Queen's coronation plot revealed

How very different it might all have been. Instead of celebrating the 60th anniversary of her coronation today, the Queen might be reviewing a very different life.
For a sinister palace conspiracy was secretly hatched to try to stop her becoming sovereign in the years before the death of her father, George VI.
At the heart of this sensational plot was her uncle - the former Edward VIII, who had abdicated in shame in 1936.
The plan was a simple one. The Duke of Windsor, as he was titled after giving up the throne, would return to Britain to become Regent - on the grounds that his niece (in her early 20s) was too young to reign. Once on the throne again, it would be difficult to  dislodge him.
Looked at with the benefit of hindsight, such an idea now seems outrageous and implausible - yet it might have worked.
For during the late-Forties, when the plot began to form, paranoia reigned at Buckingham Palace. The old guard who surrounded George VI were appalled at the thought that the apple of his eye, his elder daughter Princess Elizabeth, was in love with a penniless Greek princeling called Philip.
Even more unsettling was the suspected powerful influence of Philip's fiendishly ambitious uncle, Earl Mountbatten, and the threat that he could become the new power behind the Throne.
The House of Windsor was at a low ebb. The King, battered by the years of war, had been negligent about his health and, according to Winston Churchill, was 'walking with death'.
There were a lot of negotiations among different parties to carry out the plan as reports revealed but ultimately it wasn't carried out.
What stopped the Duke making his play for the Throne? A loss of nerve? Or had he grown to love the fleshpots of New York, Palm Beach and the Cote d'Azur too much?
Whatever the truth - and a brief visit to London didn't help because it reminded the Duke how bloody awful the British weather could be - there was no coup, no usurpation.
Had the Duke of Windsor successfully won the Regency, it's fair to suppose Queen Elizabeth II would not be celebrating the 60th anniversary of her Coronation today.