Queen Mother Biography/Wallis Simpson, etc.

[amabel]

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Yes amabel, I was horrified.  The impression was that David hoped that the German view would prevail.

There are many who believe that the QM carried on a vendetta against David and Wallis till the end of their lives, but I don't believe that.  Neither do I believe the romantic view that David was the good King we never had.  Just look at what they did with their lives.  Nothing.  They just fluttered from one party to another some of which they got paid for.  They led a jet set life without once contributing to their fellow man.  The Duke of Windsor founded the Feathers Club Association whilst Prince of Wales.  When he abdicated he did nothing for it or any other charity, but Freda Dudley Ward his former mistress continued to work for this organisation until the day she died.

Hale, just as a matter of curiosity who IS Frank Giles?
I'm not quite sure if he was saying that David was wishing that the Germans had won and felt that they wouldn't have done so, iwtout American/Jewish (??) help.  surely even HE would have realised it was a damn stupid thing to say...
However I do think that he had some sympathy with Nazi Germany, and wasn't bright enough to see the political implications of this, in the pre war years, (I think his visit to Hitler was largely at that time to do with his wanting to "be a king" again and ot have Wallis  treated as a queen) but that surely could not be the case, even for a very stupid man, after the war...
I do agree with the view that the QM was hostile to David and Wallis all her life, not because of the "view" that she had hoped to marry him herself or because she had an unfair grudge against them but  because she regarded them (quite rightly) as selfish weak and wrong minded, she thought that by Davdi's junking his responsibilities as King to marry Wallis, he had let her husband in for being King, and she believed rightly or wrongly tha the strain of being King esp during the war, had caused George VI's premature death.... and certainly generally speaking i think that the RF were always hostile to a degree to Wallis and David...

he most certainly WASNT the "good king we never had."  the fact that he abdicated might have been excused, (though I wouldn't agree with it) because of his love For Wallis, but the lives that they led after the abdication show pretty plainly what useless selfish people they both were....David DID work reasonably well at his job of Prince of Wales in the Early years, but he got bored with it and clearly by the time of the 1930s he was fed up with Royal life and perhaps unconsciously casting about for a way out of being stuck with this role all his life.  He had no intention of "modernising" the monarchy except in terms of lightening the ceremonial that bored him and saving money by sacking lots of employees... He had little interest in social problems and certainly little desire to do anything useful to help the poor in the UK or anywhere else.
and after his abdication there was nothing to stop him a wealthy man with plenty of time on his hands from starting up a charity, or dedicating himself to an existing one, but he did nothing more than a bit of attending Charity balls etc. In fact, it seems that he was just bored stiff for the rest of his life, with nothing to do but socialise and dote on Wallis, who was pretty clearly bored with him....He had no intellectual or other resources but IMO his unhappy life after his abdication was all his own fault.

[Hale]

Frank Giles was a journalist for the Sunday Times.

[amabel]

Frank Giles was a journalist for the Sunday Times.

I see, thanks
Why would David talk to him?  I would have thought that journoes were the last people he'd want to socialise with?  But what a daft thing for him to say... even if ti was just that they were at the same dinner party...

[Hale]

Frank Giles wasn't always a journalist.  He used to work in the diplomatic core and first met David  in the Bahamas when he was appointed Governor for those islands.  So the Windsors knew Giles.

[wannable]

I'm not sure if this article should belong here, but here it goes (if not may an admin or mod please link it proper thread)

Robbed, abused, sedated, alone... the desperate last days of the Duchess of Windsor
By HUGO VICKERS

The Duchess of Windsor was permanently confined to her powder blue bedroom overlooking the lawns of her house in Paris. It was September 1977, five years after the death of her husband, the man who had been briefly, and scandalously, King Edward VIII  -  and she was in poor health. Her lapses of memory were worsening, a weakness that her French lawyer Suzanne Blum used to her great advantage.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1367933/Wallis-Simpson-Robbed-abused-Duchess-Windsors-days.html#ixzz1H6M6bUo4     

[Hale]

I've just read that article.  Brilliant.

[EmpressofIndia]

From the Daily Mail:
'The people who caused me most trouble were Wallis Simpson and Hitler': How the Queen Mother always saw Duke and Duchess of Windsor as outcasts