*1 The latest figure prepared in January 1990 by Marlene Eilers, author of Queen Victoria’s Descendants (New York, 1987), was 536 but they are a philoprogenitive lot and the number has by now probably increased.
*2 An ambiguous remark; presumably the Duke derived comfort from the photograph rather than the distance.
*3 To retain these in quotation, except in the few cases where they add something to the sense, would lengthen the book to little purpose and impose an unnecessary burden on the reader.
*4 prima facie a curious proportion, the mathematical basis for which was not explained.
*5 I am indebted to Robert Rhodes James for confirming that this woman, whose name was left blank in the published diaries, was in fact Lady Furness.
*6 A mysterious comment, since the King’s address as published contained neither word.
*7 On 8 Jan 1963 the present Lord Norwich wrote to The Times to point out that Coburg’s account of his conversation with Duff Cooper was grotesquely at variance with Cooper’s known views. It was clear, Lord Norwich temperately remarked, that Coburg had ‘little gift for accurate reporting. After all, anyone who could think that he had been at Eton with the Earl of Avon, with my father [Duff Cooper] and with Neville Chamberlain (who was 28 years older than Lord Avon and never went there at all) could think anything.’
*8 Probably, in fact, an Anglo-Greek shipowner called Billy Rees.
*9 Presumably Chamberlain was referring to the Chancellor of the Exchequer (i.e., himself) rather than the Church of England. The King disliked both but certainly had more respect for the former.
*10 William Deedes in the Daily Telegraph Magazine of 17 March 1989 quotes evidence that the King was referring to the recently closed Dowlais steelworks and in fact said: ‘These steelworks brought the men hope. Something must be done to see that they stay here – working.’
*11 Lord Beauchamp was hounded from the country as the result of a homosexual scandal; Mrs Simpson seems to have been pointing out the self-evident fact that the Duke’s case was very different.
*12 From Belshazzar’s Feast (Daniel 5). Hardly a propitious phrase given the ill tidings conveyed at that uncomfortable banquet.
*13 Two leading black politicians: Cambridge was a jazz musician and Butler eventually became the first black Governor General.
*14 [Sic] So unusual a slip from this most meticulous of writers suggests that Lascelles himself was rendered overwrought by any airing of this subject.
*15 The government were not impressed by his arguments and appointed W. L. Murphy, a ‘career man’ without private means currently serving as Colonial Secretary in Bermuda.
*16 Only the consort of the King or the reigning monarch should be referred to as ‘The Queen’; after the death of King George VI his widow was styled Queen Elizabeth or, by the public at least, the Queen Mother.
*17 Presumably the letter of mid-June 1937.
*18 Sydney Johnson, the Bahamian valet who had served the Duke devotedly for more than thirty years, remembered that he was unable to leave his bed on this occasion, but Johnson was not himself present during the interview and the weight of the evidence is against him.