Madonna says the Duchess of Windsor was victim of a 'lynch mob'

Madonna, who is making a film about the Duchess of Windsor, says Nazi slurs about Wallis Simpson were unfair.

Madonna's hopes of enlisting the Queen's support for a film that she is making about the Edward VIII abdication crisis are unlikely to be helped by inflammatory claims she has made about Wallis Simpson.

"People have accused Wallis of all kinds of things," she says of her fellow American. "They've said that she put a spell on Edward. They've said that she was a hermaphrodite and that he was gay. They've said they were Nazi sympathisers.

"It's just the usual lynch mob mentality that descends upon somebody who has something that lots of other people don't have."

The admiration for Hitler of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, as they became, concerned the government, particularly after he entertained them in 1937.

Mandrake reported in March that Madonna would ask the Queen for filming on W. E. to be allowed in royal palaces. "Madonna is keen to make the film as authentic as possible and would be very grateful if we are allowed to film at certain locations," said one of her associates. "She loves the UK and holds your Queen in the highest regard."

Madonna, who lived in Sir Cecil Beaton's former house in Dorset during her seven-year marriage to the British director Guy Ritchie, plans to start shooting the film this summer.

The singer has long been fascinated by the 1936 crisis, in which Edward VIII's desire to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American socialite, caused a constitutional dilemma.

The crisis was resolved by Edward's abdication and his succession by his brother, George VI, who was the Queen's father. Edward was given the title the Duke of Windsor and he married Mrs Simpson.