EIGHTY years ago, the British people were coming to terms with the prospect that their King might be about to renounce his throne after less than a year.

“Grave constitutional crisis”, ran the headline on the Daily Echo on Thursday, December 3, 1936.

“‘A constitutional issue’ is how the grave crisis between the King and his ministers is described at 10, Downing-Street, to-day,” the story began.

For the first time, the general public in Britain were being let in on a controversy that was well-known in other parts of the world.

But even then, the reader had to read quite a way down the story to find out what it was.

“The crisis has relation to His Majesty’s domestic future – his desire to marry – and involves the vital issue whether the King is to accept the established principle by which he is guided by his Ministers in matters of national and Imperial concern,” the report said.

Edward VIII, who had become king on his father’s death in January, wanted to marry the American Wallis Simpson, who was going through a divorce. Prime minister Stanley Baldwin and his cabinet were advising him that the marriage would be unacceptable.

The affair had titillated readers in other parts of the globe, some of whom would send cuttings to family in Britain – but readers of the domestic press would have searched in vain for information.

In a paragraph headed “British Press Tact”, that Echo report of December 3 acknowledged the news blackout that had surrounded the episode.

“Considerations of delicacy and tact shown by the British Press as a whole in refraining from comment in the hope that a free ventilation of the subject might be found unnecessary have now become so overshadowed by the gravity of the matter as affecting Imperial interests that the nation is demanding full information,” it said.

On the day of that report, the King had told Baldwin that he wanted to broadcast an appeal to the nation, hoping to win public support for his marriage plans. But Baldwin insisted that would be unconstitutional.

Over the next few days, the public knew very little of the discussions that were going on between ministers and the King.

Finally, on December 10, the impasse between the King and his government came to an end. The Daily Echo’s headline that evening read: “Abdication of HM King Edward VIII.”

The report began: “The Speaker in the House of Commons this afternoon read a message from the King announcing that he would renounce the Throne.”

That statement began: “After long and anxious consideration, I have determined to renounce the Throne to which I succeeded on the death of my father, and I am now communicating this my final and irrevocable decision. Realising as I do the gravity of this step, I can only hope that I shall have the understanding of my peoples in the decision I have taken, and the reasons which led me to take it.”

The following day, MPs and peers passed an Act of Parliament that ended Edward’s reign.

“The Bill passed through the Commons after a lengthy debate. Its passage through the Lords took only six minutes, and it received the Royal Assent at 1.52, so that Edward VIII is no longer King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the British Dominions Overseas,” the report said.

“His Royal brother, the Duke of York, will be officially proclaimed King tomorrow afternoon.”

In his last hours as King, Edward had talked to his staff at Fort Belvedere before lunching with the Duke of Kent and Winston Churchill.

“Tonight, as ‘Mr Windsor,’ he will make his historic broadcast, and the whole world will be listening-in. Then he departs – for an unknown destination,” the paper said.

That evening, Edward told a nation of radio listeners: “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.”

Among those who knew the King before and after the crisis was Sir Dudley Forwood, former official verderer of the New Forest, who died in 2001. He went on to organise the couple’s marriage at the Chateau De Cande in France and experienced the former King’s outrage when none of his brothers turned up. “He was deeply, deeply hurt,” Sir Dudley recalled years later.

Sir Dudley accompanied the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, as they became, on their visit to Germany where they were received by Hitler. They visited the concentration camp at Buchenwald which appeared to be deserted.

“The Duke asked what it was,” recalled Sir Dudley. “Our hosts replied: ‘It is where they store the cold meat’.”

Episodes like that helped tarnish the Duke’s reputation, while Wallis Simpson was often cast as a villainess.

That Christmas in 1936, cheekier children could be heard singing their own take on the crisis. “Hark the Herald angels, sing, Mrs Simpson stole our King.”