Abdication
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
From critically acclaimed historian Juliet Nicolson, a novel of a King and country torn between private desire and public duty on the eve of the Second World War
'Abdication beautifully evokes the troubled thirties, with its high-stakes politics, easy money and social tensions ... This is a wonderful novel' Amanda Foreman
'Superb ... a delightful story of a friendship forged by the drama of the Abdication and the approaching war' The Times
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After the recent death of George V, England has a new king, Edward VIII. But for all the confident pomp and ceremony of the accession, it is a turbulent time.
When nineteen-year-old May Thomas arrives in Liverpool, her first job as secretary and chauffeuse to Sir Philip Blunt introduces her to the upper echelons of British society – and to Julian, a young man of conscience whom, despite all barriers of class, she cannot help but fall for.
But hidden truths, unspoken sympathies and covert complicities are everywhere, and the threat of another world war becomes increasingly inevitable...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in England in 1936, historian Nicolson's debut novel explores the tumultuous love lives of two couples, set against the backdrop of a world bracing for another global conflict while still recovering from WWI. Prince of Wales Edward and American divorc e Wallis Simpson are entangled in a scandalous (real-life) love affair whose secrecy they try desperately to maintain, a challenge made all the more difficult after Edward's ascension as king and concomitant thrust to the forefront of the public stage. Meanwhile, May Thomas, a chauffeur staying with Jewish relatives, falls in love with political Oxford undergraduate Julian Richardson, whose restlessness threatens their relationship. As if navigating an illicit royal love affair weren't enough, Edward and Wallis's situation becomes further complicated when Wallis's childhood friend the overweight "virgo intacta" Evangeline Nettlefold shows up and her long-held resentments threaten to undo the monarchy. Though richly detailed and set in a dynamic time and place, the novel revolves primarily around the uninteresting and unlikable Evangeline, leaving the truly interesting characters of Edward and Wallis to wait in the wings.
