27th August, 2024 in Biography & Memoir, History

How ‘The King’s Loot’ uncovered the murky past of the Windsor Jewellery

By Richard Wallace

The Duchess of Windsor’s notorious jewellery collection was, and still is, the subject of intense speculation regarding not only its murky provenance (were the gems originally sourced clandestinely from the English monarchy’s vast royal collection?), but also its eventual controversial dispersal at the close of the 20th century during two celebrated auctions in Geneva and New York.

Despite the plethora of general biographical material generated by the Windsor story during the last fifty years, an in-depth, balanced account of the greed and deceit permeating the horde of stolen jewels and artworks they acquired over a lifetime of subterfuge and public denial has never been published.

This is partly due to the mysterious disappearance of vast amount of Windsor archives assiduously preserved by the Duke at his various French residences between the time of his death in 1972 and the last years of the Duchess’s incapacitation and eventual death in 1986. There is a consensus these papers were either stolen by Windsor confidantes, confiscated by royal agents, or destroyed by loyal staff. Those artefacts that managed to survive do surface now and then, such as the small cache of material preserved by the Duchess’s former personal secretary Johanna Schutz.

In The King’s Loot, Richard Wallace has tracked down and sifted through the various competing contemporary accounts that exist and tested their veracity with surviving witnesses.

The 400+ footnotes used in The King’s Loot derive from four principal sources:

• The author covered the 1987 Geneva auction for Fairfax and visited Geneva to witness the first day of the auction (2nd of April) in the giant candy-striped marquee on the shore of Lake Geneva across the main lakeside avenue from the Hotel Beau Rivage (where an old register still had the 1939 signatures of the Duke and Duchess). He used notes of interviews and other first-hand observations of that time in Geneva that were not included in his Fairfax article.

• These primary experiences were supplemented with recent interviews of key witnesses willing to go on the record such as Michael Bloch (veteran Windsor author and assistant to the Duchess’s French executor in the 1970’s and 80’s), Sotheby’s investigative reporter Peter Watson, and Andrew Rayner, brother of the 1987 auctioneer Nicholas Rayner. Richard was also able to use other sources to corroborate comments made by nervous Windsor jewellers and haute couturiers reluctant to be cited for reasons of client confidentiality.

• Extensive references to first-hand contemporary accounts of key moments in the Windsor jewellery story (the fallout from the reading of George V’s will; Wallis Simpson’s escape to the Continent prior to Edward’s abdication; the wedding at Château de Candé; the burglary at Ednam Lodge; the death of the Duchess and her relationship with her executor Maître Suzanne Blum; and the Geneva/New York auctions) drawn from various sources such as The New York Times, The Daily Mail, The Times, the Diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles (a member of Edward’s staff), Diaries of Sir John Reith (DG of the BBC and witness to Edward’s abdication broadcast), Diaries of Chips Channon (Society observer), the papers of Walter Monckton (Edward’s chief confidante) at Balliol college, and police files in the National Archives.

• A judicious sampling of relevant secondary sources.