Friday 10 June 2022 10:28 PM ANDREW LOWRIE: How Edward gave up the throne for a woman who didn't love him ... trends now

The morning after her wedding to the man who had proven his devotion to her by giving up the throne, the Duchess of Windsor woke up to find her husband 'standing beside the bed with this innocent smile, saying, 'And now what do we do?'

As she later told the American writer Gore Vidal: 'My heart sank. Here was someone whose every day had been arranged for him all his life and now I was the one who was going to take the place of the entire British government, trying to think up things for him to do.'

The day before, at the Duke and Duchess's wedding in France in 1937, friends had noticed how cold her behaviour was towards him. So it is perhaps not surprising that she soon began her first post-marital affair. 

Unknown to Wallis, her meetings with her lover were being logged by the British Secret Service, who'd been asked by the Government to keep an eye on both her and the Duke of Windsor. Soon, the affair was fuelling high-society gossip.

The diarist Chips Channon was the first to record this latest tidbit, told to him by a rich American in May 1939: 'Mr [William] Bullitt — the American ambassador in Paris — is madly in love with the Duchess of Windsor.'

The rumours were backed up by Eleanor Tydings Ditzen, the daughter of close friends of the Windsors. 'The Duke would escort his wife to one of the dress designers for fittings and return for her after an hour or two,' she recalled. 'Wallis would slip out the back door for a rendezvous with the ambassador.

'As the British Secret Service was guarding both Windsors, this affair was reported to their government. The British were afraid that the Prince [Duke of Windsor] might find out, and there would be a great scandal again. So the Secret Service was protecting Wallis's transgressions from the Duke!'

It is doubtful whether Wallis ever loved Edward at all. She'd wanted to end her relationship with her royal lover when he became King in January 1936, but by then he was so obsessed with her that he threatened to kill himself if she left him.

Wallis stayed, but that didn't prevent her dallying, in 1938, with a used car salesman called Guy Trundle.

Once Edward publicly announced he was abdicating in order to marry 'the woman I love', Wallis knew her fate was sealed: she'd be trapped for the rest of her life in a marriage she'd never wanted.

Having already fled to France, she listened to his abdication speech on the radio. She spent most of the following day in bed, feeling depressed.

Her friend Constance Coolidge, who'd also been listening to the broadcast, later commented: 'Can you imagine a more terrible fate than to have to live up publicly to the legend of a love you don't feel? To have to face, morning, noon and night, a middle-aged boy with no other purpose in life than a possessive passion for you?'

With hindsight, it's all too clear that her affairs, constant shopping, and endless travel and entertaining were an attempt to provide some stimulation in a life that had little meaning, with a man she didn't love. But it was a marriage that couldn't afford to fail. The price had been too high.

At Winston Churchill's insistence, the Windsors spent most of the war years in Nassau, where the Duke was governor of the Bahamas. After the war the Duke, then aged 50, was free to pursue his interests. The problem was that he didn't really have any.

His life in France and America revolved around golf, gardening, being entertained, discussing his investments and musing about politics with the similarly minded — generally rich American businessmen who were anti-Semitic, racist and anti-Communist.

In 1938, the Windsors had taken a ten-year lease on the Chateau de la Croe, on the Cap d'Antibes peninsula, and rented a four-storey house in Paris.

In both homes, royal protocol was insisted upon, with servants instructed never to speak first to the Duchess, but wait until she'd spoken to them.

When leaving the room, they were told to take several paces backwards before turning to leave. Wallis was always 'Your Royal Highness' — though Edward's successor, George VI, had refused to grant her the appellation. Everything, in short, was an attempt to recreate the life the Windsors had lost.

Socialising was the only occupation that gave structure to their lives and Wallis took it very seriously. At her dinner parties she kept a golden notepad at her side — the servants called it her 'grumble book' — to note the successes and mistakes.

Despite her social triumphs, however, she was feeling unfulfilled. After the war, according to one friend: 'Her boredom in her own marriage had become acute and she was no longer as discreet as before when it came to hiding her feelings.'

In August 1950, they were invited to the second wedding of Herman Rogers, a businessman and long-time friend of Wallis. His first wife had died and his new bride was a widow, Lucy Wann. Wallis had long been in love with Rogers and had been hoping to lure him away — but she'd missed her chance.

'There is no question that these women were rivals in love,' remembered Lucy's daughter-in-law, Kitty Blair. 'Both wanted Herman. Wallis would have grabbed him and told the Duke to go.'

Certainly Wallis made her feelings clear to Rogers's bride, telling her: 'I'll hold you responsible if anything happens to Herman. He's the only man I've ever loved.'

'How nice for the Duke,' Lucy replied, icily.

The Windsors' relationship intrigued everyone who met them. 'When they are together, they are like two automata. They have no intimacy — they seldom talk of anything at all serious. They drift,' noted Cecil Beaton in his diary. 'He depends on her utterly… she is nearly driven mad trying to find ways of amusing him.'

By her mid-50s, Wallis was taking stock of her life. The remarriage of Herman Rogers had affected her deeply, so she was feeling vulnerable when Jimmy Donahue ramped up his attentions.

After 13 years of marriage to a man with precious few resources, she found Donahue irresistible.

For several years, the 35-year-old heir to the Woolworth fortune had been a friend of both the Duke and Duchess, but at some time between the late 1940s and 1950, his relationship with Wallis had become physical. This was despite the fact that he'd always been assumed to be flamboyantly gay.

How do we know it was a sexual affair? Well, as we shall see, there's quite a bit of testimony from people who knew them both. There are also damning reports, I can reveal, from the French secret service, who'd continued to keep the Nazi-sympathising Windsors under surveillance after the war.

In September 1951, for instance, they tracked Wallis's movements after the Duke left Paris to visit his brother King George VI, who'd recently had a lung removed.

The French surveillance report states: 'James Donahue — said to have had an affair with her for four years… takes her to the Paprika restaurant and then to the Monseigneur nightclub, where there's a cabaret. Donahue returns to the Duchess's home at 85, Rue de la Faisanderie in the 16th with her at 2.20am, and then he's seen leaving alone at 5am.'

To the deep humiliation of her husband, the affair would continue for several years — in America, in France and aboard various luxurious yachts.

Wallis could hardly have chosen a more outrageous lover. Stories circulated of orgies at his mother's Palm Beach estate, the castration of a lover and police investigations into callboys and drug use.

Reputedly, his family kept a lawyer on 24-hour call to buy him out of his most dangerous scrapes.

The Duchess, however, was intrigued by his unpredictable behaviour, so different from her husband's. Where Donahue was carefree and impulsive, the Duke was organised and precise. Where Donahue was generous, the Duke was penny-pinching. Where Jimmy was exciting and cheerful, the Duke was dull and depressed. Where her husband reminded her of her age, her lover made her feel young again.

In November 1950, the Duke remained in Paris to complete his memoirs with a ghost-writer while Wallis returned to New York alone. Designer Billy

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