The King and the Lady: Three Kings in One Year – Why Did Edward VIII Abdicate? Facts Which Were Not Told

Late 1930s. 34pp stapled booklet with black and white illustrations. 8vo.  Covers are worn, a little rubbed at edges, with oxidation stains around staples. Pencilled annotation on rear cover.  One corner curling else internally neat. clean and bright.  

Cavalcade was a British news magazine, first published in 1956. It was the only British publication to publish photographs of King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson in the summer of 1936 – exposing their relationship to the British public for the first time – and to tell, week-by-week, of their friendship.  This special issue, from around 1937 – compiles the story and photographs from the 1936 Abdication Crisis that had appeared in Cavalcade.  The editor says in the foreword “written fully and accurately as the events were fresh and new, the story is intended to be kept as a contemporary document, and passed down in history”.  Cavalcade was widely seen in some quarters as a tabloid, tasteless (and perhaps scurrilous?) publication.  Cavalcade said its “policy is to tell the truth.  People who attacked Cavalcade admitted later that if all the British journals had told the truth the crisis might never have happened”.