Born on 23 June 1894, the prince of Wales – Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David (known to his family and friends as David) – took after his grandparents: he inherited Queen Alexandra's blonde, blue-eyed good looks and Edward VII's temperament. He was intelligent, curious, a good linguist and a natural charmer. But he was also contrary, found it difficult to concentrate and reverted to the Hanoverian norm of getting on badly with his father.
Nevertheless, when he was 13, he followed in his father's footsteps and became a naval cadet. Then he abandoned the navy and was sent to France to learn the language and, from 1912, studied at Magdalen College, Oxford. A poor student, he left after two years to join the army and, with the outbreak of World War I, begged to serve at the front. But secretary of war Lord Kitchener refused, restricting him to staff jobs out of harm's way.
After the war, the prince indulged in a series of dangerous pursuits, including riding in steeplechases (until his father George V made him quit after a bad fall) and learning to fly. And then there were the (older, married) women: David acquired his first mistress even before the war ended – but there was no sign of a wife.
Meanwhile, he carried out a series of spectacularly successful tours of the empire – Canada, Australia and India – and the United States. He glad-handed, defied protocol and flaunted his sex appeal. The crowds went wild and he became the first royal star of the new mass media.
Edward was serious about one thing, however: Wallis Simpson. He had first met her in 1931 and quickly decided that she was his natural sexual and intellectual partner in life. But there were obstacles: she was American, previously divorced and now married to an American businessman resident in London. It would have been difficult to think of anyone further from ideal queen material.
Then, on 20 January 1936, George V died. At midnight, Edward VIII, as he now was, ordered the clocks at Sandringham, kept half an hour fast since his grandfather's reign, to be put back to the right time. Cosmo Lang, archbishop of Canterbury, reacted as though the new king had committed sacrilege: 'I wonder what other customs will be put back also?''
He didn't have long to wait for his answer, for Edward delighted in treading on establishment toes and ruffling retainers' feathers. In July, he simply halted the Trooping of the Colour ceremony when it began to rain. In addition, he wanted substantial cuts in the coronation service; he made slashing reductions in the staff and running costs at Sandringham and Balmoral; he walked in the street; and, during a tour of coal-mining villages in South Wales, he said that 'something must be done' about the unemployed. But all this was more an attitude than a serious programme of modernisation.
Edward was used to getting his own way, but as prince of Wales, he had done it by breaking the rules. Now, as king, he would have to change them if he wanted to marry Wallis and have her for his queen.
Though difficult, this would not have been impossible: Edward was popular and there was an embryonic 'King's Party' with Winston Churchill as its leader. But instead of exploiting these advantages, the king merely waited for something to turn up. And whether out of embarrassment or calculation, the establishment, led by prime minister Stanley Baldwin, played a similar waiting game, as did the British press, which threw a veil of silence over the affair.
All this was brought to an end by the hostile reaction to Wallis Simpson's divorce on the flagrantly absurd grounds of the adultery of her husband Ernest. On 16 November 1936, Edward met with Baldwin and the royal family, announcing his determination to marry Wallis and saying that, if necessary, he would abdicate to do so.
The prime minister told him that his subjects would find such a marriage morally unacceptable, and it was even more impossible because he was head of the Church of England, which opposed divorce. Finally, if he married Wallis against his ministers' advice, the government would have to resign, thus destroying any illusion that the king was above politics and creating a constitutional crisis.
Edward made a final plea to be allowed to put his case directly to his subjects in a broadcast. This was rejected and, cornered, he signed the Act of Abdication on 11 December. Only then, and with some trepidation, was he allowed to broadcast to the nation:
You must believe me when I tell you that I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to without the help and support of the woman I love.
He left immediately for Austria. The following day, his brother, the new king George VI, created him duke of Windsor. The editor of The Times Geoffrey Dawson, who supported Edward's abdication, sent reporters to find signs of popular relief at his departure and jubilation at George VI's accession. They found none.
On 3 June 1937, her divorce having finally been made absolute, Wallis married the duke in France. George forbade any members of the royal family to attend, and Wallis was refused the right to style herself 'Her Royal Highness' as would normally have befitted the wife of a prince. The couple were informed that their allowance, paid directly by the king, would be cut off if they returned to Britain without being invited.
On 14 December 1938, the new king sent a handwritten letter to the then prime minister Neville Chamberlain, in which he stated that he had 'heard from all sides that there was strong feeling amongst all classes that my brother should not return here even for a short visit with the Duchess of Windsor ... it would not be at all wise for him to contemplate such a visit.' He continues: 'Neither the Queen nor Queen Mary have any desire to meet the Duchess of Windsor and therefore any visit made for the purpose of introducing her to members of the Royal Family obviously becomes impossible.' The king concludes by suggesting that the duke of Windsor would take this decision 'in a more kindly manner from you than from me!'
Thus began long decades of temporary accommodation in foreign countries for the Windsors – including a controversial visit to Germany where the duke met Adolf Hitler and gave Nazi salutes – before they finally settled in Paris.
With the outbreak of war, they fled to Lisbon. Then the duke, who with Wallis had aroused suspicions with their seemingly pro-Fascist views, was packed off to become governor of the Bahamas (which he referred to as a 'third-class British colony'). They remained there until 1945.
Back in Paris, the duke lived in retirement for the rest of his life, producing a ghost-written memoir – A King's Story – in 1951 to supplement his allowance from the British monarch. He was allowed to return to London for a brief visit in 1965, and in 1972, the couple was visited by Elizabeth II while on a state visit to France. The duke died of throat cancer a short time later, on 28 May, and was buried in the royal family mausoleum at Frogmore, near Windsor Castle.
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 The duke of Windsor (formerly Edward VIII) with Wallis Simpson soon after his abdication in 1936
Illustrated London News Picture Library/Bridgeman Art Library
 Edward VIII: Abdication timeline
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2701463.st
m
A thorough chronology of the abdication crisis from BBC News, from 10 January 1931, when Wallis met David, to 3 June 1937, when they married.
King Edward VIII's car up for auction
www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,
-7124265,00.html
Guardian article on the fate of Edward's 1934 Buick, sold at auction in London in December 2007.
Edward VIII's letters to his 'vewy own darling' sold for £35,000
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_br
itain/article227390.ece
Article from the Independent on Sunday about a cache of some 260 letters written by the prince of Wales to one of his early mistresses Freda Dudley-Ward.
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King Edward VIII by Philip Ziegler (Sutton, new ed. 2001) by Philip Ziegler (Sutton, new ed. 2001)
A study of the life of Edward VIII, from boyhood to prince of Wales, uncrowned king, in exile and as governor of the Bahamas. It also examines his relationships with George V, Queen Mary, the future George VI and Queen Elizabeth, Freda Dudley Ward, Wallis Simpson, Adolf Hitler and Oswald Mosley.
Get this book
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The People's King: The true story of the abdication by Susan Williams (Penguin, 2004) by Susan Williams (Penguin, 2004)
Biased account of the abdication of 'the radical young Edward VIII who, but for the plotting of his enemies, might have reigned for his lifetime'.
Get this book
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 Fort Belvedere
Windsor Great Park
nr Sunningdale
Berkshire
Built in about 1750 south of Virginia Water, this turreted former folly was used as a summer house and a hunting lodge, and then as his principal residence by Edward, prince of Wales, who was given it by his father George V in 1929. It was here that the prince entertained extensively, not least Wallis Simpson, and where he and his three brothers signed the Act of Abdication. The fort, still owned by the crown, is now privately leased to a Canadian billionaire.
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