This is the story of Joss de Wahl who was, pretended he was, or believed he was, the secret son of Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII. He was hidden from history because his birth coincided with the abdication crisis and questions surrounding Edward VIII’s legal entitlement to renounce the throne on behalf of his descendants. In The Secret Son of Wallis Simpson, Selina Molteno tells this tall tale with verve and imagination and not a little sly humour. She enters the strange world of her subject, sympathetically relating his interpretation of his life, while keeping a sceptical, critical distance. Could his story have been true? Was he a conman? Or was he a deluded fantasist who felt so unloved that he needed to create another set of fictitious parents? Whichever way we look at it, he led an intriguing, if not necessarily particularly happy, life. It was a life touched by extraordinary privilege and considerable wealth, yet it was also scarred by the cruel and debilitating disease of porphyria, which he believed he inherited from the British royal family, and, most painfully of all for him, he was betrayed by the very people he had most trusted and loved.

Much of the story is set in South Africa, a place where those with something to hide often find their way. Joss de Wahl asserted he had been sent there at an early age with the connivance of important contemporary figures, including Winston Churchill, who had helped to construct his new identity. With the arrival of weird conspiracy theories on the internet, we have all become used to the thin line that many people walk between what is and what they choose to believe. In this respect, Joss de Wahl is a potent precursor and reminder of the dilemmas we all face. What answers may be arrived at is up to the reader to decide, but the journey is undeniably fascinating.

Selina Molteno is the great granddaughter of Sir John Charles Molteno, the first prime minister of the Cape Colony. She continued the family tradition of politics, but in a rather unexpected direction. She was arrested during the apartheid era and worked subsequently for the Anti-Apartheid Movement in London.

Selina was a ballet dancer with the Grand Ballet de Marquis de Cuevas in Paris when Rudolf Nureyev defected to the company, her account of that period being published as Letters from an Intrepid Ballet Dancer (2015). She also lived in Nigeria during the civil war and in Trinidad. Her co-authored memoir of her Nigerian experience appeared as An Expatriate Family in the Nigerian Civil War (2020).

Selina has worked in academic publishing for over thirty years. She is married to a university professor, Robin Cohen, and lives in Oxford.