Wallis's lover: Mr Trundle the dancing car salesman
By Peter Foster
(Filed: 30/01/2003)
Wallis Simpson lavished money and expensive gifts on a "secret" married lover after she became romantically involved with Edward, Prince of Wales, according to confidential Special Branch documents released today.
He is named as Guy Marcus Trundle, a car salesman from York described as "a very charming adventurer, very good looking, well bred and an excellent dancer" in a highly confidential 1935 report to Sir Philip Game, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.
"He is said to boast that every woman falls for him. He meets Mrs Simpson quite openly at informal social gatherings as a personal friend, but secret meetings are made by appointment when intimate relations take place."
Special Branch began inquiries into Mrs Simpson's background and friends after being alerted to her close relationship with the Prince, later Edward VIII. "She is reputed to be very attractive and to spend lavishly on dress and entertainment," said the first of three reports.
Her friends were said to include "Lady Emerald Cunard who is a great friend of Mrs Alice Preston and reputed to be a drug addict". Through her the Prince met Sir Oswald Mosley, the fascist leader.
Lady Cunard is described as "the mother of the notorious Nancy Cunard, who is very partial to coloured men and who created a sensation some few years ago by taking up residence in the negro quarter of New York".
Mrs Simpson's second husband, Ernest, was "the bounder type" police reported, who gloried in his wife's royal association to "make what capital he can out of it".
They also believed that Mrs Simpson had lived at two London addresses under the name Mrs Earle Spencer, the name of her first husband, and "regarded as a person very fond of the company of men and to have had many 'affairs'. She was with different men at these addresses".
Although Special Branch had heard she had a "secret" lover kept by her, they at first did not know his identity. But the surveillance they maintained on her movements soon unearthed her growing closeness to the Prince when they were overheard by the owner of a South Kensington antiques shop calling each other "darling" as they shopped together for items for his private bolt-hole, Fort Belvedere in Sunningdale.
"The lady seemed to have the PoW completely under her thumb" observed the antiques dealer.
"The Simpsons are regarded in some circles as Jews," Special Branch officers reported back. And she was anxious not to lose the Prince's affection for "financial reasons" states the second report in June 1935. "She is therefore extremely careful and spending as much time as possible with PoW and keeping her secret lover in the background."
Her husband, meanwhile, was said to be "bragging" he expected to get "high honours" for sharing his wife. "He has mentioned he expects, at least, to be created a Baron. He is very talkative in drink."
By July that year the police had "definitely ascertained" her secret lover was Mr Trundle. Despite Mrs Simpson being said to live beyond her or her husband's means, the commissioner was told: "Trundle receives money from Mrs Simpson, as well as expensive presents. He has admitted this."
He was "a married man" born in York in 1899 and the third child of a Cambridge-educated clergyman who served as minister in several York churches, including St Martin-Le-Grand, York's civic church whose nave was destroyed by a Luftwaffe bomb during the "Baedeker Air-Raid" of April 29 1942.
Mr Trundle came from an apparently well-to-do household. The 1901 census shows the family had two young maidservants and a nurse. His father, a prominent member of the York establishment, lived in smart accommodation in Petergate, close to the city's minster, and owned land in the nearby village of Askham Bryan.
"He [Trundle jnr] was married in 1932 to Melosine Vivien Helen Mary Cary-Barnard, daughter of a retired colonel of the tank regiment and said to be employed as a engineer and salesman by the Ford Motor Company."
No further reports on Mr Trundle were evident, although it is understood he had a daughter, Pamela.
After serving on the Meteorological staff as an RAF reservist from 1927-35, he entered the RAF proper in July 1938, leaving in 1945 as a wing commander and was decorated after the Second World War.
He died in Stepney, east London, in 1958.
Article From: news.telegraph.co.uk