London - MI5 bugged Edward VIII’s phone calls in the days before his abdication amid mounting government paranoia over the crisis.
Ministers ordered communications between Buckingham Palace and his country home Fort Belvedere, certain addresses in London and parts of Europe to be secretly intercepted.
It suggests a breakdown of trust between Edward and his government as he wrestled with the decision whether to give up the throne so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.
Papers held secret in the Cabinet Office for more than 75 years show the Home Office told the General Post Office to start monitoring his calls on December 5, 1936, five days before the abdication was officially announced.
The order came as Edward was holed up at Fort Belvedere and Mrs Simpson was in the South of France, where she had taken refuge with friends.
The previous month the new king, who had not yet been crowned, had informed Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin that he intended to marry Mrs Simpson.
He wrongly believed he could ride out the crisis on a wave of popular support. The file does not contain any record of the intercepted calls or any other details of the monitoring operation. - Daily Mail