Edward VIII Coins and Related Ephemera, from the Estate of the late Miss Fairlie Hopkin

Edward VIII (1936), Illustrative media: Castle, E.W. (ed), The Life of Edward, nd [1937-8], a 16mm newsreel cine film, in tin and original packaging; Anon, a Kodak 16mm monochrome cine film of the Duke of Windsor, Sir George Allen, Walter Monckton and others at Schloss Enzesfeld, Austria, 21 February 1937, 101 feet long, in excellent condition; Anon, a Kodachrome 16mm colour cine film of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor at Château de la Croë, Antibes, 1938, in good order but some damage, both in original card boxes; Rhys, D., a group of 17 original colour transparencies, mostly 25 x 20cm, of the rooms in the Moulin de la Tuilerie at Essonne, France, some featuring the Duchess of Windsor, taken in 1954 to accompany the article in Woman’s Home Companion (see below), some unpublished; a green photograph album containing pre- and post-War images of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and others, including the first official photograph of the Duke of Windsor and Mrs Simpson together at Château de Candé, signed in blue ink by both subjects and dated 7-v-37; a signed photograph of the Duke by Dorothy Wilding, 1943, and one of Sir George Allen and Walter Monckton, November 1936, together with a telegram from the Duke and Duchess expressing condolences to Fairlie Hopkin on the death of Sir George Allen, sent from Munich, 12 August 1956;

Books and Printed Matter:
Wilson, Edwina H., Her Name was Wallis Warfield, New York, 1936, 117pp, illustrations in text, extra illustrations and newspaper cuttings from 1937 pasted in at back, dj, first free endpaper signed ‘Annabel Ramage, 3845 10th Street, Riverside, California, June first 1937’; Edward Windsor, A King’s Story: The Memoirs of H.R.H. the Duke of Windsor, K.G., London, 1951, xvi + 440pp, illustrations in text, dj, with pastedown on first free endpaper inscribed ‘To Fairlie Hopkin with best wishes from Edward, September 1951’; Wirsig, W. (ed), Woman’s Home Companion, Springfield, Ohio, October 1954, 132pp, illustrations in text, featuring an 8-page article on the Moulin de la Tuilerie by the Duchess (see above); Wheeler-Bennett, J.W., King George VI, His Life and Reign, London, 1958, xiv + 891pp, illustrations in text, genealogical table, dj, title page signed John W. Wheeler-Bennett, October 1958; Keenlyside, H., Allen & Overy: The Firm 1930-1998, London, 1999, 105pp, illustrations in text; Higham, C., Mrs Simpson: Secret Lives of the Duchess of Windsor, London, revised edn, 2004, xviii + 557pp, illustrations in text, dj; together with a souvenir edition of the London Evening Standard, 2 June 1972 and Bloch, M., A Remembrance of the Windsors, London, 1986, 32pp of illustrations [Lot].

A varied and unique group of memorabilia worthy of careful study £800-1,000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Edward VIII Coins and Related Ephemera, from the Estate of the late Miss Fairlie Hopkin.

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Provenance: From the estate of Miss Fairlie Edith Mary Hopkin, additionally: first book ex libris Annabel Ramage (1879-1973).

Edward VIII repaired to Schloss Enzesfeld, the Austrian retreat of Baron Eugène de Rothschild, immediately after the Abdication. He remained there for 3 months, during which he was prevented from seeing Mrs Simpson, then staying with her friends Mr and Mrs Herman Rogers in Cannes, until her divorce from Ernest Simpson became absolute on 3 May 1937. In February 1937 Walter Monckton arrived from London, charged with the somewhat delicate task of advising Edward that his daily telephone calls to his brother with advice on how to run the country had to stop, which they did after Edward received news of the financial settlement that would enable him to survive comfortably as the Duke of Windsor. The Duke and Mrs Simpson married on 3 June 1937 at the Château de Condé, Tours, to which Wallis Simpson had moved from Cannes on 9 March 1937; Sir George Allen and Walter Monckton were two of the only seven English people at the wedding of someone who had, six months earlier, been the King of England. The Château de la Croë, on the Cap d’Antibes, now owned by Roman Abramovich, was leased by the Duke and Duchess in May 1938. They stayed there until 1952, when the lease was sold to the shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos, then moved to the Villa Windsor in the Bois de Boulogne, Paris, while at the same time acquiring and restoring the Moulin de la Tuilerie at Essonne, where they spent most weekends and summer vacations. Both the Duke and Duchess died at Villa Windsor, the former on 28 May 1972 and the latter on 24 April 1986.