The People's King

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 20 OCT 2003

Today we are likely to see the 1936 abdication of King Edward VIII of Britain as a straightforward case of a king defying the rules of monarchy and accepting the inevitable consequences. Williams, a University of London historian, recreates the key weeks of crisis and effectively argues that the democratically minded king was deliberately ousted by a court and government unwilling to accept a new style of kingship. The king's ill-timed desire to marry American divorc e Wallis Simpson was both a symptom of their problem with him and a convenient excuse. An impressive selection of quotations from private letters and journals shows the British people eager to communicate with their king and influence his decisions in regard to the throne. A large number of them clearly were sympathetic to his marrying and still remaining king. It was the higher ranks of society who accepted Simpson as the king's mistress, but not as his wife. Williams makes a strong case that Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin bullied the king into giving up the throne, cynically isolating him, misrepresenting public and official opinion and refusing to allow him to address the country personally until the crisis was over. Quotes dominate the book, lending immediacy but also creating a repetitive structure as each chapter trots out a new round of contemporary opinion. Royal watchers will perhaps be startled by details of the relationship between the royal family and the state. Many will see instructive parallels between Edward's experience and recent concerns about a constitutional crisis over the possible remarriage of the current Prince of Wales. Illus. not seen by PW.