The Windsor Style

The Windsors, while they were living, epitomized style, glamour, and wit. Ultimately theirs was a wasted life, empty of meaning in the end. From the heady days of their scandalous romance, life was all downhill, a private struggle to conserve their dignity in the aftermath of the abdication. To fill this emptiness and lack of purpose in life, the Duchess obsessed on perfection; of herself, of the things she collected and of the table she set. The Windsor's sous chef spent hours sorting salad leaves into leaves of exactly the same size to be set before their guests. Their relationship was a hollow recreation of the childhood the Duke never could leave behind. Moulin de la Tuilerie, their country home outside of Paris, was the York Cottage of Edward's youth reborn. Wallis herself was Queen Mary, obsessively arranging the display of small objets and cosseting the little boy who was King. A long time servant said, "They had nothing and no-one. They were just two lonely old people." Suzy Menkes takes the reader on an interesting tour through not only of the tangible objects of this relationship, but of the relationship itself.