Wallis Simpson had no intentions of marrying Edward VIII and expected to return to her divorced husband, Ernest, according to her biographer Anne Sebba.

An audience in the Assembly Room at the town hall on Saturday afternoon heard from Ms Sebba, visiting the town as part of Devizes Festival, that the double divorcee never for one moment thought that Edward would abdicate to marry her and, to her dismay, found herself shackled to “one of the most boring men in the world” for the next 36 years.

Ms Sebba had unprecedented access to an archive of letters between Wallis and Ernest Simpson that made it clear that she retained a high level of affection for her ex-husband and that he was “the only man who understands me”.

Born in genteel poverty in the mid-West of the United States, her father dying of tuberculosis at a young age, the young Wallis Warfield (she chose to drop her given name of Bessie) was determined to marry into wealth.

Her first foray in that direction foundered after her first husband, Wynn Spencer, proved to be a violent, abusive alcoholic.

She developed a unique method of ensnaring wealthy men by finding out all she could about them and skewering them with her striking violet eyes.

Finding herself in London, she inveigled her way into society and soon found a new victim in the heir to the throne himself.

But it backfired on her as the new King of England became besotted with her and threatened to cut his own throat sooner than give her up. He wasn’t joking.

When the news of the affair broke she found herself the most hated woman in the world and she begged Edward to give her up, but he would not.

But Ms Sebba had even more astonishing revelations to make to the less than full house at the town hall.

Mrs Simpson did not have “all the equipment” necessary to a woman who wants to have a family and it is highly likely the King was infertile as well.

Ms Sebba also revealed that, in starting research into her biography of the Mrs Simpson, That Woman, she had travelled to Mexico to interview a free diver by the name of Aaron Solomons, who was none other than the son of Ernest Simpson by his wife after Wallis.

Mr Simpson was actually Jewish and had changed his name from Solomons for “business reasons”.

Ironically, the final image on Ms Sebba’s powerpoint presentation that she used to illustrate her talk was of the newly created Duke and Duchess of Windsor being welcomed by Adolf Hitler after they dropped into Berlin on their honeymoon in 1937.

The duke died of throat cancer in 1972 and the duchess endured another 14 years of miserable solitude with nothing but her jewellery to keep her company.