Delilah's betrayal of Samson might count as "greater" than this one, or even Meg Ryan's of Dennis Quaid. In the history of love, there could be no greater betrayal. But the passion each felt for the other caused the Duchess, at the age of 55, to consider divorcing the man who rejected throne, crown and empire for "the woman I love.". In the end only the Duchess of Windsor and Jimmy Donahue. What makes a homosexual fall in love with a woman old enough to be his mother? What makes a woman ready to abandon fame and public adulation for a night of love with a man who has never even slept with a woman? These quotations from an article Wilson wrote about the book for the Express in London capture his technique in a nutshell: "Dancing With the Devil" shouldn't be critiqued so much as held at a distance with tongs. Wilson is a one-time "Fleet Street columnist" - say no more! - whose previous books include a biography of Prince Charles' mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles, and the definitive life of Goldie Hawn. Still with me? The Duke of Windsor was apparently so undone by his wife's infidelity that he wept for days, "crisscrossed" the oceans, contemplated suicide and went right on spending Donahue's money as if nothing had happened. Wilson thinks that the duchess and Donahue "consummated their love" in 1950 aboard the Queen Mary, to the horror and humiliation of "the buttoned-up and inadequate duke" (a former king of England, Edward VIII, for whose mother the ship was named). For four years, Donahue essentially supported the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's extravagant way of life. Woolworth heir Jimmy Donahue, "a gay playboy twenty years her junior," as Wilson describes him. Certainly it's not demonstrated, much less documented, in "Dancing With the Devil," Christopher Wilson's trashy new book about the relationship between the duchess, a former Baltimore socialite, and F.W. How did I reach the age of 47 without knowing that? So Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, was really a man.
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