On 18th May 1972 the Queen visited her Uncle David in Paris
The Duke of Windsor was not well enough to attend tea with the Queen when she came to visit his home in Paris this afternoon.
He was said to be “dreadfully disappointed” after doctors told him he was not to come downstairs because of ill health.
They made their decision just hours before the Queen, with Prince Philip and Prince Charles, was due to see her uncle for the first time in five years – and the first time in his own home.
The Queen did spend 15 minutes talking alone with her “Uncle David” in his first floor sitting room after the Duchess of Windsor hosted tea in the downstairs drawing room.
Ten days later, the Duke of Windsor died at his home in Paris. Doctors revealed he had been suffering from throat cancer for some time.
He left an estimated fortune of £4m.
The Duchess of Windsor attended his funeral in Frogmore, England. She lived as a recluse in Paris until her death in 1986 and was buried next to her husband in England. Her impressive collection of jewellery was auctioned a year later in Paris raising more than £31m for the Pasteur Institute, a centre for biological research.
BACKGROUND
The Duke of Windsor, once King Edward VIII, abdicated in 1936 after constitutional objections to his plans to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson. He was succeeded to the throne by George VI, father of the present Queen.
The couple tied the knot in France in 1937 and have lived there ever since in virtual exile although they have made various visits to the Royal family in London over the years.
The Duke spent some time in the Bahamas as governor during World War II.
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS – THE TRAGIC UNTOLD STORY OF THE DUCHESS OF WINDSOR
“An unloved child, Edward had an overwhelming need to be dominated and to adore; Wallis had a need to dominate and found his adulation tiresome. To a certain extent she was used by him to escape from a job he did not want, but the trap in which Wallis found herself during Edward’s lifetime was nothing to the one in which she got herself caught between his death in 1972 and her own in 1986. It is at this point that Behind Closed Doors, a book in two parts, begins.”
www.telegraph.co.uk/…/Behind-Closed-Doors-The-Tragic-Untold…