Royal Feud : The Dark Side of the Love Story of the Century.
Thornton, Michael.
Place Published: New York, NY, U.S.A.:
Publisher: Simon & Schuster,
Date Published: 1985.
Description: FIRST US EDITION. 456 pages with index. Also includes 16 pages of black and white photos. This book is in near FINE condition. Dust jacket in VERY GOOD condition with only minor tearing to top spine edge. Dust jacket reads: Here, told in full for the first time with access to the "abdication file:' held closed to all other historians except the author for 100 years, is the dark side of the love story of the century-a story of a bitter thirty-year rivalry between two strong-willed, charismatic women. Near contemporaries, Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon and Wallis Simpson seemed destined to inhabit completely different spheres. One, the daughter of an earl, with centuries of Scottish history in her blood, grew up in an ancestral castle and became Her Royal Highness the Duchess of York, King Edward VIII's sister-in-law. The other, an American, had a childhood of perilous financial insecurity and was twice divorced. But in 1936, after only eleven months as king, Edward VIII abdicated his throne to marry Wallis. Elizabeth became Queen of England and Empress of India, and Wallis became the Duchess of Windsor but was denied the title of Royal Highness. For thirty years the two women never met because Queen Elizabeth steadfastly refused to receive the Duchess. The long-smouldering enmity between the sisters-in-law haunted the corridors of power, and when Elizabeth's beloved George VI died at the age of only fifty-six, worn out by the cares of kingship, the widowed Queen Mother referred to the Duchess as "the woman who killed my husband" And Wall is, when speaking of the Queen Mother, assumed an expression that seemed "akin to frenzy." For the first time, Michael Thornton, drawing on a wealth of hitherto unpublished material from sources close to the Royal family and to the Windsors, dramatizes the course of this astonishing feud and explains its origins. Ironically, he reveals that the two women, despite fierce mutual antipathy, had many unsuspected similarities, and tells how, in old age, a strange and touching peace was finally made between them. Michael Thornton has written an original, lively and consistently revealing re-creation of the Windsor crisis that is bound to make fresh news of one of the steamiest conflicts in recent Royal history. ---------- JMVintage specializes in books, magazines and ephemera related to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor....and other curious people.
Edition: First editionBinding: Hard Cover
Condition: Fine in Very Good dj
ISBN: 0671602985
Book Id: 907
Price: $17.00
