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The Private World of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor (1995)
Hardback (UK) 1995
Hardback (US) 1996
French Hardback 1996
This selection of photographs from the private collections of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, many of them never published before, is an opportunity for a fresh look at their lives. In 1986, Mr Mohamed Al Fayed was granted the lease of the house in the Bois de Boulogne which had been the last home of the Duke and Duchess, and also purchased the contents. A few photographs soon began to emerge from drawers and cupboards, together with old scrapbooks, newspaper cuttings, and other reminders of the couple's extraordinary story. But it was not until 1988 that the mahogany lid covering the bathtub in the Duke's bathroom was lifted to reveal the most exciting find: an additional hoard of some ten thousand photographs. The loyal staff had concealed them here from prying visitors during the Duchess's long final illness, when many private papers were being spirited away from the house.
The photographs range from family snapshots to formal portraits by leading photographers such as Dorothy Wilding and Cecil Beaton. They document all phases in the lives of the couple.
We have a chance to compare their very different childhoods - the Duke as a royal prince, brought up to be heir to a worldwide empire, the Duchess as the well-bred but impoverished member of an old Southern family in America. And we can follow them through their early adult lives, the beginnings of their relationship, and their thirty-five years of married life together.
Hugo Vickers has made a wide-ranging study of the royal world. He brings this to bear on his evaluation of the career of the Duke, reassessing the reasons behind the Abdication, and tracing how the Windsors coped with the long years of exile. Comments of contemporaries, both published and unpublished, cast a new light on the familiar story.
At a time when the role of the British monarchy came under intense scrutiny, the Abdication Crisis and its aftermath took on a new interest. Here, starkly delineated, was the royal predicament, the conflict between public duty and private happiness.
The book also tells the story of Fayed's restoration of the Paris house, with specially commissioned colour photographs showing the impressive interiors of this royal palace in miniature created by the Duchess for her husband.
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