Roger Lewis reviews Anne Sebba's new biography of Wallis Simpson

ON WALLIS SIMPSON: Roger Lewis reviews Anne Sebba's new biography of socialite Wallis Simpson, who seems to be the subject of increased interest as of late – particularly following the release of the highly-acclaimed film The King's Speech, in which her marriage to Prince Edward played an important role.

While we can all agree that the ex-King was a petulant pipsqueak, who would have made a disastrous monarch, it does seem that everyone took it out on Wallis. She was generally vilified as a “prostitute, a Yankee harlot”, “sadistic, cold, overbearing, vain”, “mean and grasping” and, in the words of the late Queen Elizabeth, “the lowest of the low”. Well prior to the Prince of Wales commencing his open pursuit of her, Wallis was correct to surmise that the Royal family was “filled with an icy menace for such as me”. Part of Wallis’s appeal, clearly, was that she represented the very polar opposite of the stifling Victorian court protocol. She implied freedom. But as Anne Sebba shows, Wallis was cramped by her own “mounting nervous tensions”.

Read the rest of Lewis' piece on Simpson.