Hugo Vickers & the Duchess of Windsor

“No publishers...” Hugo Vickers records “were especially excited by the prospect of a new biography..” of the Duchess of Windsor, unless the biographer ”could come up with a new angle” (pg 229).  The angles, or “elements on which I now seek to impose order” (pg 11) that Vickers adopts in writing Behind Closed Doors: The Tragic Untold Story of the Duchess of Windsor are two fold: Firstly, “the ongoing fate of the Duchess of Windsor” (pg 11) after the Duke’s death, and secondly “a personal quest” of one who “has mulled over the events of the Abdication and sought the truth behind it” (pg 10-11).

The book is divided into two parts: “The Death, and “The Life”.  The second section, “The Life” is a fairly straightforward retelling of the events of the Duchess of Windsor’s life .  It is the first section of the book, “The Death” that is most interesting.  Beginning in 1972 with the Duke’s death, and ending with an account of the auction of some of the Windsor’s remaining household items in 1998, it is as much the story of Vickers’ fascination with the royalty, as that of the decline and death of the Duchess of Windsor.

Recounting his involvement, and quoting from his own diaries, Vickers creates a sense of intimacy and immediacy for his readers.  Working for Burkes Peerage, Vickers visits the offices of the Windsor’s staff. On one occasion, “while I was there the internal telephone on the desk rang.  It was the Duchess, and so the closest I ever got to her was to hear her voice on the telephone” (Pg 84). (There is no suggestion that Vickers answered the phone himself, but that he was present when the Duchess’s secretary took her call.)

 An association with St George’s Chapel enables Vickers to be present in the organ loft at the funeral of Marina, Duchess of Kent, which “greatly irritated the then Dean, Chapter Clerk and Virger” (pg 8).  From this position, he watches the Duke of Windsor leave at the end of the service, and observes sadly “It was his last ever visit to England and I never saw him in person again” (pg 8).

When unable to be present in person at an event, Vickers maintains the immediacy by providing the reader with information on his own whereabouts.  When the Queen visits the Duchess of Windsor in Paris, a day after Vickers too had been to France, he observes “I was back at my ... family home...in time to see the TV news bulletins of the Duchess of Windsor...coming out of the house with the Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles” (pg 15).

Vickers maintains an interest in the Duchess of Windsor during the years she spent after the Duke’s death, secluded and unwell. He recounts watching her home from the street outside on two occasions during her lifetime , and visiting with a friend after her death in 1986.  With much crinkling of banknotes, they were able to tour the drawing room and dining room downstairs, and the Dukes bedroom and bathroom, and the Duchess’s bedroom (but not her bathroom) upstairs.  Finally, when some of the Windsor’s  surviving household items are auctioned in New York in 1998, Vickers shares “a Lot containing towels and bathmats with a friend, paying rather over the odds for then” (pg 236).

Vickers writes with sympathy for the Duchess of Windsor, suggesting that she did not encourage the abdication, and suffered its consequences with dignity.   Her decline into painful and vulnerable ill health is documented, as are the actions of her French lawyer, Suzanne Blum, who Vickers believes ruthlessly exploited  the Duchess's vulnerability.  The readers real enjoyment of this book with come from Vickers descriptions of his own interactions with his subject, however.