Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
PRINCESS MARGARET WAS LIKE MY SURROGATE MOTHER
Her good friend of 34 years and the royal who might have become her mother-in-law – they’ve both been so influential in her life that Susannah Constantine says she had to put them in her new novel
THEY FORMED A LOVING BOND WHEN SHE DATED THE PRINCESS’S SON. NOW SUSANNAH CONSTANTINE’S WRITTEN A NOVEL ABOUT HER AGONIES WITH HER REAL MOTHER... AND MARGARET’S IN IT
Some people go into therapy when life gets rocky. Some celebrity types go on programmes like Strictly Come Dancing, in the hope of finding their inner calm. One-time fashion guru and TV presenter Susannah Constantine, 58, has done both, with mixed results (let’s just say there was no serenity to be found in her samba, which involved maracas and a fruitbowl on her head). But now she has discovered another way to still her mind: writing novels.
Her first was, she admits, ‘a kind of pseudo-autobiographical tale’. After The Snow, published in 2017, was the story of Esme Munroe and her difficult relationship with her mother, whom she loved but who suffered from depressive episodes that blighted her whole family’s life.
This scenario was lifted right from Susannah’s own life, and served up as fiction. Potential readers were told that if they liked Downton Abbey, they would love this story, what with an evil contessa in the plotline and rather fabulous homes. This part – or dollops of it – also came from Susannah’s experience. Before she worked as a fashion journalist and paired up with Trinny Woodall (they became the TV makeover queens of their generation), Susannah was a society girl. In the 1980s she dated Princess Margaret’s son Viscount Linley for eight years, and was a regular at all the best parties.
Her second novel, Summer In Mayfair, which has just been published, continues the story of Esme as a grown-up. She admits it was ‘a bit of a brain dump’, and that she poured every emotion into it, actually matching her mood to the story.
When she was booted out of Strictly in 2018, an experience she found bruising (in all senses), she took solace in her writing. ‘I broke it up into 31 scenes and for each scene I wrote who was in it and what was going to happen, and what emotion Esme was feeling. Then I could dip in and out, and write based on my own emotions. So if I was feeling really p **** d off, I could go to a chapter where she’s feeling the same, or if I was feeling anxious or lost I would go and write from that. For me, writing is an escape from everything. I can create a world – or a situation, or people – I want to be surrounded by, and I love that. I find it so freeing.’
Few authors are so honest, or conscious, of how they create their characters. ‘Pretty much all the people in Summer In Mayfair are people I would love to have in my life – or people who I do have – and there are elements of different friends.’
There is more than that, though. Princess Margaret is a character in her books. This would be a curious one anyway, but the fact that the real Princess Margaret could have been her mother-in-law gives this a fascinating twist.
The singer Elton John – perhaps the showbiz equivalent of royalty – is also in there. He turns up to the art gallery where Esme works, in his limo, of course. Odder still considering Susannah and Elton are also good mates. ‘I sat next to him at a dinner party about 34 years ago, and we’ve been friends ever since,’ she says. Elton subsequently became godfather to one of her daughters.
The families holiday together, although she can’t bear to be reminded of the fact that she was photographed while on Elton’s yacht last year. The pictures of her leaping into the sea, wearing a red swimsuit, are quite stunning, but she hates them. ‘I thought I looked just hideous.
Big fat t**s. It was a real shock to see them [she means the pictures]. That has never happened to me before.’ But it did look as though she was having great fun. More to the point, she looked at home. ‘Yes, it’s lovely. A home from home.’
Back to the book, though.
Did she have to have a conversation with Elton about including a fictional version of him in her novel? ‘Oh yeah, absolutely, he was fine about that. I found it quite hard, though. When you know someone you find it harder to write about them because you want to do them justice, but you also want to keep their privacy and protect the friendship, so it was quite hard to do.’ Ditto with Princess Margaret, with whom she had an extraordinary relationship. She admits Princess Margaret was a mentor, a confidante and even a surrogate mother figure, filling a void left by her own mother Mary Rose, who was bipolar and in and out of psychiatric hospitals. Susannah had a particularly complex relationship with her mother, whom she loved dearly but whose mental health issues overshadowed everything. ‘She became a shrew inside an angel,’ she once wrote of her.
She died in 2007, having suffered from dementia for the final years of her life, and Susannah admitted to an ‘element of relief’.
Her terror has always been that history would repeat itself, and she did suffer from postnatal depression after the birth of her own children. But she is also acutely aware of the issues at play, and takes steps to safeguard her own mental health.
Today, she admits that both Elton and Margaret have been hugely influential in her life, and as such she was desperate to have them in her novel. There was comfort in just having them there, she admits. ‘They are people who, both of them, have always been there for me. In a way they could be said to have been my ideal parents, although Elton isn’t quite old enough for that.’
Blimey. The idea of her finding comfort in seeing herself as the love child of Princess Margaret and Elton John is quite something, but she means it in the most affectionate of ways. She won’t be drawn more on why Elton has been such a rock, but when it comes to the late Princess Margaret, she speaks in warm tones.
The Queen’s sister is most often portrayed as the ultimate party animal, someone with a cigarette in hand and a witty, often cutting (even cruel) comment. Susannah saw another side. ‘She was loving. I was really, really fond of her. She was fantastically kind to me. I know many saw a different side. Because of her reputation, people were quite afraid of her. I think if people are born into a situation, like she was,
‘Vulnerable people are attracted to each other’
few people gave her the opportunity to show the warmth she had.’ You weren’t afraid of her? ‘No. To me she was my boyfriend’s mum.’
But a lot of women do not have a warm and supportive relationship with their boyfriend’s mother. ‘Have you read Anne Glenconner’s book Lady In Waiting?’ says Susannah. ‘That was interesting, because Anne was almost like a mother figure to Margaret. I didn’t know their relationship at all, but having read that book, she presented herself as the rock and mother figure in Princess Margaret’s life.’
She says they had a similar connection. There was depth to it? ‘I think there was. I think vulnerable people are attracted to each other, and I think that when they are together they give each other strength. I know that from friends of mine, we are never down and depressed at the same time.’
Trinny Woodall, whose boyfriend
is Charles Saatchi, pops into the conversation at this point (what can we say about Susannah’s social circle, other than it is expansive?). Trinny remains one of her closest friends. ‘Trinny and I were never depressed or down at the same time, so one of us would be strong to support the other. That’s what good friends are for.’
She stayed friends with Princess Margaret too, long after things had ended with her son. Indeed, she confides today that the princess threw her a party when she became engaged to her husband, Danish businessman Sten Bertelsen. They recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. ‘When I got engaged to Sten she gave us a dinner, which was so sweet of her, to celebrate.’ Weird, though, having an event organised by your ex-boyfriend’s mother? ‘It was quite, but that was typical her.’ She suggests there was some mischief-making afoot, with Margaret perhaps delighting in the weirdness. ‘There is a little bit of wooden spoon-stirring in the background, but it was done with love and it was very, very kind of her.’ And Sten was OK with it? ‘Oh yeah, he’s so chilled out about that kind of stuff.’
Perhaps she had a lucky escape because marrying into the Royal Family could have been a disaster for someone with her exuberance. I can imagine her getting into all sorts of spats which would make the gossip
pages, but she begs to differ. ‘Well, I don’t know. I don’t know how different it would have been because David leads a very normal life that is unaffected by all of that, but I am very happy with my life as it is now.’
She and David, now Earl Snowdon, are still in touch, and have been since they split. ‘We are good friends. We have lunch together every so often.’ She declines to comment on the fact his marriage, to Serena, recently ended, after 26 years. ‘That’s not something I know anything about.’
Mixing with royalty has furnished her with some fabulous stories though, a favourite being the day her boobs fell in her soup while she was sitting next to Prince Philip at dinner at Windsor. She tells it with aplomb, and a smattering of her trademark (fruity) language. ‘I was wearing a Valentino dress with the skinniest of diamante spaghetti straps which criss-crossed at the back. First one strap snapped, and then the other and my boobs literally fell into the soup. I looked down and thought, “F**k”.
‘Absolutely mortified, I snatched up the front of my dress and pulled it back over my chest. Quick as a flash, Prince Philip called one of the butlers over and he came back with two safety pins on a silver tray. Quietly and efficiently, he fixed the straps to the back of the dress. God bless him. Saved by Prince Philip.’
One imagines he must have remembered that one too. Did their
Continued on page 6
‘David and I are friends, wehavelunch together’
Little Birds is a period drama like no other. It has all the usual trappings – aristocrats and fantastic clothes, beautiful backdrops, handsome men and, of course, a girl who just wants to find love. But it is also deeply sensual, wonderfully funny and very high camp. Like the first big television hit of lockdown, Normal People, it focuses on a female beginning to understand her sexuality. But frankly, this is much more fun.
Loosely based on a collection of short stories by Anaïs Nin, the sixpart series follows troubled American heiress Lucy Savage, who arrives in the febrile, bohemian Moroccan port of Tangier in 1955. Back home she’d been put on tranquilisers to prevent her from rebelling against her strict arms manufacturer father. When it’s suggested she marries handsome but penniless English aristocrat Lord Hugo Cavendish-smythe, who lives in Tangier and who Lucy once met at a ball, she quickly accepts to escape both her father and her alcoholic mother.
‘In the grand scheme of Little Birds, she is the eyes, the ears, the nose and the tongue,’ says Juno Temple, the English actress who plays Lucy. ‘In episode one she arrives fresh off the boat to marry a young, handsome lord and hopefully start her own story. Tangier is this incredible mystery land for Lucy. Everything’s new and exciting to her. It’s like falling down a rabbit hole, and she has to try to be contained in a world in which it would be very easy to explode.
‘There’s an Anaïs Nin quote we kept going back to – it was on the opening page of our scripts and it works for each character: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Everyone does blossom but their journeys are not always easy, and none of the characters blossom as you think they might. The show is about people learning to exist with who they are and free themselves from whatever kind of entrapment society has put them in.’
Marriage to Hugo quickly turns out to be not as it seems. He’s a gay man in love with another. All Lucy knows is he’s not interested in her sexually. Confused and upset, she throws herself into life in Tangier, then an International Zone – an area administered by several foreign powers, including in this case France, Spain and the UK – and a melting pot of spies, spivs, and criminals.
Hugo, played by Lucy and Hugo’s marriage
is not all it seems
W1A and Fleabag actor Hugh Skinner, is a self-absorbed character who’s in love with Egyptian prince Adham Abaza. It’s some time after he marries Lucy that he realises how hurt she is at having a husband who’ll never love her in the way she wants to be loved, and who only married her for her father’s money.
‘Hugo is in such deep denial about his feelings that he’s shut down emotionally,’ says Hugh. ‘He’s not really very present with anyone; he’s a bit of a ghost. Morally he wants to do the right thing, but there is this real problem that he’s gay in the 1950s, which leads to him making a series of terrible decisions. He does love Lucy in his own way. They’re kindred spirits in one sense; they’re outsiders who have both never really felt they’ll find love.’
Hugh says he enjoyed learning about the history of Tangier as part of his research. ‘Hugo is there because he can live a more decadent lifestyle on a budget,’ he says. ‘The 50s were a horrendous time to be gay, but Tangier was this incredibly bohemian place with many brilliant gay Westerners around, including American writers Tennessee Williams and William Burroughs. ‘But while the period is so specific, the show is bold and colourful. It’s almost like a musical. It’s a fantasy.’
It’s at a nightclub that Lucy meets the third main character in the drama, Cherifa Lamour, played by Lebanese-american actress Yumna Marwan in her first English-speaking role. ‘This is the best entrance I can make into the Western film industry,’ laughs Yumna of dominatrix Cherifa, Tangier’s most soughtafter courtesan. ‘Cherifa is a selfmade sex worker with gold teeth – of course I wanted to be that person,’ she says. ‘I don’t always like the way Arabs are portrayed in the West but the show gives this woman the depth she deserves.’ Cherifa was a street kid from the outskirts of Tangier who found a home at a brothel in the city, where she specialises in whipping Westerners. ‘To prepare for the role I met a dominatrix in London to look at the instruments she used, and understand her relationship with her clients,’ reveals Yumna. ‘I was lucky enough to have one of her clients volunteer for me to flog his behind. He came into the room and I did it!’ Initially Cherifa, who is
‘The show’s almost like a musical, it’s a fantasy’