Andrew Morton, you may recall, is a tabloid journalist. The subjects of his books tend to be those with some colossal secret they wish to hide, and it is Morton’s job to expose them. It was he who wrote ‘Diana: Her True Story’ in 1992, detailing her marriage to Prince Charles. Since then, Morton has written books on Monica Lewinsky, Tom Cruise, Prince William, Posh & Becks, Madonna and Angelina Jolie. Entertainment and royalty – typical tabloid fare.

Therefore, his latest book, ‘Wallis in Love’, should come as no surprise. The ‘Wallis’ in question is of course Wallis Simpson, the woman for whom King Edward VIII gave up his throne in 1936. She was American, and a divorcée. It is very possible that the publication of this book, so close to Prince Harry’s marriage to Meghan Markle, an American divorcée, is merely coincidence, but I think not.

The central tenet of Morton’s book is that, while the then-Prince of Wales was totally besotted with this twice-divorced American, she did not return his affection to anything like the same degree, and therefore the ‘Romance of the Century’ was nothing of the sort. Morton portrays the future Duke of Windsor as weak, needy and clingy. Wallis, on the other hand, is strong and vibrant.

The book provides the reader with a fairly solid account of Wallis’ life, and paints the main events within it with the kind of language that makes them seem vividly real at times. Morton quotes some “new primary sources” (which, for the most part, actually turn out to be no more than secondary or tertiary sources at best) to give us a closer understanding of the relationship between the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, like the Duchess’ insistence that, if she and her husband have nothing to say to each other in public, then at least they should recite the alphabet so that it looks as though they are deep in conversation.

There is one primary source that Morton has been able to uncover: a nurse, Juliana Chatard Alexander, who was around 26 in 1972 when she sat with the Duke of Windsor as he lay dying of throat cancer. She, it would seem, gives this book the vast majority of its value. Apparently, Morton got her to trust him sufficiently to tell him that, during the last two weeks of the Duke’s life, Wallis did not visit her husband at all. Not once. Ms. Alexander sat and listened to the Duke’s plaintive cries for his wife, to which she did not respond.

The best part of this book is the remarkable collection of photos of Wallis, with her third husband, with the vast majority of them in personal settings. Almost from the moment of her birth, far beyond the abdication and into their years of exile in the South of France, the photos give us a much more intimate look into Wallis’ life and personality than most of Morton’s text.

Morton pulls no punches throughout the book and delivers a portrait of his subject worthy of a double page centre spread in a British tabloid newspaper.