Her Lotus Year

China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson

By: Paul French

Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow

Length: 10 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times bestselling author Paul French examines a controversial and revealing period in the early life of the legendary Wallis, Duchess of Windsor—her one year in China.

Before she was the Duchess of Windsor, Bessie Wallis Warfield was Mrs. Wallis Spencer, wife of Earl “Win” Spencer, a US Navy aviator. From humble beginnings in Baltimore, she rose to marry a man who gave up his throne for her. But what made Wallis Spencer, Navy Wife, the woman who could become the Duchess of Windsor? The answers lie in her one-year sojourn in China.

In her memoirs, Wallis described her time in China as her “Lotus Year,” referring to Homer’s Lotus Eaters, a group living in a state of dreamy forgetfulness, never to return home. Though faced with challenges, Wallis came to appreciate traditional Chinese aesthetics. China molded her in terms of her style and provided her with friendships that lasted a lifetime. But that “Lotus Year” would also later be used to damn her in the eyes of the British Establishment.

The British government’s supposed “China Dossier” of Wallis’s rumored amorous and immoral activities in the Far East was a damning concoction, portraying her as sordid, debauched, influenced by foreign agents, and unfit to marry a king. Instead, French, an award-winning China historian, reveals Wallis Warfield Spencer as a woman of tremendous courage who may have acted as a courier for the US government, undertaking dangerous undercover diplomatic missions in a China torn by civil war.

Her Lotus Year is an untold story in the colorful life of a woman too often maligned by history.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin's Press

©2024 Paul French (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Where does an unhappily married woman go in 1924 to seek peace of mind? To China, for adventure and glamour. What happens to her after this mysterious “lotus year”? She becomes none other than the Duchess of Windsor. A fascinating and very fun read."–Lisa See, New York Times bestselling author of Lady Tan's Circle of Women and Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

"Riveting and fascinating, Paul French has put flesh on the bones in his detailed account of what Wallis really did in her ‘Lotus Year.'"–Anne Sebba, New York Times bestselling author of That Woman

“I thought there was nothing left to learn about the Duchess of Windsor. But Paul French has proven me wrong in this book of fascinating revelations.”–Laurence Leamer, New York Times bestselling author of Capote’s Women

The narration makes me wish I had bought the actual book

In my opinion, any book about the Duchess of Windsor is a decadent peek into a world many of us will never experience. I am early into the book, and the author has already painted vivid tableaus of the places Wallis went. We have been on a navy transport ship and traveled up a mountainside in China. We’ve smelled the colorful flowers, seen the vermin, sailed the waters and consumed cocktails by the bay. All things that could have been elevated to an even higher level of a tremendous sensory journey, if not for the halting reading of the narrator. Pauses in the middle of sentences and an uneven cadence make this audiobook almost unpleasant to listen to and, ultimately, very disappointing.