Next Meetings

May 20 th. 2022.   Partners of Prime Ministers. - David Howe

The talk begins with the Four Prime Ministers who never married, all of whom at some point had at least one close relationship with a woman.  

Following on, the focus will be on the Churchills, the Attlees, the Edens, the Wilsons, the Thatchers, and the Majors.

                               June 17th. 2022 The Abdication of Edward VIII - Roy Smart

“Too rich,  too thin  and  too  American;  a  bewitching,  vulgar,  Yankee  huntress, out  for what she could get  -  a gold-digger !”

But rather, was Wallis  Simpson in fact,  a benevolent woman,  caught up in a situation from which she could  not  extricate  herself and who, indeed,  on the eve of war,  saved us  from a feckless king ?  However,  as one of the most reviled women in history, Wallis, a twice divorced American with two living husbands, became a hate figure for ensnaring our King     and destabilising the monarchy.   With his dashing good looks Edward VIII embodied the hopes and aspirations of most in 1936 - The Year of Three Kings ! ;  by renouncing the throne he convulsed the nation bringing dishonour and disgrace upon the Royal House of Windsor.  

Roy Smart   recounts  how  Queen Mary despaired that her son had been beguiled by an American Sorceress,  while Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin  thought  Mrs. Simpson  tolerable as “a respectable whore but not  as Queen Wally ! ”  But the King, whose obsession with Wallis had become total dependency, signed the Instrument  of  Abdication, making way for the third monarch of 1936.  Now, ‘Prince’ Edward fled the country to be with his ‘love’ and a lifetime of exiled futility, and Wallis would, thereafter, carry the burden of blame for this catastrophe; and remain to this day, the enigmatic, compelling subject of  gossip and fascination worldwide.  

Our speaker is Roy Smart who has spoken previously to the Society on Earl Jellicoe and the Battle of Jutland, and on Amy Johnson