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![Edward VIII - The King Who Threw Away A Crown [DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51czTxK560L._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
DVD ~ Edward VIII
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![Edward And Mrs Simpson [DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513TCMRT2JL._SL500_SS90_.jpg)
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A romantic hero who gave up his throne for love or an undisciplined weakling who put private desire before public duty? A hard-nosed opportunist or just a woman who happened to fall for the wrong man? Theories about Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson have kept scholars and laymen occupied for decades. They range from her appeasing his latent homosexuality with arcane sexual techniques acquired in the Far East to one bizarre proposition that she was in fact a man. Depending on the account, the King emerges at worst as pathologically immature, at best, bafflingly na?ve. Is there anything new to be said? Susan Williams thinks there is. Her approach to the Abdication Crisis, as her title suggests, is born of Tony Blairs Britain. The people loved Edward VIII, she claims; his was all set to be a populist monarchy. It was the Establishment that forced him off his royal perch, not the nation he was to preside over. To support her entertaining argument, Williams relies on the hundreds of thousands of letters written to the King by ordinary people before and in the wake of his abdication. Many are heart-warming, some heart-breaking. Some rightly point out the hypocrisy of church leaders who would tolerate, if tacitly, Mrs Simpson as the Kings mistress but not his wife. But the whole sorry episode is not the first instance of a British government presuming to read the will of its people and possibly getting it wrong. Williams is right in suggesting the government of the day placed far greater importance on its own survival than that of the Kings. There is a slight problem though. Williams seems, understandably, to have been so caught up in the lament of the common man that she has forgotten that crucial point when pathos become bathos. Turn Edward VIII into another royal martyr for the people? Come on. One Diana is enough. (Kirkus UK)
Product Description
In this candid and moving account Susan Williams tells the story of wht really happened, drawing on diaries, secret documents and thousands of letters sent to Edward by the public to re-create the tgragic events that led to his abdication. She reveals a hugely popular, deeply loved monarch, one whose modern ideas and sympathy for the poor so unsettled the establishment that his devotion to Wallis Simpson provided the peercect excuse to force him off the throne.
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A romantic hero who gave up his throne for love or an undisciplined weakling who put private desire before public duty? A hard-nosed opportunist or just a woman who happened to fall for the wrong man? Theories about Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson have kept scholars and laymen occupied for decades. They range from her appeasing his latent homosexuality with arcane sexual techniques acquired in the Far East to one bizarre proposition that she was in fact a man. Depending on the account, the King emerges at worst as pathologically immature, at best, bafflingly na?ve. Is there anything new to be said? Susan Williams thinks there is. Her approach to the Abdication Crisis, as her title suggests, is born of Tony Blairs Britain. The people loved Edward VIII, she claims; his was all set to be a populist monarchy. It was the Establishment that forced him off his royal perch, not the nation he was to preside over. To support her entertaining argument, Williams relies on the hundreds of thousands of letters written to the King by ordinary people before and in the wake of his abdication. Many are heart-warming, some heart-breaking. Some rightly point out the hypocrisy of church leaders who would tolerate, if tacitly, Mrs Simpson as the Kings mistress but not his wife. But the whole sorry episode is not the first instance of a British government presuming to read the will of its people and possibly getting it wrong. Williams is right in suggesting the government of the day placed far greater importance on its own survival than that of the Kings. There is a slight problem though. Williams seems, understandably, to have been so caught up in the lament of the common man that she has forgotten that crucial point when pathos become bathos. Turn Edward VIII into another royal martyr for the people? Come on. One Diana is enough. (Kirkus UK)
Product Description
In this candid and moving account Susan Williams tells the story of wht really happened, drawing on diaries, secret documents and thousands of letters sent to Edward by the public to re-create the tgragic events that led to his abdication. She reveals a hugely popular, deeply loved monarch, one whose modern ideas and sympathy for the poor so unsettled the establishment that his devotion to Wallis Simpson provided the peercect excuse to force him off the throne.
See all Product Description
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82% buy the item featured on this page: The People's King: The True Story of the Abdication |
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10% buy King Edward VIII: A Biography |
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8% buy Mrs Simpson: Secret Lives of the Duchess of Windsor £6.99 |
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