Had the Duke of Windsor wished to portray himself as a king-in-exile, he could not have done so more ostentatiously than at La Croe, the French chateau in which he and his wife moved after his abdication.
Had the Duke of Windsor wished to portray himself as a king-in-exile, he could not have done so more ostentatiously than at La Croe, the chateau in the south of France which he and his wife had moved to following his abdication.
The Duke was no more subtle when he returned to England in February 1952 for the funeral of his younger brother, King George VI, who had so reluctantly come to the throne following his abdication.One observer remarked on Edward's 'swaggering' manner, and described how he was 'talking and looking around, gesticulating and almost waving to the huge and completely silent crowd'.
His tenure as governor to the Bahamas between 1940 and 1945 had been dogged by endless controversy, including his friendship with the Nazi-sympathising mogul Axel Wenner-Gren, who had an estate there and no doubt agreed with the Duke's privately expressed view that 'Hitler was not such a bad chap'. Halifax, a former Foreign Secretary who had dealt with the Duke during his governorship of the Bahamas, remembered his arrogance, lack of consideration to his fellow man and general inability to do his work to the required standards. When asked to comment on the Duke's proposal, he wrote: 'I cannot but think that anything of this sort would lead to inevitable trouble.'
When they began work at La Croe in the summer of 1947, Murphy discovered that the then 54-year-old Duke was spending most of his nocturnal hours in various nightclubs, often remaining out until dawn. He later wrote: 'His span of attention was two and a half minutes maximum, and when the story of the preceding night was plainly written in his trembling hands and bloodshot eyes, I knew that another workday would have to be scrubbed.
The reviews were mixed. The Times Literary Supplement talked of how 'it is the Duke's own book… his own personality, his likes and strong dislikes, spring to life as well as his keen sense of humour'. During a press conference given aboard the Queen Mary as he sailed from New York, the Duke hinted that his visit to London for the funeral was not a purely selfless one, pointing out to American newspaper reporters: 'Queen Elizabeth is only 25 – how young to assume the responsibilities of a great throne in these precarious times?'
His mother-in-law did not agree. 'I have been feeling very unhappy all today, and I suppose that talking about leaving Buckingham Palace just finished me off,' she wrote in a letter to Elizabeth.
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