The Other House of Windsor - Wallis Simpson & Edward VIII - Duke and Duchess of Windsor

3 months ago
20

The Villa Windsor is the name by which the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's last home in Paris's
Bois de Bologne is commonly known. The former King Edward VIII and his wife Wallis Simpson leased it from the French government in 1953 and it reverted to the French state after the death of the Duchess in 1986. Since then it has been meticulously restored to its original splendour by Mohammed Al-Fayed of Harrods fame. This One Foot in the Past film gives a rare opportunity to see the results of the conservation work - the villa is now a private museum, and closed to the public.
On an intimate tour of its interior, Lucinda Lambton picks out the domestic details revealed by the rooms and their contents: the table on which the king signed the abdication in 1936, for example, a musical box that plays God Save the King, the piano once played by Cole Porter. And it seems the modern-thinking duke preferred the shower to the bath; the latter was used to house his collection of 12,000 photographs

Loading comments...