Program Title
Edward and Mrs. Simpson

Based On
"Edward VIII" by Frances Donaldson

Adapted By
Simon Raven

Number of Episodes:
7

Description
A dramatic reconstruction of the events leading up to King Edward VIII's abdication and his marriage to Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee.


Original broadcast date
1981-11-15

Cast	Characters
Edward Fox	King Edward VIII
Cynthia Harris	Wallis Warfield Simpson
Andrew Ray	Duke of York
Peggy Ashcroft	Queen Mary
Marius Goring	King George V
David Waller	Stanley Baldwin
John Shrapnel	Major Alexander Hardinge
Jeremy Child	Piers Leigh
Amanda Reiss	Duchess of York
Jessie Matthews	Aunt Bessie Merryman
Nigel Hawthorne	Walter Monkton
Charles Keating	Ernest Simpson
Cherie Lunghi	Lady Thelma Furness
Maurice Denham	Archbishop of Canterbury
Kika Markham	Freda Dudley Ward
Caroline Embling	Angie
Wensley Pithey	Winston Churchill
Ed Devereaux	Lord Beaverbrook
Patricia Hodge	Lady Diana Cooper
Trevor Bowen	Duff Cooper
Anthony Brown	Hugh Lloyd Thomas
Roger Hammond	Sir Harold Nicolson
William Hoyland	Lord Perry Brownlow
Simon Cadell	Major John Aird
Hugh Fraser	Anthony Eden
Patrick Troughton	Clement Attlee
Gerald Sim	Theodore Goddard
Edward Jewesbury	Lord Dawson
John Horsley	Norman Birkett K.C.
Richard Kay	Godfrey Thomas
Robert Flemyng	Sir Donald Somervell
Tony Church.	Sir Samuel Hoare

Credits

Producer: Andrew Brown
Director: Waris Hussein

Intro
EDWARD AND MRS. SIMPSON/Episode 1 : The Little Prince/Intro by Alistair Cooke

Good evening, I'm Alistair Cooke.

Tonight we are going to show for the first time in this country the whole version--seven episodes--of Edward and Mrs. Simpson, the story of one of the most dramatic crises in the history of the British monarchy. This was the first voluntary abdication of an English king, which--it staggers me to realize now since I was there and broadcast about it to this country seven, eight, nine, a dozen times a day--occurred forty-five years ago in 1936. Because it was nothing if not romantic, it was very simple then, and now, to oversimplify it as a case of true love versus the establishment.

Well, if we mean by the establishment what we always did mean until about twenty years ago--the established Church of England--that would be a true description, because the love affair of the king of England with a divorcee made his marriage in the Church of England impossible. It also made impossible, therefore, his crowning by the Archbishop of Canterbury. But the king's determination to marry Mrs. Simpson who was twice divorced, precipitated a constitutional crisis which I don't suppose has been equaled since the seventeenth century. That is, since 1688 when for the first time a British Parliament forced a king of England to bow before a Bill of Rights, which laid it down once for all that in all serious matters--political, change in the royal titles, marriage--he could not override the Parliament. He must have its approval. And what this did was give to the Parliament the power that the American Constitution eventually gave to the Supreme Court: the power to say that the people, not the head of state, are sovereign. And in the British system, the people, the common people, are represented by the House of Commons.

Now, our story begins when the Prince of Wales, Edward Prince of Wales (known to his friends and family as David) was thirty-four and still a bachelor. Of course, since the First World War there were rumors every year that he was about to marry some continental princess. He was extremely handsome. He'd toured the Empire to vast cheering crowds. And everywhere he was seen to be spontaneous and informal and engagingly natural. If Mary Pickford was the world's sweetheart, he was the world's Prince Charming.

His not wanting to marry was due to complicated reasons of his character. There'd been a lifelong strain between him and his mother, Queen Mary. And what he looked for in a mistress was a woman who would be discrete about her marriage and yet mother him. And he'd found such a woman ten years before in Mrs. Freida Dudley Ward. He was also at the time having a sort of casual sidelong affair with an American, Thelma Furness. Now the other thing that worried his father was his social set. George V was a solid country squire: intensely respectable, devoted to his shooting, his stamps, and above all to his wife. And yet in some ways, the Prince of Wales was a throwback to his grandfather, Edward VII. True he was interested in some country pursuits. He rode very well, though he fell off his horse often enough to inspire the fear of a crippled heir apparent.

But once he was through with his duties--his charities and hospitals, and his reviews of the armed forces and veterans' get-togethers (at which he was very good)--he loved jazz and nightclubs and carousing ‘til dawn with the upper-crust playboys and playgirls of Mayfair. Don't be deceived by the pleasure-loving tone of these early episodes. This was the Prince of Wales we didn't know about and it was an omen, which perhaps only King George spotted and feared.

Episode one, Edward and Mrs. Simpson.





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