MI5 Tapped Royals In Abdication Crisis

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

1936 Abdication head line in UK Daily Mail

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New book claims MI5 agents tapped the phones of Royal sibs King Edward VIII and the Duke of York during the crisis of the abdication.  A constitutional crisis born of the King's obsession with divorcee Wallis Simpson. To add controversy she was suspected to have had considerable ties to the Nazi party.

The Biritish government threatened to resign should the marriage to Simpson indeed happen.  Eleven furtive months later Edward announced his resignation that changed the course of British history.

At the height of the turmoil British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin called in Sir Vernon Kell head of MI5 to tap the brothers' conversations through a telephone junction box near the Duke's home at the edge of Green Park near 145 Piccadilly.