Spying on the Royals

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At the height of the abdication crisis in 1936, MI5 secretly bugged King Edward VIII's phone to keep tabs on his phone conversations with his American lover, Wallis Simpson...

At the height of the abdication crisis in 1936, MI5 secretly bugged King Edward VIII's phone to keep tabs on his phone conversations with his American lover, Wallis Simpson.

This two-part documentary reveals the lengths to which the government went to spy on the king, and his brother, future king George VI, and uses recently declassified documents to expose the royal love affair of the 20th Century.

The extent of the surveillance was extraordinary and this film, using new evidence, dramatic reconstruction and eyewitness accounts, casts the story of Edward VIII's abdication in a whole new light.