret.

So, he gets to the Bahamas, but even then, he’s making broadcasts which are isolationist in sentiment. He’s mixing with another German agent called Axel Wenner-Gren. The story goes on until December 1941. Then, he gets involved in currency irregularities when he’s in the Bahamas, he’s involved in the cover up of a murder of the richest man in the Bahamas, because he’s involved in some shady financial dealings with him. The scandal continues. That, I think, is one of the reasons why the royal family shun him. It’s not so much because of the abdication, it’s because of this treacherous and dishonest behaviour. Indeed, even when it comes to the financial settlement, when he gives up the throne, he tries to cheat his brother there and hides money that he has, rather than declare exactly what he’s got. He’s a fundamentally dishonest man.

Gerard Henderson: You write in your book that they virtually had nothing to do after the abdication, and that he was into parties, travel. She and he were into shopping. He, particularly, was into golf. You also make the point, both in the Bahamas and elsewhere, in France, he trusted his personal staff with a meanness, rudeness, bullying. He must have been an awful employer. What is there about their private life?

Andrew Lownie: He liked gardening, and they had their dogs, which were like substitutes for children that they fed very good steak in silver bowls. But they had this very empty life. Most of the French aristocrats didn’t want to deal with them. But they entertained, probably, twice a week. They were out most nights a week, and that’s what gave them pleasure. It was a very empty life, because it had no real inner life. He wasn’t interested in music, or books, or anything like that. He played the stock exchange; he took advice from a lot of these businessman friends he had. But they drifted around. They had a house in the south of France, now owned by Roman Abramovich, a house in Paris. They spent a lot of time cruising the Mediterranean. Half the year was spent in the States, either sponging off people in Palm Beach, Long Island or Newport, Rhode Island. They kept a suite at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. So, that’s how they got their pleasure.

They were fated, they were treated like royalty, they behaved like royalty. They had a large staff. They had huge expenses in terms of staff. But as you say, they treated them very badly. They didn’t pay them the going rate because they always argued that they would get better jobs when they left. People who were extremely loyal to them – not just staff, but friends, ADCs like Fruity Metcalf and others, were discarded as soon as they were no longer useful to them. They took advantage of people. They were not good at picking up the tab when they went out, they expected other people to pay for them. They shopped extravagantly, and that was one of the concerns, particularly during the war, because it sent out all the wrong signals.

For example, they took on a young “negro” butler when they were in the Bahamas, who served them loyally until the 1970s, when his wife died and he asked for more time to spend with his young family, and they refused to give it to him. They said, “If you need to go at 5, then you don’t bother coming back”. That happened time and time again; people with ill health, who were forced to give up were not paid off properly. They were extremely mean in terms of Christmas gifts to people, often just giving them signed photographs. They were not popular with their staff. They would get people sacked – even at places like hairdressers and shops – if they didn’t feel they’d been given the attention they deserved. She was not at all nice to him. He was a rather abject figure, who was looking for a mother figure.

His mother had been extremely cold and remote to him, and all his relationships were with women who were the substitute mothers. That’s the role that was played. She despised him, she had no respect for him, she felt trapped in a marriage she never really wanted. She was happy to be the King’s mistress, but didn’t want to be chained to this boy, in effect, who’d never emotionally grown up, and that’s why she took on lovers herself, and would often send him to bed in tears. People like Lady Diana Cooper who was married to the ambassador of Paris was shocked to see the way she treated him, calling him “mosquito”.

But in some ways the ruder and crueller she was to him, the more he liked it. It’s bizarre. One of the other disclosures which surprised me was to discover that they were both bisexual. There was a man in Hollywood called Scotty Bowers who pimped for them. There are now more and more stories emerging from the diaries of, particularly his, bisexual affairs – one with a man called Walter Chrysler, who was the son of the car manufacturer. Another with an actor called Montgomery Clifton Webb. They led these very empty lives. He was devoted to, and obsessed with her, and would be lost if he didn’t know where she was at any moment. Whereas she felt chained to this man. Even when he died, their bedrooms were two doors apart. She didn’t visit him in the last two weeks of his life. He was crying out for her, and yet she just wouldn’t even go into his room. He died in the arms of a temporary night nurse.

Gerard Henderson: Tell us about Winston Churchill and Anthony Blunt’s role.

Andrew Lownie: Churchill was a great supporter during the abdication, he ran the King’s party. He was disappointed – he said, “Our cock won’t fight”, when the King didn’t fight to keep the throne. He was outmanoeuvred by Baldwin and others in the Church. Churchill remained a supporter – he was romantic about the monarchy – until this episode in 1940 with the collusion with the Germans. His view changed after that. He did support the Duke in some ways in suppressing these documents after the war, but that was to protect the monarchy, rather than any loyalty to the Duke. There was some contact after the war, and Churchill did come and stay with him in the south of France, but he didn’t trust him. In fact, he refused to go on a cruise with the Duke and Duchess, because he was so revolted by his behaviour. The Blunt story is interesting, and it relates to Peter Wright. Peter Wright in Spycatcher tells the story of Blunt being interviewed in 1964, when he confessed and was given immunity.

Peter Wright was told by the Queen’s private secretary, Michael Adeane, that if Blunt mentions a mission that he made at the end of the war to the Kronberg castle, outside Frankfurt, that was irrelevant to Blunt’s treachery for the Russians. That raised interest with Wright. And I think it’s become pretty clear that the mission that Blunt conducted in 1945 was to search out any incriminating letters that might lie with German relations of the royal family, particularly the Princes of Hess, and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and to bring those letters back, and make sure they never became public. He was on a fishing expedition for these letters. And we know that these letters existed because a man called Douglas Price, who was a British army officer based at Kronberg in 1945, saw the letters and has written about them in his diaries. Blunt – the argument was that he was given immunity because he had incriminating evidence about the Royal family. It’s interesting that – for example, I’ve seen the report of the trip that he made in 1945, in the Royal archives, and it’s clearly a doctored report. It doesn’t tie in with any of the reports in, for example, archives in Britain and America about the visit. Again, it’s a part of the cover up that the government, or the royal family did, to try and disguise what he was up to.

Gerard Henderson: You mentioned the Duke dies in 1972. He has throat cancer and dies soon after. The Duchess lives a long life, but towards the end of her life she’s incapacitated. Can you wind up with the deaths of the two of them? And they were both buried in Windsor Castle?

Andrew Lownie: Yes, at Frogmore. The royal family began to relent – they realised this was very bad PR. So, from the late 1960s, when the Duke began to suffer ill health, there was some contact. He was invited, for example, the unveiling of a plaque to his mother. Flowers were sent when he was ill. There was a visit by Prince Charles to him in Paris. The Queen, realising that he was about to die, and very concerned that artifacts like the garter robes, various incriminating correspondence he had, should be recovered, mounts peace overtures towards him and goes and visits him in May 1972, just before he dies. Peace is made at that point. Wallis lives on another 14 years, but she is not the person she was. She, again, suffers ill health, and eventually weighs only about 60 pounds.

She falls into the grip of a French lawyer called Suzanne Blum, who, ostensibly to pay the hospital bills, sells off a lot of the furniture and various things in the house in Paris. Eventually, Wallis is cut off from her friends, the staff is let go, very few people see her – she’s a recluse. And she hardly eats anything, she’s just drinking vodka from a silver tankard. It’s a rather sad life – living, bedridden in one room of the house. She does get a service at St George’s Windsor Castle, and is buried alongside the Duke at Frogmore, but she is never given the title he wanted for her of Her Royal Highness. It’s a very sad life, the last 20 years of their lives.

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Questions and Discussion

Question: I wondered if you’d care to go back to why the Duke was so enchanted by the Nazis. You say in your book that he wasn’t really interested in the overall effect of Nazism or communism on ordinary people, he was not aligned politically in any sense. To what extent was his infatuation, or interest, in them more about what he could get out of it, than what he might be doing, say, in revenge to what had happened to him? What was the real motivation?

Andrew Lownie: I think, certainly, the visit in October 1937 was to have a role on the world stage. He realised that he wanted to big himself up for Wallis, he wanted her to be treated properly, like a state visit. He felt bad that she had lost all this with the abdication. The Germans played to his ego, and to, I think, a genuine desire that he could be a peace broker. Then, I think, it developed from that – he had this belief in strong government and the Fuhrer Principe. He was antisemitic. He had a great admiration for Hitler, because he felt that Hitler had rescued Germany from the ravages of war. He felt a bond with another Anglo-Saxon country. He was strongly anti-communist – he almost didn’t go to France after the war because of the Communist Party there. There was a whole series of factors. I think it was also to get back at the family a bit. He was aggrieved at the way he was treated, and he was getting attention from the Nazis. So, there was a bit of vindictiveness against the family, in a sense – he could make up for the fact that he abandoned the throne, but he could still be a player on the world stage.

Question: What was the Duke’s opinion of Nazi Germany or the Nazis after WWII? Did he ever express any views about the Nazis after 1945?

Andrew Lownie: I quote from the book discussions – for example, when John Balfour, was a minister in Washington, about how he thought Hitler wasn’t such a bad chap and had several people saying that right up to the day he died. The comments that he made, where he backpedalled and said that he was naïve and misread Hitler, I think were for public consumption. But I think, privately, that his views on Hitler never changed. He remained vehemently pro-Nazi.

Question: You suggest at the beginning of your book, which goes to his character, that he not only was happy to do a deal with Germany, but he was also happy to do a deal with Republicans. There’s some suggestion that if the British Labor Party came to office, and the Labor Party wanted to go down the Republican route, he would accommodate that. Can you explain that?

Andrew Lownie: That’s absolutely right. This is the game part of upstaging his brother. He was a great moderniser. That was one of the concerns before he came to the throne, that he was doing away with a lot of the court ritual, and the court didn’t like that. We see certain parallels now, for example, with Prince Harry. I think he did feel that he wanted to be a different king, and that raised concerns. But a lot of this was people flattering him and appealing to his ego. He was in many ways a great paradox, because he was a great stickler for etiquette. In the 1950s and 1960s, people had to curtsy and bow, and they had to stand up when he left the room, and he insisted on everyone calling him (and Wallis) His (Her) Royal Highness. He was a great stickler for protocol, but at the same time, he did feel that some things needed to change. This engagement with the Labor Party was all hushed up. This was just before the outbreak of the Second World War. There were numerous scandals like that, where he was very indiscreet, and was too actively involved in politics, which wasn’t the role of the monarch.

Question: What were the financial arrangements made for the Duke, by the British government at the time of abdication and subsequently? How truthful was he about his own financial position?

Andrew Lownie: When he abdicated, the decision was taken that he would be paid – from the civil list, the government – £25,000 a year. Which was what they gave the siblings – he would just swap roles. That’s what had been agreed. But what he hadn’t said was that he’d saved the equivalent of millions of pounds from Duchy of Cornwall revenues as Prince of Wales. He hadn’t been spending even his civil list entitlement. Therefore, he really didn’t need this money. When that emerged, George VI felt that he could go back on their agreements. He also felt that he couldn’t go to Parliament to ask for this money because it would reveal just how much they were being overpaid. That money had to come from the Royal family – they paid for it. But he played very hard to get over giving up his lifetime interest in Sandringham, Balmoral, the Royal houses.

Throughout his life, he always felt that he never had enough money, but, in fact, he was very canny with his investments. He did a lot of trading on the black market with currency. In fact, there was a huge scandal after the war in which his private secretary had to be bought off, because he was going to take the story to the press. They made a lot of money for the books, from endorsing everything from cutlery to linen, from charging for radio and television interviews. He was always a tax exile, that was one of the reasons he didn’t want to live in certain countries. The French treated him very well, they gave him very cheap rent on the houses that he had. He got things duty free. So, a lot of people supported him, because it suited their purposes to have him in their pocket. He was not open about his financial dealings at all.

Question: When the Holocaust was exposed, how did he react?

Andrew Lownie: He didn’t react at all. He said nothing.

Question: Can you tell us about the ongoing relationship with Mountbatten?

Andrew Lownie: He’d been best man to Mountbatten at his wedding in 1922, and Mountbatten hoped to be his best man at his wedding in 1937. But the Royal family banned anyone from attending and banned clergymen from conducting the service. Edward always felt bitter about that. Mountbatten did keep in touch with him and did see him. He didn’t get on well with Wallis, but when Wallis was away, often getting one of her facelifts in Switzerland, Mountbatten would pop across to Paris and see him. They had made up their relationship by the time the Duke died in 1972.

Question: Did he express a view, after the war, when he became aware of the extent of the Holocaust?

Andrew Lownie: He made no reference to it, whatsoever. As I say, he had been very involved with French collaborationists. The French government were very reluctant for him to come back at the end of the war, because of his association with these people.

Question: He went on a tour in about 1930, wasn’t it? With Mountbatten, all around the old empire?

Andrew Lownie: That’s right. He went to Australia in 1921 and 1922. He did India and Australia.

Question: He was involved in a serious train derailment, crossing from Adelaide to Perth, as I recall?

Andrew Lownie: On one of those trips, he’s supposed to have fathered an illegitimate child, in Dunedin.

Question: Towards the end of your book, you quote Craig Brown as saying, “It’s a rare “. Your answer to that is that your stuff is new, I imagine?

Andrew Lownie: Yes, there have been quite a lot of books on Wallis, particularly, and they tend to be very pro Wallis. Interestingly, there hadn’t been a book on the Duke since Phillip Ziegler’s official biography some 40 years ago, apart from an academic book about his relationship with America. This was the first book, also, that looked at the two of them together, and looked at the marriage. The first book that began in 1936 and looked in detail at the period from 1936 to 1986. Ziegler, for example, covers it in a matter of about 30 pages, in a book of 600 pages. Everyone is focussed on the period before 1936 and people pass over the overtures from the Germans – what was called Operation Willy – often in a chapter, and don’t really take it very seriously. They say that the German ambassadors were just trying to curry favour with Ribbentrop.

But it’s very clear, from looking at the primary material and the material that’s been released, like the diaries – I mentioned Liddell and Lascelles – that wasn’t the case. We’ve got more material now and, also, my research has looked at other countries, in a way that previous writers haven’t. A lot of these books have almost no primary research, they’re just a rehash of someone else’s book. Also, one of the extraordinary things was that many people who knew them, are still around. One of the people I interviewed was a woman called Sarah Morrison, who was a teenager and lived with them in Paris in the 1940s. There’s an interior designer here called Nicky Haslam, now in his 80s, who knew Wallis in the 1960s in New York. I think that’s one of the extraordinary things, that these people are still around who dealt with them. There’s a woman called Mona Eldridge, who worked for Barbara Hutton, as her secretary. Hutton was very close to the Windsor’s, part of their circle. It was her cousin, Jimmy Donohue, who was bisexual, who had an affair with Wallis in the 1950s. The line was that she had swapped a king for a queen.

Question: I’m intrigued with what you’ve described as their aimless, purposeless life, and I wonder if it’s got some lessons for the present-day hangers on Royals. Britain has kept this established monarchic system strongly, as opposed to the Europeans, and I wonder whether this is a warning to those who come after them, taking into account Prince Harry. He’s got children, that will give him some purpose. But what is it about the monarchy that leaves these people rudderless, in some sense, if they are no longer connected? How long do you think the system can go on?

Andrew Lownie: I think the trope of the Crown is this tension between public duty and private pleasure, and I think that is one of the themes of Royal history. The heir always has a role, and it’s often the second son; the Harry’s or the Andrews, that have the problems. Here, the problem was the heir. He just didn’t want the job, and really wasn’t suitable for the job. My argument is that there is a very strong element of a rather boorish, Hanoverian gene; strongly self-entitled, not very bright. It’s actually people marrying into that which improves the gene pool for the Windsors. There are good Royals; I think Charles will be a good King, Queen Elizabeth has been a dutiful Queen, and there is that tradition, clearly, through George V and George VI. But it’s clear that when Charles comes to the throne, there will be a streamlined monarchy, and the siblings will be cast aside. Also, in the way that Australia reached this position, long before Britain, there is less deference now to the Royal family. There is a challenge at the moment over Prince Phillip’s will.

I’ve had a big campaign to get these diaries and letters of Mountbatten, which were bought with public funds, to be made available, which were closed, in effect, on the orders of the Royal family. That battle’s been won. So, I think people are much more prepared to question the Royal family in their role. They have an important role in binding the nation together, in their charitable work. But I think people want them to be whiter than white, and that we have a much less deferential press, which is more prepared to talk about their foibles. It is interesting the parallels between Harry and the Duke. They’re the same charismatic, young Prince, who gives it up for an American divorcee, who takes them away from their friends and family, there are the same debates about security, about finances. Same accusations of bad parenting. Falling out with siblings. The exploitation of the royal brand for commercial gain. The curation of the narrative. The suing of anyone who doesn’t suit that narrative, working with tame journalists and writers. So, the playbook is there for Harry to look at. The problem for the Royal family is if a royal goes rogue, it’s very difficult to control them, because anything you tell them will be made public. All you can do is try and freeze them out and take away some of their privileges. Which is what they’ve done with Harry, and what they’ve done with Prince Andrew when he became an embarrassment.

Question: Was Mrs Simpson’s arrival in London a godsend for Britain, because it led to the abdication?

Andrew Lownie: Yes, absolutely. That’s one of my arguments. I think that the abdication was used as an excuse to get rid of a very unsuitable King. The courtiers had prayed before Wallis turned up, that he would die in a steeple chasing accident. They used her, and the couple were played. They sought advice from dominions, the Church. He was outmanoeuvred. He could have had a morganatic marriage, which is what he had in the end. He had all sorts of choices; he could have kept her as a mistress, he could have taken on the throne, and then tried to marry her. But I think the politicians realised this was a useful way of a “stick to beat him with”, and they achieved that. We owe a lot to Wallis. People say we should have statues of her all over Britain because she saved the monarchy. Who knows what he might have done? There were lots of novels based on the premise that the Germans would have come to accommodation with him, and we would have had jack booted soldiers marching up the mall.

Question: Do you get many invitations from Buckingham Palace these days? Are you able to tell us about your next book?

Andrew Lownie: I never got invitations from Buckingham Palace, and if I did, to receive a knighthood, I would keep a long way away from that sword. But we did ask for comments; the press have asked for comments from Buckingham Palace, and they’ve refused to comment. I did start off very well. When I did my first book, on John Buchan, it was the Christmas present the Royal Family gave people. Dozens of copies were given away as presents. I think they may have bought the more recent books, but they certainly haven’t been giving them as presents. I’m afraid I’ve continued with my anti Royal theme by doing a book on Prince Andrew. Though my initial investigation suggests that he is more sinned against than sinner.

It’s not the material I expected to find, but we’ll learn more in the coming months from what happens, but we’re not going to get the trial, so, it will be interesting to see how much information does emerge. But from the people I’ve been talking to, oafish and entitled as he is, he is, perhaps, not as guilty of as many things as the press suggested. But there’s not been a good biography of him, and he was, after all, favourite son. The second son; fourth in line at one point. So, to look at his role and his story, and the story of his wife, I think will make an appealing next book.

Gerard Henderson: Anne and I would love to have you back at the Sydney Institute in a couple of years’ time when you’ve finished that. I’ll finish by saying two things. As I said before, it’s a great book – Traitor King. We have copies of that which will have signed bookplates to put in them. We’ve also got a few copies of the Mountbatten’s book, which came out a couple of years earlier. So today our time, tonight your time, Andrew Lownie, thanks very much for a terrific performance, and good luck with the book.