2022 has been the year of big-name royal biographies. The Duke of Kent’s memoirs, A Royal Life, Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers, and Robert Hardman’s Queen of Our Times have all made their mark this year, and offer insight into the current members of the royal family. However, there are several looking at earlier members of the Windsor dynasty. Andrew Lownie’s new biography features two of the most controversial members, the Windsors. This week’s Book Bite is all about Traitor King by Andrew Lownie and why it should be on your to-read list.
Thank you to NetGalley for providing an Advanced Listening Copy in exchange for an honest review.
Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Andrew Lownie
Traitor King, by Sunday Times bestselling author Andrew Lownie, looks at the years following the abdication of Edward VIII when the former king was kept in exile, feuding with his family over status for his wife, Wallis Simpson, and denied any real job.
Drawing on extensive research into hitherto unused archives and Freedom of Information requests, it makes the case that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were not the naïve dupes of the Germans but actively intrigued against Britain in both war and peace.
It reveals:
– the story behind the German attempts to recruit the Duke as a British Pétain in the summer of 1940.
– the efforts, by Churchill in particular, to prevent post-war publication of the captured German documents which detailed the Duke’s Nazi intrigues.
– the reasons why the Duke, as Governor of the Bahamas, tried to shut down the investigation into the 1943 murder of his close friend Harry Oakes.
– the full extent of the feud with the British Royal Family, based on his betrayals going back to his dishonesty about his true financial position at the time of the abdication.
– that far from a love story, Wallis felt trapped in a marriage she had never wanted with a pathetic and suffocating husband, one of the reasons she took several lovers, including the gay playboy Jimmy Donahue.
Why You Should Read This…
The Windsors are slowly becoming a more divisive couple in the Windsor family. For decades and decades, they were largely seen as selfish and petulant and Britain (and the Commonwealth) were lucky to have dodged them. While I think that the second part of that statement still stands, historians are now starting to dig further into their lives and take a more sympathetic approach.
Lownie presents a complex and oftentimes sad story of these two lives. He uses both government and archival sources, coupled with more informal, personal sources and stories and it paints a lonely picture. My view of the Windsors did not change after reading this- I still believe that their choices were selfish and that they overestimated what their life would look like post-abdication. However, Lownie has filled in so much of that missing story, and it was sadly fascinating. This is one of the most thoughtful biographies I’ve read/listened to in quite some time.
Lownie narrates the audiobook himself and does a fantastic job. I know that a lot of authors do not like narrating themselves. However, I think that it allows their emphasis and opinions to come through strongly. There are a lot of quotes in the book, and his reading brought them to life.
Is Traitor King by Andrew Lownie on your to-read list?
Cheers,
The Historian
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