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Bezig met laden... Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsordoor Andrew Lownie
   Books Read in 2022 (463) Bezig met laden...
 Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek.  HistoryToday | Aug 31, 2023 |    ) aadyer | Apr 29, 2022 | In polite company, one doesn’t throw around the word ‘traitor’ very casually. But Lownie has written about traitors before (I really enjoyed his book about Guy Burgess) and here he sets out to convince us that Edward and Wallis were not just naive people who might have been manipulated by some clever Nazis, not just ordinary British aristocrats who didn’t particularly enjoy Jewish company, but were in fact conscious and willing supporters of Hitler and his criminal regime. He succeeds. He succeeds because he dug deep into the archives — both the British archives and more interestingly the German, Spanish and others. There he learned that the idea of Edward returning to the throne as a Nazi puppet ruler of a defeated Britain was one that the Duke could live with. It gets worse. After the abdication, Edward and Wallis travelled abroad, including a trip in 1937 to Germany where he was feted by the Nazi regime. There, among other things, he had very nice chat with Hitler at his Alpine retreat, the Berghof. And while much of the trip is well documented, there is no record of what they said. Meanwhile, there is some evidence that Mrs. Simpson had an affair with Ribbentrop, the future Nazi foreign minister, while he was the German ambassador to London. Ribbentrop was not just a diplomat. He was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Nuremburg tribunal and was hanged 75 years ago. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were anti-Semites and would have played the role of puppet rulers exactly as Pétain did in France, or Quisling in Norway. Fortunately, thanks to the RAF, they never got the chance. (  )2  ericlee | Nov 23, 2021 |
 Did Edward, as Mr. Lownie claims, commit treason?...The 'conventional line,' Mr. Lownie writes, is that Edward’s attitude to Nazi Germany differed little from that of his family, much of Britain’s aristocracy, and most of its Conservative government...In the Bahamas, Edward and Wallis continued to socialize with pro-Nazi figures, including the Swedish businessman Axel Wenner-Gren, who, like Santo, was involved in moving German money into South America...But their last chance had passed...The rest of their story, and the rest of Mr. Lownie’s narrative, descends into freeloading, snobbery and irrelevance...They never paid for anything, treachery included  he reader might be forgiven for groaning at the publication of yet another book about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor...It must be said that there is very little in Andrew Lownie’s briskly written and compulsively readable account that will not be familiar to the addicts...There is Wallis Simpson’s hypnotic but still not quite comprehensible hold over the little Prince, from almost the moment they met at a party in 1931; and her bizarre emotional history, including her affair with the German ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop, who sent her seventeen carnations a day in acknowledgement of the number of times they had slept together...There is Edward VIII’s determination to marry her, despite her previous two marriages and the monogamous teaching of the Church of England; their exile in France after his abdication in 1936; the dodgy friends.. Summary and interview with the author. He notes the American intelligence service belief that Wallis was in “constant contact” with Ribbentrop after the war started and cites a report that she even kept a signed picture of him on her dressing room wall. In the book, Lownie also elaborates on Ribbentrop’s eventual plan to kidnap the couple when they wouldn’t willingly join onto a German effort to force a negotiated peace with England.
Drawing upon newly released archives, bestselling biographer Andrew Lownie tells the story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's glittering lives after Edward abdicated the throne-a world that was riddled with treachery and betrayal. 11 December 1936. The King of England, Edward VIII, has given up his crown, foregoing his duty for the love of Wallis Simpson, an American divorcée. Their courtship has been dogged by controversy and scandal, but with Edward's abdication, they can live happily ever after. But, do they? Beginning this astonishing dual biography, at the moment, that most biographers turn away, bestselling historian Andrew Lownie reveals the dramatic lives of the Windsors post-abdication. This is a story of a royal shut out by his family and forced into exile, of the Nazi attempts to recruit the duke to their cause, and of why the duke, as Governor of the Bahamas, tried to shut down the investigation into the murder of a close friend. It is a story of a couple obsessed with their status, financially exploiting their position, all the while manipulating the media to portray themselves as victims. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were, in their day, the most glamorous exiles in the world, flitting from sumptuously appointed mansions in the south of France to luxurious residences in Palm Beach. But they were spoiled, selfish people, obsessed with their image, and reveling in adulterous affairs. Drawing upon previously unexplored archives, Lownie shows in dramatic fashion how their glittering world was riddled with treachery and betrayal-and why the royal family never forgave the duke for choosing love over dut Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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 Google Books — Bezig met laden...GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)941.084092History and Geography Europe British Isles Historical periods of British Isles 1837- Period of Victoria and House of Windsor 1936-1945LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: (3.77)
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The key event in the transition of Britain’s royal family from a significant power player to an international soap opera was the Abdication of Edward VIII in 1936, so that he could marry the twice-divorced American, Mrs Wallis Simpson. Most accounts of the Abdication focus on the brief year of the king’s reign and the manoeuvres of the Establishment in easing the patently unsuitable sovereign off the throne. In contrast, Andrew Lownie concentrates on the long post-Abdication lives of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, definitively answering some of the enduring mysteries of the affair.
Were the Windsors merely pro-Nazi sympathisers or active conspirators in a plot to do a deal with Hitler to restore the duke to his recently vacated throne? Did the couple truly love each other? What was the exact nature of their relationship and their respective sexualities? Why did the rest of the royal family move heaven and earth to keep the couple out of the country for the rest of their lives, only permitting their return to be buried? For anyone seeking solutions to these and similar questions – and the TV schedules and tabloids tell us that there are many such people – Lownie fearlessly yet fairly provides the answers.
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
Nigel Jones is an author and historian specialising in the world wars.