Miscellany Series
Miscellany is a selection of photographs from this series that don’t fall into one of the main project areas. Sometimes these are individual images, sometimes they are mini-projects in their own right.
King Edward VIII
On 20 January 1936 Edward, Prince of Wales, became King of the United Kingdom following the death of his father, George V. His reign was to be a short one and he abdicated on 11 December 1936 – following his decision to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.
Simpson, who had divorced her first husband, was in the process of divorcing her second husband. This led to a constitutional crisis – as the King was also the head of the Church of England which, at that time,’ disapproved of remarriage after divorce if a former spouse was still alive’. In the face of this crisis Edward abdicated in December having only reigning for a matter of months.
He took the title of the Duke of Winsor and married Wallis Simpson in France on 3 June 1937. During the Second World War, Edward was appointed Governor of the Bahamas after accusations that he held sympathies for the Nazi regime. After the war, he lived in France and the couple remained together until his death in 1972.
This is the only statue of King Edward VIII in Britain and one of only two in the World. The statue is in bronze, by the noted Italian sculptor Mario Rutelli.
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All images © W N BISHOP