This is the story of London at war from 1939 to 1945, or perhaps of Londoners at war - for Philip Ziegler, best known as a biographer, is above all fascinated by the people who found their lives so suddenly and violently transformed: the querulous, tiresome, yet strangely gallant housewife from West Hampstead; the turbulent, left-wing, retired schoolmaster from Walthamstow, always standing up to the authorities; the odiously snobbish middle-class...

Traces the life of King Edward VIII of England who abdicated the throne to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.