An author has said her new book will overturn the popular image of Edward VIII as lazy and unintelligent and shed light on his visit to Nazi Germany before the Second World War.
Jane Marguerite Tippett spoke The Telegraph about her upcoming book which will shed a ‘very different light’ on Edward and look at his journey to Nazi Germany.
Edward abdicated the throne in 1936, a year before his trip to see Hitler, to marry divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson.
Edward and Wales visited Germany and met the Führer in 1937 – despite British officials strongly advising them not to go due to tensions between the two countries at the time. Two years later, World War II began.
Speaking about Edward’s trip to Germany to visit Hitler, Tippett told the outlet: ‘In the new material we get a better sense of why he went to Germany, something that has been misrepresented in popular culture.
‘It brings some nuance when we see things from his perspective around what he thought he was doing in Germany. That wasn’t quite how his actions translated.’
Jane Marguerite Tippett spoke to The Telegraph about her upcoming book which will shed a ‘very different light’ on Edward and look at his trip to Nazi Germany in 1937
Edward abdicated the throne in 1936, a year before his trip to see Hitler, to marry divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. In the photo: The couple
The author added that the set of photographs of him with Hitler in 1937 ‘didn’t serve him well.’
While in Germany, Edward was infamously photographed with a Nazi salute and later also toured industrial facilities and even a concentration camp, the watchtowers of which were allegedly explained to him as meat shops.
The former king is reported to have said as late as 1941 that Hitler was the ‘right and logical leader of the German people’.
It comes as prominent royal historian has claimed that classified documents from the Royal Archives suggest the exiled Duke of Windsor was a Nazi sympathizer who gave up detailed plans of Buckingham Palace so it could be bombed in World War Two.
Speaking at the Oxford Literary Festival yesterday, royal expert Alexander Larman said that although he had been given access to the archives for a book about the royal family during the war, he was surprised by the level of condemnation thrown at the Duke, who revealed a royal. archivist told him: ‘We are not protecting the Duke of Windsor’s reputation.’
He said: ‘The Nazis knew what they were doing and that’s because they had inside information (of the duke).
“I don’t think he wanted to see him (his brother, King George VI) dead, but he was in a position where he knew exactly where everyone was in Buckingham Palace.”
During the conflict the Palace suffered nine direct bombings and one death – PC Steve Robertson, a policeman on duty there who was killed by flying debris in 1941.
Edward and Wales visited Germany and met the Führer – despite British officials strongly advising them not to go due to tensions between the two countries at the time. Two years later, World War II began
During his visit, the Duke was photographed inspecting German troops
Edward’s proposal to marry Wallis – while divorce proceedings with her second husband were still ongoing – triggered a constitutional crisis that culminated in Edward’s decision to abdicate. In the photo: The couple on their wedding day in 1937
Tippett’s book, Once a King, will also challenge the stereotypes that surrounded the former monarch.
Commenting on Netflix’s The Crown, Tippett also told The Telegraph: ‘That series was the apotheosis of that view of him as lazy, not intelligent, someone who never thought critically about his life.’
In contrast, she says that her book sheds a different light on Edward’s time as the Prince of Wales before he became King.
She said that during this period he was “not at all lazy,” noting that in 1919 he spent a year on tour in India and the Orient and then went to Canada for four months.
Tippett said that royal tours these days only last a few days and she called Edward ‘the hardest working British royal’ at the time.
The author added that because the former monarch had abdicated, the impact he had on the firm and its development over the past century had been ‘wiped out’.