Since my collaborator and friend, J. Bryan III,has done

the larger share of this book, it has fallen to me to relate

how our collaboratinn began and why we have told the

story of the Windsors as we have.

We came to know them rather well in the years after

World War Two. Both of us were then officers in the U.S.

Air Force Reserve, and we usually did our tours of duty in

Paris at SHAPE---Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers

Europe---first under Gan. ALfred M. Gruenther, U.S.A.,

then under Gen. Lanris Norstad, U.S.A.F. The hospitable

Windsors would have us over for dinner at their mansion

in Neuiny from time to time, and for weekends at their

famous "Mill"--the Moulin de la Tuilerie--neer Gif-sur-

Yvette, half an hour from town.

The Windsor table, after the clatter and rush of the

SHAPE mess, unfailingly offered an experience in sus-

tained elegance and ornamental luxury hardly to be

matched elsewhere. We liked our hosts. Neither of us con-

sidered himself an intimate; indeed, none of their other

friends seemed to achieve that status, either. Prudence sug-

gested that such intimacy could be a slippery, even a haz-

ardous relationship. Being in their company, whether at

cocktails beside the pool at The Mill, or at their gleaming

table, or over coffee in the library walled with unread

books, was like watching a brisk comedy of manners, with