As the Abdication crisis reached boiling-point in the dying days of 1936, was Wallis Simpson ready and willing to be bought out of her forthcoming marriage to King Edward VIII?
Newly viewed Cabinet documents indicate that, at the height of the crisis, the question of a cash settlement to get rid of the twice-divorced American was actually proposed by her lawyer.
Had the deal been struck it could have had far-reaching consequences lasting down to the present day, 88 years later, resulting in a different monarch occupying the throne – not King Charles.
