Sir Alan Frederick “Tommy” Dascelles. Secretário particular de quatro Monarcas. Jorge V. A abdicação de Eduardo VIII. A Segunda Guerra Mundial e Winston Churchill. Jorge VI e Isabel II. Alguns episódios sobre Eduardo:

Dascelles demite-se

When, about the middle of December, we got home, the King was still very ill and one evening I sent the Prince a note saying that I wished to resign. When he asked me why I wanted to leave, I told him what I thought of him and his whole scheme of life, foretelling, with an accuracy that might have surprised me at the time, that he would lose the throne. He heard me with scarcely an interruption, and when we parted, said: “Well, goodnight, Tommy, and thank you for the talk. I suppose the fact of the matter is that I’m quite the wrong sort of person to be Prince of Wales” — which was so pathetically true that it almost melted me.

Aprendiz de Calígula

Ulick Alexander (Keeper of the Privy Purse) has told me that, in the May of that year, he at last induced the King, Edward VIII, to go round his immense kitchen garden and glasshouses at Windsor. The particular pride of the old Scottish gardener was the peach-house, at that time a mass of blossom, promising a record crop of peaches. The King passed no comment till his tour of inspection was ended; he then turned to the gardener, and told him to cut all the blossom on the following day, and to send it to Mrs Simpson, and to one or two other ladies, to embellish their drawing-rooms in London. Caligula himself can never have done anything more wanton.

Espiões em Lisboa

The whole Windsor problem has recently been complicated by the discovery among the German Foreign Office archives at Marburg of a set of top-secret telegrams between Ribbentrop and Stohrer (German Ambassador in Madrid), regarding certain alleged overtures made to the Windsors by German agents when they were marooned in Portugal in May 1940. If the Windsors’ reactions were as implied in this correspondence the result is, to say the least, highly damaging to themselves.

Churchill

A few years ago, when Winston was still compos mentis, Jock asked him what he really felt about the Abdication, looking back on it after quarter of a century. (…) “Yes, but were you really prepared to accept Mrs Simpson as your queen?” — to which Winston, after a slight pause, replied: “ Never for one moment did I contemplate such a dreadful possibility.” Jock went on to say that Winston and Max Beaverbrook decided early in the Abdication crisis that “Cutie” (their private name for Mrs S) must leave the country as soon as possible. “It must have been fairly easy to persuade her,” said Jock, “when people started throwing bricks through the windows of her flat, and threatening to throw vitriol at her.”
“Max,” said Winston with one of his deepest chuckles, “Max arranged all that.”
A little later Jock found himself next to Beaverbrook after dinner. He put to him the same question that he had asked Winston. B, with his gargoyle smile, answered: “I thought it was all great fun.”

[King's Counsellor.Abdication and War: the Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles § Orion Books]