The Windsors at War: The King, His Brother, and a Family Divided

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. (Apr.)