The British love affair with the island of Rab continues in The Independent, the latest feature in th British media on the Croatian coast. Rab, of course, is credited as the birth of naturist tourism in Croatian, after the skinny-dipping antics of a British royal.
In the summer of 1936, little-known Rab Island, close to the mainland in northern Croatia’s dazzling Kvarner Gulf, had an unexpected 15 minutes of fame. The UK’s new king, Edward VIII, had whisked off his married lover, Wallis Simpson, for a rackety booze-cruise around the Med and the Adriatic. (He’d had all the books cleared out of the library of their hired yacht, Nahlin, to make room for the alcohol supplies.) As the pair cavorted blithely on deck, smooching over cocktails, the world’s press took to the water in hot pursuit of the scandal.
