The Windsors at War
The King, His Brother, and a Family Divided
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
The next volume in Alexander Larman's biographical chronicle of the Windsor family, as they go to war with Adolf Hitler—and each other.
At the beginning of 1937, the British monarchy was in a state of turmoil. The previous king, Edward VIII, had abdicated the throne, leaving his unprepared and terrified brother Bertie to become George VI, surrounded by a gaggle of courtiers and politicians who barely thought him up to the job. Meanwhile, as the now-Duke of Windsor awaited the decree that would allow him to marry his mistress Wallis Simpson, he took an increased interest in the expansionist plans of Adolf Hitler. He may even have gone so far as to betray his country in the process. And as double agents and Nazi spies thronged the corridors of Buckingham Palace, the only man the King could trust was his Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. But they faced a formidable, even unbeatable, adversary: his own brother.
The Windsors at War tells the never-before-told story of World War Two in Britain and America with a fresh focus on the royal family, their conflicted relationships, and the events that rocked the international press. How did this squabbling, dysfunctional family manage to put their differences aside and unite to help win the greatest conflict of their lifetimes? Alexander Larman, author of The Crown in Crisis, now chronicles the Windsor family at war with Germany—and each other.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Larman follows up Crown in Crisis with an immersive account of what happened after Edward VIII's abdication—namely, "a squabbling and dysfunctional family being tested to the limits under unimaginable pressure." Drawing on diaries, letters, and memoranda, Larman focuses on the "psychodrama of the uneasy relationship" between Edward and his younger brother, George VI, which was exacerbated by the royal family's refusal to attend Edward's wedding to American divorcee Wallis Simpson in 1937, and by Edward's insistence that his wife be given the title of "Her Royal Highness." Seeking proof that he could be "the instrument of peace and harmony between the two countries," Edward toured Germany soon after the wedding, but the visit was seen as a "propaganda coup for the Nazis" and made him and Wallis "persona non grata in the circles in which they wished to move." Larman also sheds light on Winston Churchill's role as an intermediary between George and Edward, details fascist sympathies among the British aristocracy, and notes that Edward's prescient warnings about the weakness of French defenses were ignored by the War Office. Polished and persuasive, it's an incisive study of the interplay between the personal and the political.
