Abdication (Unabridged)

England, 1936. The nation has a new king, Edward VIII, but for all the pomp and ceremony of the accession, it is a turbulent time. Poverty and unemployment affect many and for some, Oswald Mosley's New Party seems to offer the vision of the future. Nineteen-year-old May Thomas has just disembarked at Liverpool Docks after making the long journey by steamer from Barbados. Her first job as secretary and chauffeuse to Sir Philip Blunt, Chief Whip in Baldwin's Conservative government, will open her eyes to the upper echelons of British society. The unlikely friendship she forms with Evangeline Nettlefold, American god-daughter of the Chief Whip's wife and an old school friend of Wallis Simpson, will see her through family upheavals - and the Blunts' son Rupert has an Oxford University friend, Julian, a young man of conscience for whom she cannot help but fall.