THE KING OVER THE WATER: The Windsors in the Bahamas 1940-45.

UK,8vo HB+protected dw/dj,1st edn.FINE+/FINE+.No owner inscrptn,and no price-clip to protected dw/dj - virtually as new. Bright,crisp,clean,subject's b/w,contemporary,montage'd photographic illustrated dw/dj,with red and white lettering; with negligible shelf-wear and creasing to edges and corners - no nicks or tears present.Top+fore-edges bright and clean; contents bright,tight,clean,and solid and sound - near pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners - appears unread.Bright, crisp,clean,sharp-cornered,plain dark brown paper-covered boards with bright,crisp,stamped gilt letters to spine/backstrip,and immaculate plain white endpapers.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,15- 279pp [paginated] includes Pts 1-4,12pp of subject contemporary b/w photographs,in 3 blocks of 4pp apiece,between pp76/7, pp140/1 and pp204/5 respectively, the sources,notes and bibliography.Plus [unpaginated] half-title+title pages,a dedication, contents list/table,author's note,photographic acknowledgements, Pts+Sources separator pages. In August 1940 the Duke and Duchess of Windsor arrived in Nassau,where the Duke was to take up his post as Governor of the Bahamas.They were still the most romantic couple in the world,he the handsome Prince of Wales who had won hearts wherever he had gone,she the woman for whose sake he had given up a crown. But in Washington and London the royal Governor and his wife were already under suspicion in official quarters.The pro-German sentiments he had expressed during the 1930's were already well-known and the contacts that the couple had had with German agents and sympathisers during their sojourn in France and Portugal after the Abdication had made it imperative that they be removed from the European scene as quickly as possible.Exile in the Bahamas was intended to keep the Duke and Duchess of Windsor out of harm's way. 'The King Over the Water' tells for the first time (then 1981) the story of the years the Windsors spent in the Bahamas.During his governorship the Duke became closely involved with three men whose lives drew his into a network of scandal,political subversion,and,finally,murder.The three were Sir Harry Oakes,'the richest baronet in the British Empire', Harold Christie,the land speculator,and Axel Wenner Gren,the mysterious Swedish millionaire who was active in the interests of Goering and Krupp. Only the entry of America into the Second World War prevented these men from completing a plan that would probably have brought the Duke's name into eternal disrepute. During those years the Duke struggled for minimal social reforms in the face of implacable opposition from the ruling oligarcy of white merchants and lawyers,and the Duchess threw herself into work for the poor and the sick,but the apparently idyllic life of the islands,in which black and white lived together in peaceful inequality,was to erupt in riot and looting.In the Duke of Windor's little kingdom,the dream of a white man's Paradise was shattered for ever. Finally,in 1943,Sir Harry Oakes was horribly murdered.The Duke took personal charge of the investigation and a local adventurer, Alfred de Marigny,was arrested and charged.But the prosecution's case was disgracefully weak,de Marigny was acquitted,and the murder of Sir Harry Oakes has remained a mystery to this day (then 1981).Michael Pye unravels the tangle of threads,social, financial and personal,that point to a possible solution,a dramatic solution that links the murder with the other machinations in which the Due was involved. At the end of the war,the Duke and Duchess sailed for Europe,their magic faded,their glamour tarnished.The Duke was never again to hold an official position.The Windsor legend finally died in the Bahamas. Since April 2013,again in March 2015 and in this year too,the UK Post Office has altered it's Pricing in Proportion template,altering its prices,weight allowances,dimensions and lowered its qualifying compensation rates too!
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