A fate worse than death

Hugo Vickers has already produced a well-documented and balanced biography of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. To follow this with the Duchess of Windsor is as bold a left-and-right as one could ask for; like writing biographies of Shylock and Antonio or Cain and Abel. ‘I will go to my grave,’ wrote the lady-in-waiting Frances Campbell-Preston, ‘trying to convince people that the Queen Mother did not hate the Duchess of Windsor.’ ‘Hate’ is a strong word; but the Duchess certainly hated the Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth was as much as anyone responsible for the fact that the Duchess was never fully accepted by the royal family.

The subtitle to Vickers’s new book is at first sight surprising. ‘Untold’ — up to a point — but ‘tragic’? On the whole the Duchess of Windsor had a very jolly time. She enjoyed most of the perks of royalty without any of the responsibilities, lived in luxury with jewellery and expensive clothing lavished on her, travelled from one expensive resort to another, was fawned on by almost everyone. Her life was one which many — including, one suspects, most readers of The Spectator — would find of terrifying sterility: traipsing from Paris to Antibes, from Antibes to New York, from New York to Florida, from Florida back to Paris, and so the weary merry-go-round spun on. But it was the life she craved and, with the Duke trotting behind her like an adoring lapdog, she was happy to follow it so long as her health permitted.

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But the Duchess’s active life is not the main theme of Vickers’ book: the tragedy lies in the last ten years after the Duke had died and the Duchess lingered on alone. According to Vickers:

A Satanic figure was waiting and watching, narrow-eyed and dangerous, wearing the mantle of good intentions to disguise her inner malevolence: Maître Suzanne, lodged in her eyrie in the rue de Varenne.