THE CROWN IN CRISIS Countdown to the Abdication

The 1936 abdication of Britain's King Edward VIII gets a full hearing in this absorbing audiobook. Journalist Alexander Larman offers a fresh view--a candid, highly detailed account of what happened and why. Narrator Richard Trinder sounds just like a 1930s British newscaster, and he's most effective pacing a multi-perspective narrative that compares contemporary accounts to private diaries, published memoirs to their unedited versions, and files long sequestered to each other. Trinder's dialogue voices, however, are disappointing. His Edward sounds very much like his Wallis, she with a Southern accent, and his Churchill (a marker for British narrators) is just passable. No matter. The story carries you along, and the better you know it already, the more you'll appreciate Larman's scrupulous reconstruction. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine [Published: FEBRUARY 2021]