Abdication

Product Description

England 1936. After the recent death of George V the nation has a new king Edward VIII. But for all the confident pomp & ceremony of the accession it is a turbulent time. Terrible poverty & unemployment affect many but trouble few among the ruling elite; for others Oswald Mosley's New Party which offers a version of the fascism on the rise in Germany seems to offer the vision of the future. Nineteen-year-old May Thomas has just disembarked at Liverpool Docks after making the long journey by steamer from Barbados to escape the constraints of her sugar-plantation childhood. Her first job as a secretary & chauffeuse to Sir Philip Blunt Chief Whip in Baldwin's Conservative government will open her eyes to the upper echelons of British society... The unlikely friendship she forms with Evangeline Nettlefold American god-daughter of the Chief Whip's wife & an old school friend of Wallis Simpson will see her through family upheavals including the shocking sudden loss of her mother; but more significant for May the Blunts' son Rupert has an Oxford University friend Julian a young man of conscience for whom despite all barriers of class she cannot help but fall. Secrets hidden truths undeclared loves unspoken sympathies & covert complicities are everywhere
- biggest & most dangerous of them all the truth about the new King's relationship with a married woman & the silent horror that few in Britain dare voice: the increasing inevitability of another world war...