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Was the Duchess of Windsor a sexual predator with an insatiable appetite for men who snared the future king with her infamous ‘Shangai grip’?
While romancing Edward, Prince of Wales, did she also bed a lowly used-car salesman and a high-ranking Nazi official, plus a Fascist Italian aristocrat?
Or did people hate her so much they just loved spreading lies about her?
One of the most damning pieces of evidence against the Baltimore-born divorcee – still much-discussed today – is the infamous ‘Chinese dossier’, which was prepared for Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and King George V.
It listed in detail Wallis Simpson‘s bedroom antics in Shanghai in the 1920s, where she lived with her first husband, Earl Winfield Spencer Jr, who was posted to the Far East on the USS Pampanga in 1934.
Following their split, she travelled around the country and allegedy learned sexual techniques which were to captivate the sexually inadequate Prince of Wales.
Later, during the Abdication Crisis of 1936, Wallis’s debaucherous year in China was even discussed at Cabinet level, as ministers struggled to find a way to detach the new King from the woman who held him in sexual thrall. Top mandarin Sir Horace Wilson’s handwritten notes show that ministers felt they’d finally found something so damaging it could break her tenacious hold on Edward VIII.
Only the China dossier didn’t exist, as a new book finally proves.
A portrait of Wallis Simpson being presented at court in the 1920s when the infamous ‘Chinese dossier’ showing her bedroom antics in Shanghai were meant to have taken place
The dossier alleged that Wallis Simpson had an affair with Ciano (far right) while in China – later Fascist Italy’s foreign minister and was tipped to take over from dictator Mussolini
Any more than Wallis’s alleged affair with car salesman Guy Trundle, dreamed up by the secret services, turned out to be true.
Or her secret liaison with Joachim Ribbentrop, Hitler’s ambassador to London – later executed for his part Nazi atrocities during World War II – it never happened.
Or her bedtime activities with Count Ciano, an Italian politician and the son-in-law of Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
Wallis Windsor was so hated by the British for stealing away their king that no dirty rumour was good enough.
In retrospect, of course, history confirmed that she did the nation an enormous favour by removing from the throne a weak, obsessive, and increasingly erratic monarch who, in the lead-up to World War II, would have proved far less resolute against the Nazi threat than his younger brother, King George VI.
Even so, both US and UK governments did their best to undermine the twice-divorced socialite’s reputation.
Paul French writes, no woman of Simpson’s social status would be seen dead in such places, ‘not even in the cause of physical education.’
U.S. Navy pilot Earl Winfield Spencer, Jr. (1888 – 1950), first husband of Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, pictured in 1920 (left). Sir Ellice ‘Victor’ Sassoon, who allegedly took pornographic pictures of Wallis Simpson (right)
In the newly-published ‘Her Lotus Year’, biographer Paul French forensically takes apart the most damning evidence – the China dossier – and proves that the stories made up around Wallis were never anything more more than desperate and shabby inventions.
The dossier alleged:
- Wallis had an affair while in China with Ciano – later Fascist Italy’s foreign minister and tipped to take over from dictator Mussolini. Author French proves it was impossible – Wallis had left China for good before Ciano even arrived.
- It claimed that while in China she had an abortion which prevented her having children later. French says there’s no evidence that she underwent such a procedure.
- Wallis is said to have posed for pornographic pictures taken by Italian hotelier Victor Sassoon. Not only have none of the alleged images ever been found – Sassoon wasn’t even in Shanghai when Wallis was there.
In the newly-published ‘Her Lotus Year’, biographer Paul French forensically takes apart the China dossier – and debunks the stories made up around Wallis Simpson
- She’s said to have learned her skills – including the ‘Shanghai grip’ (described as ‘a technique where the woman would tighten her muscles in order to make a matchstick feel like a cigar’) – in the city’s brothels. But, says French, no woman of Simpson’s social status would be seen dead in such places, ‘not even in the cause of physical education.’
So, like her or hate her, the Duchess of Windsor has finally been able to shake off one of the most damning rumours about her.
But there were others.
In the run-up to World War II, Hitler installed Joachim von Ribbentrop as his ambassador in London. Later, Ribbentrop would be executed for war crimes, but for a brief period pre-war he enjoyed the company of Mrs Simpson and it was claimed they had an affair.
He sent her 17 carnations, said to signify the number of times they’d slept together.
But the information came from a ridiculous source.
FBI agents interviewed a benedictine monk, Father Odo, in a Franciscan monastery in the United States. The monk had once been the Duke of Wurttemberg, a minor German royal with distant connections to Queen Mary, the king’s mother. Fearful that his own German origins might make him vulnerable, Odo told the agents what they wanted to hear – that Ribbentrop had been the duchess’s lover.
Stuck in a monastery 5,000 miles away, how can he possibly have known? But it was good enough for the FBI – another major slur against the Duchess.
Then there’s the case of Guy Trundle, a used car salesman who’s alleged to have bedded Wallis Simpson just at the moment when her royal lover Edward was on the point of proposing marriage.
Before the Abdication crisis broke, secret service agents were trailing Mrs Simpson through London high society in an attempt to discover more about her private life – their purpose, to discredit her.
A secret report, dated July 1935, opens with a triumphant revelation. ‘The identity of Mrs Simpson’s secret lover has now been definitely ascertained. He is Guy Marcus Trundle, now living at 19 Bruton Street in Mayfair.’
Wallis was so hated by the British public for stealing away their king that no dirty rumour was good enough
Guy Trundle, a used car salesman who was alleged to have bedded Wallis Simpson just at the moment when her royal lover Edward was on the point of proposing marriage
A report from Special Branch on Mrs Simpson’s secret lover called Guy Marcus trundle
The 36-year-old Trundle, the report said, was a charming adventurer, good looking, ‘well bred’ and an excellent dancer.
‘Trundle is a motor engineer and a salesman and is said to be employed by the Ford Motor Company. It is not known what salary he gets … Trundle claims to have met the Prince of Wales through Mrs Simpson.
‘He is said to boast that every woman falls for him. He meets Mrs Simpson openly at informal social gatherings as a personal friend, but secret meetings are made when intimate relations take place.’
This, of course, was the glorious boast of a man who may once have met Mrs Simpson – but then managed to spin a series of fantasies around her, assisted by quantities of alcohol poured down his throat by his interviewers.
Historians who know the Wallis Simpson story are all agreed that, once she became romantically involved with Edward, she was too determinedly focused on getting her king and making her home in Buckingham Palace to have anything to do with a mere car salesman.
But the secret service believed Trundle – because they wanted to believe him. And so Wallis’s reputation took another hit.
There was plenty in the Duchess of Windsor’s life to criticise – but, it appears, the authorities were so frightened of the threat she posed to the stability of the monarchy that they couldn’t wait to dream up even worse porkies about her.
Her Lotus Year by Paul French is published by Elliott and Thompson