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    Gone With the Windsors
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    Gone With the Windsors
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    Gone With the Windsors
    Ebook555 pages10 hours

    Gone With the Windsors

    By Laurie Graham

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    The hilarious and touching novel from Laurie Graham – the fictional diary of the Queen’s best friend in pre-war London.

    Laurie Graham's brilliant novel is the fictional diary of Maybell Brumby, a wealthy American widow who arrives in London in 1932 and discovers that an old school friend is in town: Bessie Wallis Warfield, now Mrs Ernest Simpson. Maybell and Wally are made for one another. One has money and a foothold in high society, courtesy of a sister who married well. The other has ruthless ambition and enough energy to power the National Grid. Before the year is out, Wally has begun her seduction of the Prince of Wales, and as she clambers towards the throne she makes sure Maybell and her cheque book are always close at hand.

    So Maybell becomes an eye-witness to the Abdication Crisis. From her perch in Carlton Gardens, home of her influential brother-in-law Lord Melhuish, she has the perfect vantage point for observing the anxious, changing allegiances for and against Queen Wally, and the political contours of pre-war London.

    When the crisis comes and Wally flees to the south of France, she insists on Maybell going with her. 'Are you sure that's advisable, darling?' asks the King. 'Of course it is,' snaps Wally. 'She's the Paymaster General.' Maybell's diary records the marriage, the Windsors' exile, and the changing complexion of the Greatest Love Story. It takes the sound of German jackboots at the gate and personal tragedy to make her close its pages for the last time.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateApr 17, 2017
    ISBN9780007369836
    Unavailable
    Gone With the Windsors
    Author

    Laurie Graham

    Laurie Graham is the author of 8 novels. ‘The Ten O'Clock Horses’, was shortlisted for the Encore Award and dramatized for Radio 4, as was ‘Perfect Meringues’. Later titles are The ‘Dress Circle’, ‘Dog Days’, ‘Glenn Miller Nights’, ‘The Future Homemakers of America’, ‘The Unfortunates’, ’Gone with the Windsors’ and ‘Mr Starlight’, which was shortlisted for the Saga Wit Award. Her latest novel, ‘The Importance of Being Kennedy’ was published in 2007.

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    Reviews for Gone With the Windsors

    4/5

    57 ratings6 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Hysterically funny work of fiction about the Duchess of Windsor. It is admirable because the author does not take the usual narrow view of Wallis Simpson. The books heroine is absolutely hysterical. I guffawed my way through this book.
    • 4/5
      Wasn't keen to read this (picked by reading group) but listened to it on tape and absolutly loved it!
    • 4/5
      Really fun book by one of my favourite authors. Just whipped through it - wish we knew for sure if this was anything like the relationship between Wally Simpson and Prince Edward.Back Cover Blurb:The scandalous divorcee who led the besotted Prince of Wales to abdicate his throne first appears in the fictional diary of Maybell Brumby as her schoolmate Bessie. 'I'm Wallis,' she snarls, 'and if you call me anything else you're going to be sorry.'One social climber swiftly recognizes another. When life's whimsical currents toss these two gilt-edged gold diggers together again as adults, history will change its course.Maybell is the wealthy, friskily young widow of a Baltimore bore, eager to break into London society. Wallis has jettisoned husband number one and is looking for the escape hatch from husband number two; impoverished as ever, she's armed only with that terrific bone structure, a few erotic tricks she's picked up in the Far East, and the determination to land the most eligible bachelor in the world. And now, to help her on her quest, she has her old chum Maybell, along with her inexhaustible trust fund and her useful inability to recognize the deft touch of a born con artist.Trailing a cloud of Worth perfume and an ermine stole, missing the point of every conversation, the deliciously dim Maybell witnesses the courtship of the twentieth century and the scandal that rocked a monarchy - recording all in her diary.
    • 4/5
      I started to read this book because I've read a few of Laurie Graham's books before and enjoyed her way of writing. At first I thought, this isn't as good as her other books, but slowly the characters grew on me, and I was very sorry to come to the end of the story. I thoroughly enjoyed my daily fix of the lives of Maybell and her best friend Wally (Wallace Simpson) David (Edward VIII) and all the others, who mixed in the high society of the 1930 - 1940's. The lives of royalty, the abdication the second world war, early international travel and the ups and downs that come with it, Gone With The Windsors has it all and it read like a true life diary. I loved it.
    • 2/5
      This novel is in diary form, which I was able to tolerate, but may not be for every reader. This “diary” is kept by a fictional character, Maybell Brumby, who is a close friend of Wallis Simpson. Wally, as her friends call her, is famous for being the woman that King Edward VIII abdicated his throne for– and eventually marrying.There are many real-life characters that Maybell socializes with and often refers to in her diary — mostly distant royal relations of Edward’s, and Americans that Maybell knows such as the Vanderbilts. I don’t know if a reader unfamiliar with the European royal family tree would enjoy this book as much. Maybell is a somewhat shallow socialite who is also naive. For a long time, she is unable to see through Wally’s true character and constantly provides money to Wally so that she can work her way up the social ladder and associate with Edward.After a while this became annoying reading, but especially annoying was Maybell’s attitude towards her younger sister, Doopie. Doopie is deaf, and Maybell is constantly stating in her diary entries her low opinion of Doopie. In fact, when Doopie becomes engaged, Maybell tells Doopie’s fiance that she (Maybell) hopes the two of them never have children. It would have been bad enough for Maybell to denigrate Doopie a couple times in her diary, but this constantly went on through the book.I do know that there always has been, and always will be, people who are ignorant towards deaf people and there are better books that address that problem. I’m not sure what was the purpose of having a deaf character in this book, unless it was an attempt to prove how ignorant (and not very likeable) that Maybell was. Here is one typical passage, about Doopie:“Violet says there’s nothing can be done about her ears. Apparently Prince Hymie with a J [Jaime, son of King Alfonso and Queen Ena of Spain] tried a hearing aid, an electrical box that hung around his neck and plugged into his ears, for when he had to go to receptions, but it didn’t help him at all. I’m not surprised. No one at receptions can hear anything. The only thing to do is nod intelligently and move swiftly along.Rory says Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, was also deaf. Greek aunts [Prince Philip's mother], ex-Prince Hymie, Thomas Edison. Suddenly, deafness is all the rage”.Sheesh. That was one of the nicer entries regarding Maybell’s attitude towards deafness. After a while, I started skimming (mainly to see how much more insults could be thrown towards Doopie). I have read one of Laurie Graham’s previous books, "The Future Homemakers of America" , which I liked and was a very different book than this one. I hope that Laurie Graham went back to her usual style with the rest of her books, because I didn’t care for how “Gone With the Windsors” was done.
    • 4/5
      Gone With the Windsors by Laurie Graham is a re-telling of the love affair between Wallis Simpson and the Prince of Wales, soon to be Edward VII. Told through the journal entries of Wallis’ best friend Maybell Brumley, a fellow American. Wallis and Maybell grew up in Baltimore together and were schoolmates. When Maybell’s millionaire husband dies, she move to England and becomes reacquainted with Wallis. With Maybell’s money and Wallis’ connections, they set their eyes on meeting the Prince of Wales as knowing him gives them an entree into the high society that they wish to be part of.There were two camps to English high society, those who strictly followed the age-old rules and were on the side of King and Queen. They shook their heads over the lively society that the Prince of Wales kept. His was a society of cocktails, gossip and high jinks that reminded me somewhat of high school with the Prince of Wales as the head boy and his current paramour at his side laying down the rules to everyone else. Wallis neatly snags the Prince away from his current companion and takes over all aspects of the Prince’s life. He is totally enthralled by Wallis and does his best to marry her and have her proclaimed Queen of England. The scandal and the eventual abdication play out while storm clouds are gathering over Europe with the likes of Hitler and Mussolini coming into power.Gone With the Windsors was very humorous as the author uses her witty insight to skewer not just the situation, but the people, customs and rules that came into play during these years leading up to the abdication. Wallis Simpson comes across as a controlling, ambitious, and very intelligent woman. She lures the rather simple-minded Prince into her snare and he becomes putty in her hands. The author gives this familiar story a fresh spin by giving a voice to the rather dim Maybell who admires Wallis and see most things through rose-coloured glasses. I found Gone With the Windsors to be an entertaining and enjoyable read.