Wallis Simpson

Wallis Simpson    (socialite, spook?)
King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson on holiday in Yugoslavia, 1936
Born	Bessie Wallis Warfield June 19, 1896 Blue Ridge Summit, Pennsylvania
Died	April 24, 1986 (Age 89) 4 route du Champ d'Entraînement, Paris, France
Spouse	• Earl Winfield Spencer Jr • Ernest Simpson • Duke of Windsor
Married King Edward VIII in 1936. Ties to Italian intelligence.

Wallis, Duchess of Windsor (born Bessie Wallis Warfield, later Simpson), was an American socialite and wife of the former King Edward VIII. Their intention to marry and her status as a divorcée caused a constitutional crisis that led to Edward's abdication.

Intelligence ties

According to Paul Foot, "the American state files, produces clear evidence that Wallis Spencer, as she then was, was hired as an agent for Naval Intelligence. The purpose of her visit to China in the mid-Twenties, where she accompanied her husband, who also worked for Intelligence, was to carry secret papers between the American Government and the warlords they supported against the Communists. In Peking her consort for a time was Alberto de Zara, Naval Attaché at the Italian Embassy, whose enthusiasm for Mussolini was often expressed in verse. Wallis’s enthusiasm for the Italian dictatorship was, by this time, the only thing she had in common with her husband, Winfield Spencer."

According to Charles Higham, the author of Wallis: Secret Lives of the Duchess of Windsor (1988), while in Shanghai in 1925, she had an affair with the handsome fascist Count Galeazzo Ciano, who was later to become the son-in-law of Benito Mussolini. The affair resulted in a pregnancy, and a carelessly carried out abortion had left Wallis unable to have any more children. Wallis eventually divorced her husband in 1927.

Wallis then met the divorced businessman, Ernest Simpson.He was a partner in a shipping firm that had close business ties with Fascist Italy. The couple married in1928 and moved to London. They became friends with Lady Thelma Furness, a mistress of the Prince of Wales. On the 10th January, 1931, Furness invited them to her country house at Melton Mowbray where they met the heir to the throne. Prince Edward was fascinated by Wallis and it was not long before he was having an affair with her.

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