The Windsor Faction

Taylor’s 11th novel presents an intriguing premise: Edward VIII’s mistress, Wallis Simpson, dies in 1936, preventing him from abdicating his throne for her. Instead, he remains the king of England, open to negotiating peace with Germany, influenced by a cryptofascist group called “The Windsor Faction,” headed by one Captain Ramsay. Our entry into this alternate history world comes through Cynthia Kirkpatrick, a young woman who survived the car accident that killed suitor Henry Bannister while they and their families were both living in Ceylon. Now she is in London, working for a small publication called Duration while still in the web of Bannister’s parents, who are connected to the Faction. Add to the mix bon vivant author Beverley Nichols, sympathetic to the Faction’s cause and tasked with helping the king prepare a live radio address to the nation. This background alone is interesting, but little happens amid the confusing shifts in tense and wall-to-wall dialogue until a climactic, out-of-place descent into gothic melodrama. What works best are the excerpts from Nichols’s diary—clear, funny, full of life and spirit, they fulfill the story’s promise in a way the rest of the book does not achieve. Agent: Gordon Wise, Curtis Brown. (Sept.)