Abdicted to Love

By Adrian Phillips

Imprint: Pen & Sword History

Pages: 240

ISBN: 9781399065412

The First Royal Media War examines the behind the scenes intrigue of a dynastic old guard of politicos trying to placate a love sick left-leaning new King of a crumbling British Empire. 

Dense in research and accomplished in portraying William Randolph Hearst, an overbearing Lord Beaverbrook, an evasive Prime Minister in Stanley Baldwin and a ‘swine’ of an Archbishop of Canterbury in Cosmo Gordon Lang, author Phillips is skilled at bringing to life the daily scuttlebutt and political posturing of press barons and politicians who circle each other like the dials of Big Ben while time ticks down on an unprecedented constitutional crisis and the King’s ultimate abdication.  

The popular but obdurate King is less a stoic people's champion more a tragic figure here. The idea of subordinating a future wife to a diminished rank compels the narrative forwards and the various attempts to parachute an unpopular American divorcee into the title of HRH bring to mind the current state of the British monarchy and weirdly echoes Prince Harry’s and Megan’s current travails and fragile media relationship. 

The relative innocence of 1930's media society is clearly overshadowed by the doomed fate of its lovers. The morganatic right of ancient aristocratic houses to accept lower born paramours into their circles is shuddered at in every level of 1930’s society and situation: in Welsh miners meetings, Canadian colonial outposts, through the halls and corridors of Westminster and the Cannes Riviera. The constitutional crisis facing twice divorced Wallis Simpson and the well-meaning but naive King reads as if it is happening now and the story is prescient in that is showcases a generational divide. The popular King is a success in the flesh at photo calls where he doesn’t lecture but is he is simply outmanoeuvred by self-serving industrialists, business magnates and stodgy empire loyalists who understand how to use the media to advantage. Knowing this dynastic terrain well and drawing on earlier writing Adrian Phillips has written an erudite, scholarly work which serves as an updated companion piece to earlier books on the subject.