"Lese Majesty: The Private Lives Of The Duke And Duchess Of Windsor" 1952 LOCKRIDGE, Norman (SOLD)

LOCKRIDGE, Norman

[190] pp.

Boar's Head Books

1952

8 1/2" x 6"

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The author, Norman Lockridge, was actually a Polish Jew called Samuel Roth, who lived in London and New York when he wasn’t in jail for publishing ‘Ulysses’ and ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’. The book departs totally from the standard biographical treatment, consisting mainly of three extended dialogues that debate Edward’s proclivities. The first is with the nursemaid to an aristocratic household, who is persuaded to confide details of Edward’s regular visits to her employer for all-male threesomes. The second is with a psychiatrist with complex theories about the concealing of gay tendencies. And the third is with an obscure American reporter trying to slag-off Wallis for turning Edward into a traitor and ruining the monarchy.
The revelations are bizarre indeed, and the prince is portrayed in a curiously intimate light that is not replicated in any of the more conventional histories. The conclusion seems to be that Wallis was the sudden explosion that shifted the blockage and set him on an even keel. But that is too close to the fairy-tale version that they both promoted in their memoirs. Nobody believes that their marriage was sexually harmonious, whether she was the nymphomaniac he couldn’t satisfy or whether she died a virgin, as claimed by her lady-lawyer and companion of her widowhood. In fact, at the time this book came out, they were nightclubbing every evening with the Woolworth heir Jimmy Donahue, rich, gay and amusing, for whom Wallis was seriously considering leaving her husband…