Laurie Graham

Laurie Graham is an English novelist and former journalist whose fiction often approaches public history through witty invented witnesses. Gone with the Windsors, published by Fourth Estate in 2005, uses the diary of fictional American Maybell Brumby to revisit Wallis Simpson’s relationship with Edward, Prince of Wales, and the social circle surrounding the abdication crisis. Maybell’s friendship with Wallis lets Graham mix recognizable people and events with a deliberately partial narrator, creating historical fiction rather than biography. The novel followed works such as The Future Homemakers of America and Mr Starlight, continuing Graham’s interest in private lives caught inside larger cultural stories. The British Fourth Estate edition runs to 504 pages, while later North American editions appeared under Harper imprints. Gone with the Windsors can also be confused with Iles Brody’s earlier nonfiction title of the same name. The Laurie Graham attribution and 2005 edition therefore matter when distinguishing the two separate works.