Lead Review
- Book: Another Woman’s Husband
- Location: Brighton, Paris
- Author: Gill Paul
I read this book around the 20th anniversary (2017) of the death of Princess Diana in the Alma Tunnel, 31 August 1997. It was a very apt and poignant read as the book opens with Rachel and Alex driving up just behind the crash scene in the tunnel, leaping out to see if they could be of help and being stunned by the flashes of the Paparazzi, as they photographed a dying woman and her dead beau.
Alex, with eagle eyes, spots a small platinum heart that has fallen out of the car, torn seemingly from a charm bracelet, engraved with the initial J and the Roman Numerals XVII. He snatches it covertly and Rachel puts it to one side in her purse and it is more or less forgotten about.
This dual narrative also takes the reader back to the early 20th Century and to the blossoming friendship between Bessiewallis Warfield, better known in later life as Wallis Simpson, and Mary Kirk. Wallis was the woman who drove the friendship forward, set the rhythm, with Mary seemingly hanging onto her coat-tails; Wallis was a woman very much with verve and wry humour who made it her business to move up the social echelons, away from her relatively humble beginnings. But could she really truly love anyone and give of herself?
It is interesting how Wallis comes across in the narrative, a larger than life character – a woman who would never allow herself to be photographed with her hands on show (they were, she felt, too large); a fascinating story, excellently told. Not, however, terribly likeable, as she seemed to ensnare the heir apparent to the British throne, Edward VIII (a bit of a milksop, by all accounts), and had him grovelling at her feet; compounded by her flirtation with von Ribbentrop and her clear Nazi sympathies. All the while, she was married to Ernest Simpson, who stoically stood by and watched her burgeoning relationship with the soon-to-be King unfold. But through the lens of history has misogyny created a monster of her, I wonder? It is hard to know. Was she perhaps the “most misunderstood woman in history”?
The story of Rachel and Alex is firmly set around the death of Diana in 1997, as Alex seizes his opportunity as a film maker to make a documentary, the conspiracy theories are rife, the monarchy’s response under scrutiny. The author sheds insight into the possible lives of the elite, and beautifully brings together the ménage à trois endured by Ernest Simpson, which is echoed in later years by the on-going relationship between Charles and Camilla, and which proved so painful to Diana. “English kings have always married some fecund young aristocrat to produce an heir and a spare, and taken the women they love as mistress”. Indeed.
Two iconic women, two thorns in the side of the British monarchy, each with their own story. “Two women who challenged a royal dynasty. Divided by time. Bound by a secret…” Highly recommended.
Please wait...
