Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor
ANDREW LOWNIE
(BLINK, 352 PP, £25)
Tablet bookshop price £22.50 • tel 020 7799 4064

The abdication crisis in 1936 divided a nation and became an indelible point of reference for any member of the British royal family with an expectation of becoming a monarch.

My late father, Tom Burns – director and subsequently editor of The Tablet – was among those of his generation who initially shared a huge regret that a king they had perceived as a “moderniser” should be forced to abandon the throne after being told he could not marry the American socialite divorcée Wallis Simpson.

Burns, who served in the British Embassy in wartime Madrid and Lisbon, recalled an encounter in the Estoril casino in Portugal in 1940 when the retitled Duke of Windsor thanked him for the way The Tablet had shown sympathy for a king’s human predicament, torn between duty and love.