Royal Family: Princess Margaret: Rebel Without A Crown – ht
Princess Margaret, a woman caught in the shadow of her sister who became the ultimate royal rebel. You just knew if Margaret was there, it was going to be fun. She wasn’t a kind of two-dimensional figure that sort of fit the traditional mold of what a good royal should be. Margaret could be a total cow, but she could also charm people back from the dead.
Always battling to find a role and personal happiness, she was denied the love she wanted. She was in love with a man who was a divorcee and she had an affair with a man who was 17 years younger than her. The queen agreed that the best course of action for her sister was to get divorced. She was a princess who chose to live her life exactly how she wanted, caught in controversy and scandal along the way.
The queen was furious. She thought her sister was behaving appallingly. It was inappropriate on every level. She had tarnished the reputation of the royal family. She had damaged the royal family. Tonight, we hear the true story from those who knew her best. Princess Margaret, the rebel without a crown.
Throughout her life, she was going to be doing things her way. She was a star. In February 2002, the world said goodbye to one of the most intriguing and original princesses the royal family had ever known. She loved life and lived it to the full. So many people remember her for that vitality and attractiveness.
She had this wonderfully sharp mind. One of the fondest memories I shall have of her was ways of sitting at the piano playing away with a large very elegant cigarette holder in her mouth. But not all the tributes were quite so complimentary. When Princess Margaret died, I think the abiterists were stuck to some extent because um she was a very complex contradictory kind of character.
She did a lot of work for charity, but she also seemed to be unpleasant on many occasions, came across as entitled, a bit of a snob. In a paradoxical kind of way, she was both a very good person, but she had this terrible reputation for being promiscuous, for getting divorced, the first royal for centuries to get divorced.
Biographer Christopher Warrick was the only author the princess ever cooperated with. Most people who knew Princess Margaret would agree with the Queen, who always regarded her sister as an enigma. She had the kind of personality that in many ways wasn’t so very easy to define. She was a one-off. But why was she so controversial? Margaret was born into a family who had not even been destined to one day wear the crown.
In 1930, the Duke of York, the second in line to the throne, welcomed Margaret into the world. Despite her mischievous ways, there was one family member who was very much in her corner. She was her father’s favorite. He once said, “Elizabeth is my pride, but Margaret is my joy.” And certainly he was the really the most important man in her life always.
It was her father who was completely central to her. He had a temper that could flare up without any warning. They called it his nashes. And Princess Margaret was somebody who could dispel those nashes by saying something, doing something, you know, even throwing a spoon over her shoulder and that would dispel the temper.
and he would just dissolve into laughter. But the cozy family orientated world of the Duke and Duchess of York was turned on its head in 1936 when Edward VII abdicated, leaving his brother to step into his shoes. Before the abdication, Margaret was the younger daughter of the Duke of York, which is quite a long way from the succession.
But after the abdication, Margaret’s father became King George V 6. Her elder sister um Elizabeth was of course the heir to the throne. So Margaret was now relegated to that really difficult position which is being the younger sibling of the heir to the throne. I think they were actually known as P1 and P2.
And it was kind of shorthand, wasn’t it, for for the two princesses. Elizabeth suddenly had been set up for a starring role that perhaps she’d never imagined. And Margaret from then on had a sense that not that she was second best, but that she wasn’t going to be queen. She had to compensate for not being her sister.
And the only way she could do that was by trying to get as much attention as she could by being funnier, louder, slightly more mischievous. Princess Margaret said to me that she never minded being described or being called the younger daughter, but she said I always minded being described as the younger sister. And I think part of that was that she minded the idea that she was always in her sister’s shadow.
With fewer responsibilities than Elizabeth, Margaret’s approach to royal engagements was at times more playful. Before I finish, I’m going to ask your head mistress. The school may have an extra day’s holiday as a mark of my visit. It’s perfectly true that throughout her life she was going to be doing things her way.
But somebody once said to me, I tell you what she was. She was a star. She was gorgeous. I mean, she had a wonderful figure, a very, very pretty face. She was petite and uh often charming, not always charming. Um, but the press adored her. She made great copy, great headlines, great pictures. And of course she was out on the town more and more.
So she was there to be seen. It’s almost the beginning of of the paparazzi era I suppose. And she was mobbed mobbed by cameramen increasingly as she grew older and actually more beautiful. Margaret had that aura of royalty that you really can’t teach and she quite liked that she uh was superior in her view. She liked to wear her superiority.
And so sometimes that came across in sort of snobbish, but at the time royal deference was a thing and Margaret milked it for all it was worth. She enjoyed life. She felt that her sister was going to be queen. There was no major responsibility on her and therefore she didn’t have to tow the line in the same way as her elder sister had to. So she did enjoy clubs.
She did enjoy the company of men. She did enjoy parties. With fewer responsibilities than her sister, Margaret took full advantage of London’s night life. She loved going off to various nightclubs. Very often the sun would be rising through the back window of the car as she drove home. And so she’d stay in bed till 11:00.
The princess was enjoying the postwar years, but the health of her father began to cast a shadow over the royal family. The king was extremely ill. He was a heavy smoker. He had cancer. Uh, and he’d had an operation, and he never really fully recovered from that cancer operation.
I remember him opening the Festival of Britain in 1951. He certainly did not look a well man. The pressure really was on Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret to kind of stand in for him. In 1952, Princess Elizabeth flew off on a tour of the Commonwealth. Margaret, however, remained with her father in Britain and stayed with him at Sandringham.
7 days later, her world would be turned upside down. The man that she absolutely adored had gone to bed that night, kissed them good night, and he’d gone off to bed. They’d had a wonderful evening. They’d had a lovely day. Not a care in the world. And at some time on that morning of the 6th of February, 1952, his heart stopped.
And it was his page, of course, that went in to wake him and and found him dead. Margaret was devastated by the loss of her father. She was inconsolable to the point that she was heavily sedated with sleeping tablets because she couldn’t sleep. Uh she was very weepy. I suppose she felt at the time that what future was there for her? What was she going to do? You know, dad was always there, papa was always there.
Uh and now life was changing dramatically. One reign has ended. A reign begins. Princess Elizabeth now became the new monarch. Britain had gained a queen, but Margaret had lost her childhood friend. As the queen herself had said, for her, yes, she too was devastated. But she suddenly was queen. She had a role. She had a husband.
She had two young children. But as she acknowledged, Margaret was on her own. She’d suddenly lost the man that she adored. What was she going to do? She just was so lost. Margaret was also harboring a secret. She was romantically involved with a man 15 years her senior. Group Captain Peter Townsend. He was a divorcee at a time when the Church of England did not approve of divorce.
Despite his record as a war hero within royal circles he was not seen as a suitable match. Peter Townsen was an RAF pilot and after the war he became an aquar to King George V 6th which is where he would have come into contact with both princesses Elizabeth and Margaret and Margaret being a sort of teenager had a crush and obviously they got fairly close.
You don’t need to be a genius to see that what she was lacking in her life was a father figure. And Peter Towns end really encapsulated everything. He provided the rock that she had lost from her father. Their romance was only known to a few until the day of the queen’s coronation. Away from the cameras, Margaret gave herself and Peter away with a gesture that some BDI journalists picked up on.
In her excitement, Princess Margaret went up to Towns End and put her hand on his tunic to brush away a piece of thread. This gesture, this very intimate gesture of, you know, a very unroyal way to behave, brushing a man’s coat with your hand, is immediately taken up by the world’s press.
It’s the beginning of a whole scandal around Princess Margaret. Princess Margaret was a very calculating, an instinctive sense of drama and an instinctive sense of how to get the attention that she’d craved since she was a girl. the incident with the brushing the fluff from Towns End’s jacket. She would have known at such a public event that it would be spotted and it’s the kind of intimate action that speaks volumes.
The coronation of all days is a day which belongs to Margaret’s sister Elizabeth. I mean, as queen, this is perhaps the most important ceremony in in her reign. And yet here we have Margaret, her younger sister, doing something out of order, creating a sensation, diverting attention from her sister. The affair was now public.
Margaret’s romance with Towns End caused a sensation, particularly as Peter was a divorcee with two sons. She actually had the public’s support. I think she was so popular with members of the public and things were changing. I don’t think the public was too concerned that Peter was a divorced father of two children.
They just saw that she was happy. That was members of the public. If we cut to the government, they were horrified. Prime Minister Winston Churchill told the Queen that the Dominion Prime Ministers would never accept such a marriage. The British Cabinet Parliament said they wouldn’t recognize the marriage. Towns End’s divorce status created a huge problem if there was to be a future with Princess Margaret.
Princess Margaret went to the Queen and said that she and Peter Townsend were in love and that they wanted to marry. It created problems because here you’d got the Queen as governor of the Church of England and it was a church that did not recognize divorce. It also put the queen as sovereign in a difficult position because at that time all members of the royal family had to have the queen’s consent in order to marry.
The queen really couldn’t give her consent. But by asking them to wait, this was pushing Margaret towards her 25th birthday. Now, that was significant because at 25, a member of the royal family, no longer needed the sovereign’s permission to marry. As the Queen’s younger sister, Margaret was still powerless to make her own decisions. Peter Townsend was sent away from the royal household to become military air atache in Brussels.
Margaret had lost her father and now she was losing her lover. She wouldn’t see him for the next 2 years. But as Margaret approached her 25th birthday, she could now decide for herself if she was going to become the next Mrs. Peter Townsend. She writes a letter to the then Prime Minister Anthony Eaton. She writes very tellingly and we get very much the sense of doubt.
They hadn’t seen one another for two years and she said it is only by seeing him that I can decide whether I can marry him or not. There’s such an incredible narrative here. She is this beautiful princess and this is the love of her life and she’s being denied this man because of the pressures of the establishment and the result is that she becomes hugely popular.
Margaret sees the press perhaps mistakenly as uh being on her side and she’s not yet aware of the danger that they could turn and destroy you just as quickly as they make you. Despite the government’s initial opposition, behind closed doors, they had agreed that Margaret could retain her royal status and her income from the civil list if she decided to marry Peter Townsend.
It was now down to Margaret if she was going to accept. Princess Margaret’s personal message issued from Clarence House began with these words. I would like it to be known that I have decided not to marry group Captain Peter Townsend. The announcement followed many months of speculation in newspapers and among the people of Great Britain, indeed throughout the world.
What had happened here was that this huge, huge romance likened by some romantic journalist to the greatest love affair since Romeo and Juliet. their feelings quite obviously had started to weigh that they were not as much in love as they were. She cited her commitment to the Christian faith as the reason why she could not accept Hanzen’s proposal.
I think Margaret always wanted someone who was a bit edgy, a bit dangerous. In 1958, at the request of one of her male admirers, Margaret was photographed by one of the most cuttingedge photographers in London, Tony Armstrong Jones. Tony had a habit of telling his sitters what he wanted them to wear or not wear.
He got the princess to change her dress, to alter her jewelry. For Margaret, who was accustomed to total difference. No one ever told her what to do. This was completely new. And I think that’s what made him so interesting and challenging and unique. That’s when they realized they were both incredibly attracted to one another.
I mean, he was immensely sexy. Um, and so was she. And it was an attraction, a physical attraction that they never really lost. Before long, unknown to both the public and the princess’s inner circle, Margaret and Tony started a Clanderstein relationship. The two would go to parties. They would arrive separately.
And because everyone was so focused on Margaret making a grand marriage, uh they were able to fly under the radar. Tony lived in Rotherhive, East London, far away from the gates and guards of Buckingham Palace. And he used to take Margaret there on the back of his motorbike and she absolutely loved it. No one recognized her, of course.
Who’d expect a princess to be zooming through the streets of London on the back of a bike with with a handsome photographer? And there, you know, they they make love and they smoke a huge amount of cigarettes and drink a huge amount of alcohol and have a lifestyle that she she never dreamt she could be part of, I don’t think.
In February 1960, the palace announced Margaret’s engagement to Tony. It was a huge huge shock to everybody. Nobody had even guessed it, even his best friends. In keeping with her defiance of convention, Margaret’s choice of husband seemed unlike any other royal spouse. Some people were thrilled for them, others were horrified.
How could the late king’s daughter marry a photographer? How could she marry someone who worked for a living? I mean, this was unheard of. Tony’s relationships before Margaret in particular defied the norms of conventional society. Tony was a man with a huge sex drive. I mean, a libido like no one else’s. I think he I mean one woman would never have been enough.
He told me I think the way he used to put it was I love a change. Tony’s colorful love life even drew in best friend Jeremy Fry and his wife Camila. I think you see Janney Fry’s wife had been a girlfriend of Tony’s and he he loved them both and he used to go and stay there a lot and I suppose the best way I can put it was that um it was a bit of a freefor all.
I think Tony was bisexual. Somebody once said to me, “If it’s got socks on, he’ll jump on it.” The rebellious Princess Margaret was marrying sexually liberated Tony in the hope he would give up his free living ways. It was a gamble no other royal had made in their choice of partner. With the wedding day set for May 6th, 1960, plans took shape, but there was soon a scandal over Tony’s choice of best man, his old friend from Eaton, Jeremy Fry.
Jeremy Fry had uh had been embroiled in a homosexual act in 1952 and been fined. Homosexuality was frowned upon. It was also against the law. And so no longer could he be best man and so they had to find someone else. The wedding took place in Westminster Abbey with 2,000 guests. But as the first royal wedding to be televised, another 300 million around the world were able to watch the ceremony.
It seemed quite modern in that we were able to witness it for ourselves. It was no longer something going on behind closed doors. Brides all over Britain watched every single bit of it. And here she was looking utterly beautiful. For many commentators, Tony’s status as a commoner embodied the sweeping social changes happening across Britain at this time.
In many ways, Margaret’s marriage was a was a great leveler. It showed people that yes, a member of the royal family can marry a regular person just like you or me. Margaret and Tony’s guest list also ran against the grain of royal tradition. She filled out the pews with politicians, with celebrities, with the Bohemian artistic set that she and Tony had become such good friends with.
There were a huge number of celebrities. Through her wedding, Margaret had rebelled against royal traditions and edged the monarchy closer to the progressive outlook of 1960s Britain. Her choice of honeymoon too was a new departure for a royal bride. Margaret and Terry embarked on the Royal Yacht Britannia for a 6 week tour of the Caribbean.
And one of the islands that she decided to visit was the very barren and basic island of Mastique. Mustique was owned by Margaret’s friends, Lord Colin Glen Connor and his wife, Lady Anne Glen Connor. Collins said to Margaret when they were on Mustique, “What shall I give you for a wedding present? Would you like a jewel in a box or would you like a piece of land?” And quick as a flash, Margaret said she’d really rather like a piece of land.
And then when he gave her a piece of land on Mustique, she actually asked for it to be a bit bigger. Having received part of Mustique as a wedding gift, Margaret returned to Britain with Tony, now known as the Earl and Countess of Snowden. They settled into life as a royal couple for the first years of their marriage. Uh life was wonderful.
They were in love. They were happy. They rode around in a sort of blue roadster which were so luxurious at the time. Before long, the Rebel Royal had become one half of the most famous couple in the country. I think it was the beginning of royalty being celebrity, being part of the celebrity circuit.
They are really in this very very glamorous crowd of actors, comedians, writers, artists, you know, the the hipsters of the day, the behemians of of the day, you know, it’s it’s very cool. Although now one half of a celebrity power couple, Margaret’s own fame had always overshadowed Tony’s. She was extraordinarily beautiful.
She had a lovely figure. Uh I don’t think it was possible to catch her at a bad angle. She was a completely gorgeous, glamorous um sex symbol. Margaret was breaking new ground as the first royal celebrity of the modern age. Well, the notice has just gone up at 10 minutes to 12. In 1961, Tony and Margaret’s first child, David, was born, followed 3 years later by daughter Sarah.
Externally, Margaret seemed to be enjoying the perfect life of a royal princess, wife, and mother. But cracks were emerging in her relationship with Tony as he struggled to leave behind his colorful past. And the royal family would suffer some of the most sensational scandals of the century. In the 1960s, Britain was undergoing a cultural reawakening.
With new music, new fashions, and new freedoms, the country had a spring in its step. And no one embodied this newfound energy more than Princess Margaret and her husband Tony Armstrong Jones, now known as the Earl and Countess of Snowden. They were the couple that everyone wanted at their dinner party or their event.
I mean, they they were dazzling, both of them. For Margaret, raised in the strict traditions of Buckingham Palace, the world of entertainers offered a chance to rebel against the expectations placed on her since childhood. And I think Margaret found herself drawn into that world of celebrity and loving every minute of it. But beneath the glittering veneer, her marriage to Tony had lost its sparkle.
While she was enjoying the excitement of meeting his artistic friends, he was finding the traditions of royal life restricting. Margaret and Tony had very different expectations from the marriage and their rebellious natures which had once been a point of common ground now became a source of conflict.
They both realized quite quickly that they had fiery tempers. They played hard but they fought hard as well. The root of all their problems was that they both wanted to be center stage. Uh Princess Margaret was used to being center stage and she’d never had no said to her and she had a strong will. Tony equally strong will. He only did what he wanted and he one of the things he wanted very much was attention.
Tony’s work was not the only thing that stood between him and Margaret. In the years before their relationship began, Tony had been known for indulging in multiple non-exclusive relationships. And when he married Margaret, many of these continued. He didn’t want sex just with one woman or one princess.
He wanted sex with a lot of ladies at the same time. He was an attractive man and he spent all his life around other attractive people, models, artists, designers, actresses, actors and there are lots of stories of him having lots of affairs with lots of them. During the engagement, um he conceived a child by the wife of his best friend, Jeremy Fry.
that child was born while he and Margaret were on honeymoon. So, no, he certainly didn’t stop seeing other women. If there was a competition to find the most promiscuous man in England, he would be up there in the first division. I’m not sure Margaret actually really knew what she was getting into in that sense.
Tony’s affairs with other women soon became the worstkept secret in royal circles. But even more scandalous for Margaret in an age far more conservative than our own were the rumors of his involvement with other men. Tony Armstrong Jones was very attractive to both sexes. I mean there are endless rumors about the men uh with who were attracted to him both um Jeremy Thorp the liberal leader with whom he was at Eaton and Jeremy Fry.
There was a time when Princess Margaret was at a function in the United States and uh her host happened to ask Princess Margaret, “How is the queen?” And Margaret said, “Which one? My sister, my mother, or my husband?” Not one to be slighted easily, it wasn’t long before Margaret took a lead from Tony’s behavior and began affairs of her own.
Very often, they were what I would describe as revenge affairs. rather you may not find me attractive but look here is somebody else who does. She retaliated famously with the nephew of the prime minister Alec Douglas Hume. The most extraordinary thing about their numerous affairs with other people was that they threw these affairs in each other’s faces.
And on one occasion, Princess Margaret said to uh her husband, “Well, I slept with and she mentioned a male friend of of her husbands, and he shot back immediately, well, I slept with him as well.” As with Tony’s affairs, rumors of Margaret’s liaison were whispered throughout royal circles. Some of the most famous names in the world became attached to her romantically.
All sorts of people have been been named. There was speculation that she’d had a relationship with the British actor David Nan. Uh MC Jagger’s even come into the frame. Picasso um allegedly offered to marry her, but she was married at the time. So um he was always extravagant. Margaret liked men. She liked to be naughty.
I’d be very surprised if she didn’t occasionally, you know, let go of the reigns and just do what physically she wanted to do. The rumors of Margaret’s affairs soon reached Tony, and his reaction could be very public and very vicious. Tony was much cleverer at being cruel than Margaret was.
And one instance of this was that perhaps in a book that she was reading or in the drawer where she kept her gloves, she’d find notes. One she found was 10 reasons why I hate you. Or he would tell her at dinner to shut up. Shut up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Let X speak. I want to hear something sensible.
So it was he was very snubbing and it was really awful for her. For the queen, if details of Margaret’s life became known by the British public, the damage caused to the royal family could be irreparable. They were supposed to set an example of how to live with Victorian values of where you put your family first and everyone behaves appropriately.
Um, and so I think the queen was very disappointed in terms of how both Margaret and Tony were behaving. Um, but I think, you know, she was at the same time hoping that none of this would be made public. The one solace Margaret had was her royal duties. With her reputation as the rebel princess firmly established by the mid60s, it’s an aspect of her life that is often overlooked.
It must have been a great thrill for the girls meeting the princess, especially so soon after her engagement. In 1962, she took on a public role that remained dear to her throughout her life, the chancellorship of Keel University. It was characteristic of her to choose a university that was new and that didn’t have anything sort of fusty and old-fashioned about it.
With many of her other interests, she was quite fickle with with Keel University. She was incredibly consistent. The British public still knew nothing of her deteriorating marriage to Tony and neither did the queen. I was told very reliably that so bad were the rattles between Princess Margaret and Tony that close friends thought the queen should have some indication of the level the volume of the acrimony.
And so the queen was invited to Kensington Palace and Margaret and Tony were at each other’s throats like it was going out of fashion. The marriage of Margaret and Tony was in in real trouble. Um he was spending an awful lot of time away having affairs on the side. The problem was that broadly amongst the public still the royal family presented harmonious family life.
So that was a problem that I think the queen saw coming down the road. In 1973, the public were unaware that Princess Margaret’s marriage was failing. Amid rumors of her husband Tony’s affairs, Margaret spent more time with friends and a new man would enter her life. She met Rody Llewellyn who was a aristocratic landscape gardener, very well respected.
He was only 25 at the time. she was uh 17 years older. She met him at the Cafe Royal in Edinburgh and they went on to this house party and had a wonderful time and she was immediately drawn to Rody. By 1973, which was, I think, probably the grimmst period of her life. She was smoking too much. She was drinking too much. And what this young man does for this middle-aged lady is to give her back her sense of worth.
But as a married princess, the palace were keen that Margaret keep the affair away from the public eye. I think the royal family took a pretty broad and sympathetic understanding. What they dreaded was anything becoming public knowledge. So, as far as they were concerned, if it made Margaret happy and she could keep it quiet, that was all right.
But once things become public property, then it can’t be allowed to be foder for the newspapers. One place Princess Margaret felt she could keep the affair under wraps was at her private Caribbean home in Mustique. Must was her hideaway. One of her old friends, Colin Tenant, had given her the land on which her house was built.
She could have the people she wanted there in a relaxed environment with plenty of alcohol, sunny weather, and away from prying eyes. What better place to see the new man in her life and and it not get into the press? But she was naive. It was always going to get in the press. So in 1976 on Sunday morning uh the queen opens her newspaper and sees splashed all over the front page a photograph of her sister Margaret with Rody Llewellyn.
And here suddenly uh is her bohemian uh difficult little sister um uh exploding a bomb in front of her because instantly it’s clear to the whole world that Princess Margaret is um involved in an unsuitable and adulterous love affair. The press revelations of Margaret’s affair would have a damaging impact not only on the princess’s own image but on that of the royal family as a whole.
This was not just a regular person that had been caught out having an affair. This was Princess Margaret. Uh she was the queen’s sister. She had a responsibility to the institution of monarchy and people expected members of the royal family to act to a different level. It was extraordinary.
It was just all over the place. Margaret causing trouble again. I mean the Peter Towns and stuff have been all over the papers and there’ve been a lot of sympathy for Margaret. Now there wasn’t sympathy for Margaret. She had tarnished the reputation of the royal family. The public were enraged because ministers are saying, “Look at Princess Margaret.
She’s swanning around the Caribbean with a boy, 17 years her junior. She’s doing it on on government funds. Uh, she’s just on a perpetual holiday.” And so suddenly the public are crying, “What about your duties, Margaret? What about your civil income list, Margaret?” The queen absolutely would have been horrified. The public storm around the rebel princess’s affair now made the marriage to Tony untenable.
The problem for the queen is that it’s clearly impossible to go on pretending that Margaret and Tony uh are happily married. They absolutely aren’t. Um and this photograph clearly puts Margaret in the blame for the failure of the marriage. And there’s a great deal of public sympathy for poor Tony who is allegedly being betrayed in this way by his wife.
This I have never discussed. Could you confirm or deny the reports that Did you hear that? Yes, I could. Could you confirm or deny the reports that in fact you’re That’s all I I mean that’s all I said. Look, I said that in the past. Um, that’s what I’m The very idea that Princess Margaret should be the person who is causing a divorce um is really hard uh for the royal family to um take and to accept.
So clearly something needs to happen with the Snowden’s marriage. And in March it was uh an announcement was made by Buckingham Palace that Tony and Margaret had formally decided to separate. Now this announcement came out unbeknownst to Tony. He was in Australia at the time and he isued his own statements.
I’m uh naturally, desperately sad in every way that this had to happen. Poor old Tony. He’s being cheated on by his wife, Princess Margaret, who’s swaning around the Caribbean. Lord Snowden, is there any hope of a reconciliation? Thank you, ladies. Yes. The narrative really was incredibly damaging and and very difficult for the queen to deal with.
Two years later in 1978, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden’s divorce was finally announced. What is the matter? Nothing else. Thank you. The split left Margaret as the first senior royal divorcee in centuries, setting an unwanted precedent for future generations of royals. when she cared about a subject particularly and she really did care about children and the NPCC particularly um she could make a most eloquent and impassioned speech.
We know that some children can die of neglect. Thousands more can be stunted physically and emotionally throughout their lives through lack of love or want of proper care and nurturing. These are the forgotten children whom we must never let the world forget. She was always known as a sort of rebel princess and the words charity work don’t fit with that image and so I think her charity work tended rather to be overlooked although she did do a good deal.
She may have had the image of a royal rebel, but the princess was patron of over 80 charities. And it was her work with one cause in particular in which she set yet another lesserk known precedent. Everyone associates Diana with AIDS, but actually Margaret was there first, but probably didn’t get the publicity for it.
In 1987, she became involved with London Lighthouse and the AIDS victims before Diana became very involved. She was never a touchy feeling person, but she was there making the people there laugh, being supportive and sympathetic. And 1988, she opened their new place. By the 1990s, Diana was the most famous princess in the world, a position once occupied by Margaret herself.
But as the elder princess began to fade from the public eye, she would take issue with the new princesses on the royal scene. I think when Diana came on the scene and Fergie with the focus of all the press attention around the UK, she was playing jealous. No, she had been the bell of the ball.
she had been the one that people wanted to follow. So I think she was jealous and she was unsympathetic towards uh their behavior. From now on, the headlines Margaret made were increasingly due to her ill health. Princess Margaret arrived at the exclusive London Hospital just after 8 this morning. She walked unaided from the car, although she looked a little tired and unsteady.
She had her first stroke in 1998. A year later she had a dreadful accident where she scolded her feet. She was in a terrible way after that. Uh in 2000 and 2001 she had strokes again and she wasn’t really able to conduct official engagements in the way that she used to. The stroke started to affect her speech. Uh left her very depressed.
I remember sitting next to her on a number of occasions at at lunch at Windsor Castle and she did cut a very sad figure because looking back on on the sort of 1950s and the 1960s, this very beautiful woman, frequently photographed, very happy golucky, and now seeing her confined to a wheelchair with wraparound glasses, finding it very difficult to hold a conversation, you couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, and I After suffering a final stroke, Princess Margaret died on February the 9th, 2002, aged 71.
Draped in her own blue and crimson standard, Princess Margaret’s coffin leaves the King Edward IIIth Hospital late this afternoon. Her death was a devastating blow to the Queen in the year of her golden jubilee. I was there in Windsor for Princess Margaret’s funeral. And the Queen, she doesn’t often show um emotion, but in that moment, she couldn’t hold back the tears.
And I’m sure the queen in that moment felt very alone because it had been the two of them through their childhood, and she’d always been so protective of her her troubled little sister. Troubled, scandalous, but complex, Princess Margaret began life as the spare to the heir, only to discard that ill-defined role and instead become the rebel without a crown.
She wasn’t going to be this beautiful younger sister to the queen. She decided very early on that she didn’t want to do that. She broke the rules. She lived quite a reckless life for a royal. I mean, she was fantastically grand, fantastically snobbish and she did tarnish the reputation of of the royal family by her her lifestyle, by her broken marriages, by bringing divorce into the fold.
But that too has another side to it because she cleared the way um for younger members of the royal family to get out of unhappy marriages. She led a an extraordinary life for a royal in a way that you know the queen has led a very evenpaced life where very little has changed. She’s done her duty. That’s been her watch word.
Margaret on the other hand kicked over the traces was extravagant. She was a bit naughty and she was a bit of a rebel. But uh you know you want to ask yourself who would you like to be sat next to at dinner? Princess Margaret or a bit of a bore? I know which I prefer.