Wallis Simpson has fascinated the public since the 1930's. She has always been portrayed as the cold, aloof American who was after a crown or title and this book goes out of its way to change the public perception.

It is a fascinating read but the author seems to be very biased towards Wallis, and in trying to show us the "real" Wallis that she is shifting the blame to Edward. as a selfish prince / king who wanted everything his own way.

A thought provoking book, it has changed my perspective of both Wallis & Edward but not completely in line with the Authors view.

Anna Pasternak nails her colours pretty unashamedly to the mast when she talks about the book being fuelled by a desire to rehabilitate Wallis in history. Untitled paints the Duchess of Windsor in a positive light, putting forward her side of the story and attempting to quash some, if not all, of the accusations that have been levelled at her. The list of sources and references at the back of the book demonstrate the detailed research undertaken by the author.

I was surprised to learn of the extremes to which the government went in their opposition to the relationship between Edward and Wallis Simpson, including listening in to their private telephone conversations.

However, I was left with a picture of two people so wrapped up in each other that the impact of their actions on others ceased to matter or just simply did not occur to them. At times, the behaviour of Wallis and Edward was either naive or bordered on the crass and their lavish lifestyle was far removed from the experience of the majority of Edward’s subjects. However, no-one with any feelings would surely wish for them the sadness of their final years – declining health, exile and manipulation by others.

Untitled is also the story of a family torn apart by a decision regarded variously as an act of selfishness, betrayal and a failure of duty. The author depicts how the refusal by his mother, Queen Mary, to receive Wallis or even acknowledge her and the decision not to grant the Duchess HRH status became totemic issues for Edward, creating a rift in the Royal Family that was never repaired in his lifetime.

In the Afterword, the author observes that she found herself warming to Edward during the process of researching and writing the book. I’m afraid this reader had the opposite experience. If anything, Edward comes out diminished to my mind. His blind devotion to Wallis is touching but tainted by his seemingly single-minded belief that he should have whatever he wanted in life, regardless of the consequences. As the author observes, ‘His love for Wallis was as selfish and as crucial to his survival as a child’s; it would have been the more loving act to have relinquished her‘.

As for Wallis? I think the author sums it up when she comments, ‘She [Wallis] was powerful – in her effect on Edward – but powerless, in her inability to prevent events from spiralling out of control’.

Gossipy and a bit gushy (Pasternak is furious at the way Wallis has been reviled... so this is not neutral or unbiased), lots of attention to lavish interiors and Wallis' wardrobe, and packed with quotations from Wallis' famous friends. There are the speculations I've read before of Wallis having some kind of genetic problem that made her gender dysmorphic (evidence?) and a sensational assertion that she never had sex with either of her two husbands before Edward and that Edward himself was sexually dysfunctional... Quite a lot of whitewashing over their Nazi support, too. Still, treat this as a celebrity biography and it's hugely readable: 3.5 stars.

I’m really sorry and I hate to leave a negative review for any book, but I have to make an exception for Untitled. It’s a new biography pf Wallis Simpson, later the Duchess of Windsor and it bills itself as a book in which “Anna Pasternak redeems a women wronged by history with new information revealed by those who were close to the couple - presenting Wallis as a convenient scapegoat to rid England of a king deemed unworthy to rule”.

It may well be that Wallis Simpson was harshly treated by historians but the way to demonstrate that isn’t to deliver information without scrutiny. Anna Pasternak gives us plenty of opinions on Wallis’s charm and thoughtfulness but she does so unquestioningly in her attempt to present the Duchess more sympathetically. Okay, it’s a celebrity biography rather than a history book, but nevertheless.

I think that was my main problem. There were too many contradictions. On one page Pasternak repeats the improbable claim that Wallis never slept with either of her first two husbands and on the next she argues that she was distraught that neither of those marriages produced any children. Okay, these claims aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but they deserve a little analysis.

Similarly, the story brushes over some of the Windsors’ more unsavoury connections, such as their friendship with the German Ambassador von Ribbentrop, their visit to Hitler and the hospitality they accepted from wealthy friends with Nazi affiliations. And Pasternak repeatedly quotes Wallis’s friend Lady Diana Mosley, making very little of the fact that Diana was an active Fascist and married to Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists. If we’re to accept the story of the Windsors as one of a couple who were much misunderstood, I think we need a harsher examination of their weaknesses as well as their strengths.

As it was, I don’t think Pasternak has done the Duchess any favours, presenting her as a woman whose greatest concern, when her country and her adopted country were involved in a war, was that she wasn’t accorded the title of Royal Highness and who suffered immensely by the fact that her waxwork at Madame Tussaud’s is placed with that of Marie Antoinette rather than with the royal family.

Pasternak skims over the difficult stuff and gives us endless details about Wallis’s clothes, the decor of her various houses and the contents of the menus she served up for dinner parties. There seems very little in the book that’s new, unless you count a few interviews with friends, and most of that is opinion rather than fact. I found it very hard going, like ploughing my way through a celebrity magazine article hundreds of pages long.

There’s definitely a place for a more sympathetic biography of the Windsors than those which have gone before, but I’m afraid this isn’t it.

An eye opening look at Wallis Simpson not the driven American divorcee always portrayed but through interviews with intimate friends of hers the real woman the life she lived with Edward after his abdication ..A book that tells wallis’s history portrays as the victim of the abdication rather then the victor.Told through the reality of Wallis Simpsons world.#Netgalley #HarperCollinsuk.

This books gives you a fresh and totally different insight into Wallis’ Simpsons life within the royal family and her relationship with the Duke of Windsor. I have read this that I was I even aware of as whatever had been written about Wallis in the past had been so negative.
I didn’t realise that the Duke was such a child and so needie . As you read this you being the realise that I’m actual fact Wallace is almost suffocating under the pressure of the Duke.

If your a lover of history or the history of the royal family then this is for you.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Harper Collins uk for my eARC of this book. In exchange for my honest unbiased review