The Morton Files: Andrew Lownie on 'Traitor King' Edward VIII's and Wallis's Scandalous Exile

Join Andrew Morton on Substack here! - https://substack.com/@andrewdavidmorton On this week’s The Morton Files podcast Andrew Lownie joined me to talk about his book on Edward VIII, Traitor King, though we started with the news that King Charles had appointed an official biographer for his late mother. Lownie’s view was blunt: official royal biography is a form of patronage dressed up as history, and the palace should simply open its files and let historians get on with it. The chosen biographer, Anna Keay, a seventeenth century specialist, struck us both as an unusual selection. On Edward himself, Lownie’s central argument is that the abdication was less a love story than a managed removal. The courtiers found Edward unsuitable on several grounds. He did not really want the job, he was conducting an affair with a married American woman, and he had been sending warm signals to Nazi Germany since at least 1935. The establishment used Wallis as the lever to push him out. Wallis, for her part, was not seeking to be queen. When Edward rang her in Paris during the crisis and wept down the telephone, she held the receiver out so her friends in the room could listen, and they all laughed. Edward’s sympathies were not unusual among the British aristocracy in 1936, but he kept going further for longer than almost anyone else. During the phony war he appears to have passed information about the Maginot Line to the Germans, whether deliberately or through loose talk at the dinner table. When France fell and he and Wallis retreated through Spain and Portugal, he was still in contact with German intermediaries, who planned to install him as a puppet king in the event of a succesful invasion. Faced with the Duke of Windsor prevaricating over whether to leave Portugal, Churchill responded by threatening him with court martial and shipping him off to the Bahamas as governor, where Edward demanded Government House be redecorated, at great expense, and during the Battle of Britain, and gave press interviews arguing that America should stay out of the war. After 1945, Churchill, Attlee, George VI and Eisenhower all colluded to delay publication of the Marburg Files, the German diplomatic documents recording what Edward had said and done. Had they come out immediately, Lownie believes the public reaction would have been severe. Leo Amery’s son John was executed for conduct that was arguably less serious. Whether Edward should have faced the same fate is a question the book implicitly raises. 00:00:00 Introduction – Welcome to The Morton Files 00:00:26 Debating King Charles's Official Biographer 00:01:47 New Books on the Queen – A More Human Picture Emerging 00:04:06 Setting the Scene: Edward VIII & Wallis Simpson (1935–36) 00:05:38 The Abdication: Palace Coup or Love Story? 00:08:22 Wallis Simpson, Ribbentrop & Nazi Spy Theories 00:10:34 The China Dossier – Myth or Reality? 00:13:56 What Kind of King Would Edward Have Been? 00:15:15 When Did Edward & George VI's Relationship Break Down? 00:17:20 Churchill's Role – King's Champion to Cover-Up Artist 00:18:47 Could the Abdication Have Played Out Differently? 00:19:27 The Parallel with Charles & Camilla 00:20:32 The Nazi Germany "Honeymoon" Tour, 1937 00:21:59 Edward's Ambition to Return to the Throne 00:22:06 Fleeing Through France: Spain, Portugal & the Enemy 00:23:35 Leaking Military Secrets – Naivety or Treachery? 00:25:06 Was British Intelligence Ordered to Shoot Edward? 00:26:08 The Nazi Plot to Install Edward as a Puppet King 00:29:10 Churchill Exiles Edward to the Bahamas 00:31:43 Life in the Bahamas – Entitlement, Intrigue & Wallis's Purpose 00:33:40 The Death of the Duke of Kent – Accident or Conspiracy? 00:34:53 Edward as a Thorn in the Side – Parallels with Harry & Meghan 00:36:06 The Harry Oakes Murder Case 00:36:28 The Marburg Files – Suppressed Evidence of Wartime Betrayal 00:37:53 FBI & MI6 Surveillance of the Windsors in the Bahamas 00:38:39 Should Edward Have Been Hanged as a Traitor? 00:40:22 New Discoveries in American Archives 00:41:05 Why Are We Still Fascinated by Edward & Wallis? 00:42:51 Closing Remarks