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Review: That Woman

Allure that captured a king

September 28, 2011 09:20
Monarch and mistress: an ill-begotten couple

ByJan Shure, Jan Shure

2 min read

By Anne Sebba
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20

With a recent Channel 4 documentary about Wallis Simpson, the American socialite and divorcee for whom Edward VIII gave up his throne, merely the latest example among a wealth of published and broadcast material, we are entitled to think we know all there is to know of the scandal that rocked the British monarchy.

But Anne Sebba's refreshing biography, with its treasure trove of new material, sheds light not only on Simpson's early life, first marriage, sojourns in China and, of course, her affair with the Prince of Wales, but also on her abiding love for Ernest Simpson and the profound doubts she had about her relationship with the Prince of Wales.

Sebba paints a revealing picture of the early life, including the medical history, of Bessiewallis Warfield, the woman born in genteel poverty in Baltimore. Persistent rumours about Wallis's gender determination, fuelled by her somewhat masculine appearance and inability to have children, may have had their roots in a medical condition now known as a Disorder of Sexual Development (DSD).