The Windsor Conspiracy by Georgie Blalock

September 7, 2024

The Windsor Conspiracy by Georgie Blalock

King Edward VIII abdicated his throne in order to marry Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee and the love of his life. But their plans backfired: they expected the Prime Minister and Parliament to change the law so that Edward could marry Wallis and still remain king. But the government accepted his abdication and proclaimed his younger brother King George VI. Edward and Wallis never forgave the government or the royal family for allowing the abdication and exiling them from Britain. Worse yet, they fell in with anyone who flattered them, no matter how evil they were (think Hitler, Mussolini, etc.).

An honest portrait of the Windsors, historically accurate; the author has very little sympathy for them and rightly so. While the Duke was spoiled, lazy, and dim, Wallis and her friends were passing information about British war plans to the Nazis, believing that if the Nazis conquered Britain, they would restore the Duke to the throne he had tossed aside. All their lives, the Windsors were two people who gravitated toward the wrong types of people, as long as they flattered the Windsors and paid their bills. If you are interested in reading another book about the Windsors, try Beatriz Williams' The Golden Hour, about the Windsors time in the Bahamas during WW II. 

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC for review.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor in their later years

The Golden Hour by Beatriz Williams

Friday, June 28, 2019

The Golden Hour by Beatriz Williams

In December 1943, Leonora (Lulu) Thorpe travels to London to meet with a representative from the British War Office regarding her missing husband, who was captured as a spy while on his way to London and is being held in a German prison.  The couple met and married in Nassau in the Bahamas, where Lulu was working as a society correspondent covering the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. She implores them to send a rescue party for him, or to let her go and try to free him, attempting to use information about the Windsors as leverage, but her attempt at blackmail backfires.

Although it's almost 500 pages, once I started The Golden Hour, I couldn't put it down and when I got to the last third of the book, I spent a whole afternoon reading.  Full of actual historical events, this is Beatriz Williams at her best, similar in tone to Summer Wives, another great vacation read (much better than her collaboration with her friends Karen White and Lauren Willig, The Glass Ocean, a romance novel set on the doomed Lusitania).  Take this one to the beach with you or throw it in your luggage for vacation reading.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC in return for a review.