Wallis Simpson The Untold Story

Edward VIII paid a high price to marry the woman he loved, but, according to royal biographer Andrew Morton, Wallis Simpson longed for another man entirely.

- Katherine hassell

Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson: supposedly the greatest love story of the 20th century. A grand passion that saw a man choose desire over duty and give up the crown to be with the woman he loved. A romance that caused a constitutional crisis, which altered the course of history.

But according to a new biography, the grand passion wasn’t grand at all. At least not for the bride. It now seems that Wallis Simpson was in love with another man. What’s more, he was the only man she ever loved.

Biographer Andrew Morton’s explosive portrait draws on never-before-seen diaries, secret letters and previously unheard testimony from those involved and their families. 

His chief revelation in Wallis in Love: The Untold True Passion of the Duchess of Windsor (£20, Michael O’Mara) is that the American socialite was in love with her businessman friend Herman Rogers. But the loves of Bessie Wallis Warfield, as she was born in Pennsylvania on 19 June 1896, aren’t easy to unravel.

Her first husband, Lieutenant Earl Winfield Spencer Jr, was a glamorous but heavy-drinking US Navy aviator. Her second, shipping broker Ernest Simpson, had to stand by as she became mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales.

Herman was the husband of an old acquaintance of Wallis, Katherine Moore Bigelow. The trio bumped into each other on their travels in Peking in 1924 and became firm friends.

But, as Andrew reveals, Wallis wanted far more…

How did the new book come about?

I got the idea from my last book, 17 Carnations: The Windsors, the Nazis and the Cover-Up. I’d become friendly with Herman Rogers’ family and it seemed there was more to the relationship between Wallis and Herman than met the eye.