Wallis Simpson: The Secret Letters

TX: Wednesday 24th August, 9pm, Channel 4

Wallis Simpson found herself at the centre of a national scandal when she was seen to ensnare Edward VIII and lure him from the throne of England. But in this explosive new film, biographer Anne Sebba sifts through a newly discovered cache of documents, shown in this film for the first time, which contains15 secret letters written by Wallis Simpson herself around the time of the Abdication. These extraordinary personal missives will rewrite both history and our perception of Wallis. They reveal she was deeply in love with another man and charts her fear, desperation and loneliness as she found herself becoming trapped into marrying the man who should have been king.

In 1936, just months into his reign as the King of England, Edward caused a constitutional crisis when he determined to marry Wallis Simpson. Britain was scandalised. It was unthinkable that the Head of the Church of England would marry a twice-divorced American socialite, and the government immediately opposed it.  Edward chose to renounce the throne, explaining: "I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility without the help and support of the woman I love."

Yet in the months immediately just before and after Edward's abdication, Wallis wrote a series of secret love letters to another man. She revealed her dread at the prospect of the marriage and how she planned to escape from the King and the furore surrounding her. The letters reveal a tortured love between Wallis and the man she could not be with - and the derision with which she held Edward.

Wallis Simpson: The Secret Letters charts Wallis's story with dramatic depictions of the key moments in her relationship with Edward. From her shameless climbing of the social ranks to meet the Prince of England at a party in 1931 to becoming his lover with the apparent complicity of her then husband Ernest. 

The film reveals how Wallis enjoyed the riches and trappings of a royal mistress, believing them to be short-lived - that she would easily be replaced one day. However, these assumptions were shattered when King George V died and Edward made it clear he wished to marry Wallis at any cost - even threatening suicide when she suggested ending their affair. So Wallis divorced her husband - but as both Wallis's and Ernest's private letters make clear, theirs was a divorce conducted with collusion between both of them and the King of England.

Wallis Simpson: The Secret Letters interviews key experts and descendants and sifts through the new sources to build a very different portrait of Wallis. Vilified at the time of the King's abdication, in later years her marriage to Edward was seen by many to be a great romance against all the odds. This film reveals the complex reality and web of relationships surrounding this pivotal moment in British royal history.