Duke of Windsor Archives - Richard M. Langworth

“The Crown”: A Not So Crowning Achievement

14 December 2016 Comments 0 Comments

The Crown, 2016. Produced for Netflix by Left Bank Pictures, created and written by Peter Morgan. Ten episodes released 4 November 2016. A second season is commissioned. = N.B. Since writing this, more false trails emerged. Consulting 1952 documents at the Hillsdale College Churchill Project and Churchill Archives Centre, we found no evidence for the film’s implication that the Duke of Windsor bargained with Churchill to persuade the Royal couple to move from Clarence House to the Palace, in exchange for restoration of his allowance. Nor is there anything to suggest Churchill postponed the Coronation 18 months for his own political purposes. ____________________________________

No sooner had I admired the fair, mostly balanced and accurate PBS docudrama Churchill’s Secret (on the Prime Minister’s June 1953 stroke) than I was grumbling through Netflix’s The Crown, which is, sadly, as often misleading as Churchill’s Secret was honest.…

HM’s Nazi Salute: Relevant to What?

18 July 2015 Comments 0 Comments

Stiff-Arm Salute: Must We Know Everything?

Claiming it is “historically relevant,” the Sun defended publication of a six-year-old Princess Elizabeth, coached by her mother the future Queen Elizabeth and her uncle the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII, still later the Duke of Windsor) raising her arm in the stiff salute now identified with the Nazi party. It’s “in the public interest,” wails the Sun.

It’s in the interest of selling newspapers. Buckingham Palace responded:

“Most people will see these pictures in their proper context and time. This is a family playing and momentarily referencing a gesture many would have seen from contemporary news reels. No one at that time had any sense how the salute would evolve.…

Near-Treasonous Dukes?

18 January 2012 Comments 2 Comments

The Dukes of Windsor and Westminster are attacked for their “near-treasonous activity” and “overt support of the Third Reich.” In an American Spectator review of Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel’s Secret War (Dec/Jan 2011-12) Roger Kaplan says Winston Churchill did not turn against those “top toffs”

“Near-treasonous” and “overt support” are going some in describing actions of the Dukes, and should be discounted. Reason: They may have been “toffs,” but they counted for little. Nevertheless, Churchill did act to silence them.

The Two Dukes

The Duke Windsor certainly had “much to be modest about.” Churchill got him out of Europe by appointing him Governor of the Bahamas, where he did not rehash his prewar pro-Nazi points of view.…