HEREFORD VBCW AUTUMN BIG GAME 2024 - KEEP THE DATE FREE !

A short "keep the date free" post in relation to the Autumn VBCW Autumn Big Game 2024, which is going to be a little later than usual this year because Umpire (and Terrain Tsar) Roo is "moving barracks" in October, so our 2024 Big Game will take place on/at:

 Saturday 23^rd November 2024
Yarkhill Village Hall
9.30am – 5pm

The full scenario will be put up on the blog in the due course, but it’s already clear that, with our working title, "Return to Little Hereford", we’re revisiting the same Parish as last year's Autumn 2023 Big Game. Its an “All play All” game in farming country, with "Big Men", hordes of marauding women – possibly a return of the Nuns – on a battlefield centred upon a 1/60 scale Handley Page Hereford, flown by the RAF but crewed by Feldmarschall Goering’s Fallschirmjager (on day release from The Red Lion, Bridge Street). With such unprecedented co-operation between RAF and Luftwaffe, what valuable secret can the plane be carrying? And how many marauding women can you capture take hostage “persuade to take tea” in your farm – if you can even capture a farm ? 

And can Stokkies Joubert, rollicking hero of the King’s Own Colonials, finally escape from Anglican captivity? Will the Umpires have made up some rules for his possible escape by November 23rd ? (if either of them can find an envelope, you can count on it).

All these serious issues can only be resolved by attendance at the Hereford 1938 Autumn Big Game 2024 on Saturday 23rd November 2024 - keep the date free !

PS. Free Stokkies Joubert !!

CHATEAU de CANDE (2) - EDWARD and WALLIS

 The usual VBCW Historian's Trigger Warning applies to this Post

Edward and Wallis were married at the Chateau de Cande on 3rd June 1937, and today the Chateau remains as a shrine to their wedding day:

Wedding Photograph at the Chateau.

Another wedding photograph at the Chateau

The original photograph - Wallis and Edward

Wallis' wedding dress at the Chateau. This is, in fact, a copy -
the original is in the US but undisplayable, as the specially
dyed "Wallis blue" colour has faded over time to .... brown.
Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

The Library of the Chateau set for the wedding guests.
Through the doorway is the wedding altar.

Wallis at the altar.

The wedding lunch. In the centre, an outsize wedding cake with
Prince of Wales' feathers.

The wedding lunch in progress, "Fruity" Metcalfe right foreground.

The wedding certificate on display at the Chateau.
"Fruity" rather grandly signs himself simply "Metcalfe"
(in rather larger writing than the happy couple, too)

Signature close up. This is the first public document signed by Edward as Duke of Windsor
(in the French style, too) and the first document ever signed by Walls as "Duchess of Windsor".

(1). For those resisting the urge to visit the Chateau de Cande in the immediate future, You Tube is (as ever) your friend. A very professionally done video tour of the entirety of the Chateau is available on YouTube here

(2). Charles Bedaux, the owner of the Chateau de Cande in June 1937, died far from France and in mysterious circumstances in Dade County Prison, Miami, Florida, on 18th February 1944. His interesting Wiki Bio is HERE.

CHATEAU de CANDE (1) - EDWARD AND WALLIS

Trigger Warning : VBCW Historians should look away now. This post clearly comes from an alternative time line, one where Edward VIII did not raise his Royal Standard in the Mall, Mosley did not become his appointed "Prime Minister", and Britain did not descend into an uncertain Civil War. Instead, it appears, Edward VIII tamely abdicated, and was then taken into exile in France aboard a British destroyer.....good grief.....

It is 3rd June 1937, and the wedding day of the Duke of Windsor (formerly Edward VIII, King and Emperor) and the Duchess of Windsor (formerly Mrs Wallis Simpson, formerly Mrs Wallis Spencer, formerly Miss Wallis Warfield) at the Chateau de Cande in the Loire Valley, France. After the wedding ceremony, the happy couple emerged onto the front steps of the Chateau for formal pictures:

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Chateau de Cande, 3rd June 1937.
None of the Royal Family attended the wedding, and some days previously
(27th May 1937), King George VI had informed his brother that the 
Duchess of Windsor would not, upon her marriage, be accorded the title "HRH".

The Duke and Duchess in close up.

...and colourised....

The happy couple with the Duke's best man, "Fruity" Metcalfe.

another colourised photograph, reverse view.
The photographer is within the entranceway
of the Chateau, looking out upon the same steps and estate.

The couple with their wedding guests - a generally sorry lot of hangers on, perhaps
exemplified by the presence of Randolph Churchill, son of Winston (right). Between
the Duke and Randolph, Mrs Fern Bedaux, chatelaine of Cande. More helpful detail
and the full guest list HERE

A closer image. Randolph to the right of the photograph and to the left, Wallis'
redoubtable Aunt Bessie.

Looking down and......

....later, after the wedding lunch and changed for departure.
The Chateau de Cande, now owned by the French State following the deaths of
its previous owners, Mr and Mrs Bedaux, (in 1944 and 1972 respectively)
is open to the visitors of today...

87 years later, a helpful tourist practises a "royal wave" at the entrance

to the Chateau de Cande...

and "steps in to history" (or at least steps on history,
or on alt-history) at the Chateau de Cande.

HRH the Duke and (not HRH) the Duchess of Windsor, same spot,
87 years before.

Notes

(1). The formal photographs of the wedding were taken by Cecil Beaton; the informal photographs by (amongst others) "Baba" Metcalfe, wife of "Fruity", daughter of George Nathaniel Curzon, one time Viceroy of India, and very close friend of the very married Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, 1938 - 1941

(2). An amazing and colourised moving film of the Duke and Duchess on their wedding day is on YouTube HERE. Baba Metcalfe can be seen taking some of the above photographs, and there is a suitably 1930s musical accompaniment!