The King Who Had To Go

If you're at all interested in the British Royal Family, the abdication of Edward VIII will be familiar to you. The broad outlines of the story are no less scandalous for being fairly straightforward: less than a year into his reign, before he'd even had a coronation, Edward renounced his throne for the sake of a singularly unsuitable woman, Wallis Simpson...not only American, not only already once a divorcee, but still married to her second husband. As the head of the Church of England, which did not sanction divorce, and with the unpopularity of Simpson herself, he had no choice but to abdicate if he wanted a future with her. This book is not particularly interested in the Edward and Wallis of it all (though there's naturally some of that), but rather in exploring how, exactly, the abdication came to be from a government perspective. It's fact-heavy, relying on primary sources like contemporaneous diaries and memoirs and full of detail about Cabinet meetings. I think it would be a bit too dry for many readers, though the writing itself is pretty lively and it's pretty easy to tell who author Adrian Phillips likes (like Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin), and who he doesn't (like Edward and Wallis) because he does not pull punches with his opinions. As someone who works in politics for a living, I found it really interesting because I'm well-acquainted with the way behind-the-scenes political dramas play out and the way they are often quite different than what is presented to the public. I enjoyed this and learned a lot from it, but if you're looking for something more focused on the Royal Family itself this may not be for you.