Seven months after giving up the throne in December 1936, the former Edward VIII, now the Duke of Windsor, married the former Mrs Wallis Simpson, who reverted to her maiden name of Warfield after her divorce from Ernest Simpson which took full effect in May 1937. The wedding was held in June at a castle in France. Pictures taken by one of the guests were published for the first time in The Daily Telegraph on 23 November. Alistair Lexden provided some background details in a letter published in the paper on 28 November.
SIR--Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, the woman behind the camera at the Duke of Windsor’s wedding in June 1937 (“Private pictures of wedding that shocked the world”, November 23) was the daughter of Lord Curzon and an ardent supporter of Sir Oswald Mosley. Nicknamed Baba, she was widely known as Baba Blackshirt.
The host of the occasion at his French castle, Charles Bedaux, whom the Duke had never met, had recently agreed to give “a permanent cut of his business profits” in Germany to the Nazis.
Baba noted in her diary: “It could be nothing but pitiable & tragic to see a King of England of only six months ago, an idolised King, married under these circumstances. [But] he was so sure of himself in his happiness that it gave something to the sad little service which it is hard to describe.”
He found some consolation for the low turn-out of wedding guests in the interest the event aroused in France. The French post office issued pictorial souvenir covers “en commémoration du mariage de S.A.R. le Duc de Windsor et de Mrs Wallis Warfield, Monts, le 3 Juin 1937—12 heures." I possess two.
Lord Lexden
London SW1