Tag: Duke of Windsor

Duke
Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson on Mediterranean holiday, 1936. (National Media Museum @ Flickr Commons)
Troublesome Toffs: The Duke of Windsor and Bendor Westminster

Troublesome Toffs: The Duke of Windsor and Bendor Westminster

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“A ful­ly equipped Duke costs as much to keep as two Dread­noughts; and Dukes are just as great a ter­ror and they last longer.”

The wise­crack, wrong­ly attrib­uted to Churchill, was actu­al­ly uttered by his Lib­er­al ally, David Lloyd George. (Alleged­ly LG said it in 1909, dur­ing their bat­tle to reform the House of Lords,) It didn’t make Churchill more wel­come at Blenheim Palace, where his cousin the Duke of Marl­bor­ough for­bade the name of LG in conversation.

The Duke of Wind­sor (for­mer­ly King Edward VIII) and the 2nd Duke of West­min­ster are occa­sion­al­ly attacked for their “near-trea­so­nous activ­i­ty in sup­port of the Third Reich.”…

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Crown
“The Crown”: A Not So Crowning Achievement

“The Crown”: A Not So Crowning Achievement

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The Crown, 2016. Pro­duced for Net­flix by Left Bank Pic­tures, cre­at­ed and writ­ten by Peter Mor­gan. Ten episodes released 4 Novem­ber 2016. A sec­ond and third sea­son followed.  =  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. …

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salute
American schoolchildren performing the Bellamy Salute, 1915. (Wikimedia Commons)
HM’s Nazi Salute: Relevant to What?

HM’s Nazi Salute: Relevant to What?

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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…

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