Tag: Duke of Windsor

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 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.…

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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 one at that time had any sense how the salute would evolve.…

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Near-Treasonous Dukes?

Near-Treasonous Dukes?

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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”

The Duke of Wind­sor (1894-1972)

“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.…

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