The Windsor change

There was no lying in state for Edward VIII, King of England; no occasion when the great British public could file past his embalmed body, as they had done for his father George V. Because when Queen Victoria's eldest great-grandson died in 1972, he was no longer a king, but simply the Duke of Windsor. A man who chose a woman over dynasty and duty, who returned to his native land only in a coffin, for a private funeral, still rejected and reviled by the mass of his people.

But times have changed. And yesterday in London the descendants of those who in the 1920s and 1930s would stand for hours just for a glimpse of their handsome Prince of Wales, were filing through the porticos, not of Westminster Abbey but of Sotheby's, which next month in New York is selling the contents of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's Paris house.

The body might not be there, but from ashtrays to diaries, childhood snaps to swords of state - 3,200 lots and 44,000 individual items - his life certainly is.

Only 200 or so selected highlights are on view in New Bond Street. With a catalogue selling at £65, there are few takers. This is not a "view" in the conventional saleroom meaning of the word, where people come hoping to buy. Most of those listening to a recording of the voice (described at the time as "thick and tired") in the room with the abdication desk, telling the world how he was unable to continue his life "without the help of the woman I love", are trying to come to terms with something they have never really understood. The desk where on December 10th, 1936, Edward VIII signed his birthright away is in fact a mahogany library table, circa 1755. Nothing special, apart of course from its patina of history. Yet the estimated sale price of $30,000 to $50,000 seems conservative.

The same cannot be said about the vast portrait by Alfred Munnings of the 27-year-old heir to the throne on his horse Forest Witch. Expected to fetch up to $800,000, by any standards this is a superb equestrian portrait. His fine-featured face and bright red hunting jacket are in stark contrast to the dull, sketchy winter landscape. Painted in 1921, when Britain was still in shock from the first World War, where he had acquitted himself well and endeared himself to his future subjects in the process, it clearly represents how he was seen: the Prince of Wales was the future.

And so he remained, adored and feted, until that famous broadcast of 1936. At the very moment that other men in Europe were taking power, the heir to the greatest empire the world had ever known was relinquishing it. The walls of Sotheby's exhibition area are lined in blue velvet,

matching the blue of the portrait of Wallis painted by Gerald Brockhurst in the Paris house on Boulevard Suchet where they moved following the abdication. She would have approved.

Wallis Simpson may have been a hard-nosed American, but she knew about style. It helped that he was handsome and she was, well, handsome. Dressed by Dior, Givenchy, Chanel and Schiaparelli, photographed by Beaton, the Duchess of Windsor stayed on the Best Dressed list for 40 years. Several of her dresses are in the sale, as is his extensive time-capsule wardrobe - not on show in London, however, but in the windows of Bergdorf Goodman in New York where, when the dust sheets came off last Friday morning, the crowds on the pavements were 10 deep.

Yet the most poignant pieces on show are the least grand: the photographs, all inscribed, "to Wallis, with all my love, David" or the other way around. Their initials, W and E, are intertwined on every surface that could be engraved. They spell WE. Clutched under the arms of a good number of those who filed passed the relics of these two sad people, were copies of yesterday's Sunday Mirror.

"It's like that William Blake poem," said one American tourist. "Fearful symmetry." Blazoned on the cover was a blurred colour portrait of Princess Diana embracing Dodi al-Fayed, son of Mohamed al-Fayed - the same Mohamed al-Fayed who bought the contents of the Windsors' Paris house in 1987. He is now selling the contents (for charity) because he needs the space for his growing family, he says. A family that, if the British tabloids are to be believed, may soon include the current Princess of Wales.