A little over 40 years after the Abdication Crisis that had peaked in December of 1936, Thames Television, holder of the weekday independent TV franchise for London and the Home Counties, commissioned a dramatisation based on the exhaustive Wolfson History Prize winning biography of Edward VIII by Frances Donaldson.
There was great care taken in terms of casting, production design, and location filming that included Fort Belvedere where many of the real events unfolded. Edward and Mrs Simpson seemed to be as close as you could possibly get to 1930s culture, fashion and upper-class society without a time machine. Written for television by Simon Raven and directed by pioneering British-Asian director Waris Hussein, the series was rewarded with an Emmy and multiple BAFTAs.
In retrospect, it appears to be as faithful to real events as a drama could be, including verbatim conversations and parliamentary statements. Edward VIII, formerly the Prince of Wales known as David, then finally the Duke of Windsor, was played by Edward Fox, and Wallis Simpson by Cynthia Harris. Other key castings included Nigel Hawthorne, yet to find stardom as Sir Humphrey Appleby in Yes Minister / Prime Minister, as the King’s friend and advisor Walter Monckton, David Waller as Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin (He reprised this role in 1988 for another adaptation, The Woman He Loved, starring Anthony Andrews, Jane Seymour and Olivia de Havilland), Peggy Ashcroft as Queen Mary, Marius Goring as King George V, and Wensley Pithey as a totally convincing Winston Churchill. Versatile British-Australian actor Ed Deveraux played Tory press baron Lord Beaverbrook, a role he later reprised in The Life and Times of David Lloyd George (BBC 1981).
Other notable players included Andrew Ray (Duke of York / George VI), Charles Keating (Ernest Simpson), Patrick Troughton (Clement Attlee), Patricia Hodge (Lady Diana Cooper), Maurice Denham (Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury), Cherie Lunghi (Thelma Furness) and Hugh Fraser (Anthony Eden).
The Duke of Windsor died in 1972, but the Duchess of Windsor, formerly Mrs Simpson, was still alive when the programme was conceived and broadcast. (She died in 1986). She was not best pleased, citing invasion of privacy, and lobbied to have the production stopped. Her opposition was reported in The Sun, and perhaps might have been more newsworthy if not for another significant event in August 1977.
The series ended with the marriage of the Duke and now Duchess of Windsor, some months after the Abdication.
The BFI Screen-Online review stated;
"…The series also carefully juxtaposes Edward’s frequent, and popular, visits to depressed areas with his opulent and carefree private life, and doesn’t shy from showing his admiration for Mussolini in a pair of brief but pointed exchanges with Anthony Eden…Edward Fox gives a fine and charismatic performance as the King, ably suggesting the contradictory impulses that ruled the man. Wallis Simpson, however, is presented rather less sympathetically. In an occasionally heavy-handed performance, Cynthia Harris plays her as a cool and conniving gold-digger, albeit a sometimes naïve and even disarmingly foolish one…"
The portrayal of Edward VIII was a little more sympathetic than in some later productions, including Bertie and Elizabeth (2002). Edward and Mrs Simpson did tend to gloss over the King’s fascist sympathies, although it was at least alluded to as mentioned in the BFI review. Perhaps, in fairness, these along with some alleged shady financial dealings, meddling in Britain’s foreign policy and the cosy relationship with Hitler, didn’t really become apparent until the period after the series ended. Wensley Pithey’s Winston Churchill was accurately shown as a strong and sincere personal friend and advocate for the King and Wallis Simpson, in public and private, to the annoyance of the Baldwin government, but this relationship later soured when Churchill was wartime Prime Minister, over the Duke of Windsor’s behaviour.
