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“... their quality of strangeness, their dark undertow of fairytale, finds an echo in the material of Deborah Cadbury’s absorbing book. By 1789, the sons and daughters of the people who believed that Louis XV was a leper were encouraged by pamphleteers to believe that his successor was an impotent, overweight cuckold, a king of Cockaigne – the fairytale ...”

“... the window, only the eyes expressive of some incalculable regret. In the many retellings, of which Deborah Cadbury’s is the latest, two versions of Wallis have emerged. One, widely held at the time, argues that she was an ambitious, selfish woman who was intent on being queen and spent the rest of her life punishing the hapless duke for her ...”

“... is inspired by two genuine uncertainties, the more important of which was extensively explored in Deborah Cadbury’s book, The Lost King of France: Revolution, Revenge and the Search for Louis XVII (2002). Marie-Thérèse never saw her brother’s body. He was visited by Dr Pierre Joseph Desault on 6 May 1795, who reported that he had ‘encountered a ...”