1936: British press finally break silence on Wallis Simpson affair

Rumours that Edward Vlll, then Prince of Wales, and future king, had fallen in love with the American divorcee Mrs Wallis Simpson had swirled around high society for some time and were confirmed by gossipy stories cut from foreign newspapers and posted to relatives back home in the UK.

For the majority of the British public, the story was unknown, with most seemingly unaware of the constitutional crisis that was brewing. Newspapers in Europe and the United Stated were less muted and even local reporters on the Milwaukee Journal were falling over themselves to tell readers about the story of the American girl and the King: here they even published a piece about the cockamamie attempts of the British to take US newspapers off news stands in London and how pages had been ripped out of Time magazine.

The whole world seemed to be in on the story, yet the British press chose to ignore it even though Fleet Street editors knew about the scandal from the start - after all the rakish Edward was known for his indiscretion, and could hardly complain about press intrusion. What really kept the press from reporting on the affair was a gentleman's agreement undertaken by news proprietors who were mindful of upsetting the King. The result was a media blackout.

Searching the Guardian's archive, there is clearly a gap in coverage until the divorce case of Wallis Simpson from her American husband was heard at Ipswich Assizes in 1936. The story should have been headline news, as it meant Simpson was one step closer to wedding the king. Curiously the Guardian gave the story very little space, running it at the bottom of page ten, below a story about municipal elections in Merseyside.

What really sparked public awareness of Edward VIII's relationship with Simpson, and the abdication crisis that might follow, came thanks to the words of Bishop Blunt of Bradford whose pulpit denunciation in 1936 exposed the whole crisis.

With the press no longer gagged, newsrooms hurriedly churned out as much copy as they could in order to satisfy the public's curiosity. As events moved quickly the style of coverage also changed, with readers given almost breathless coverage, as this Guardian time line of the crisis demonstrates:

On December 11th 1936, Edward VIII was forced to abdicate less than a year after becoming King to marry Wallis Simpson. The nation listened to his decison in a BBC broadcast