Than the and ruder ce Philip!
here was a woman so pampered, she never in her entire life had to put out the bins, book a ticket online or trudge around a supermarket with a 12-pack of toilet paper.
Princess Margaret never learned to drive, nor operate a washing machine. When she once inadvertently went through an airport security barrier , her corsets set off every alarm.
The tone of Brown’s book, however, isn’t excoriation, but pity. Brown sees Ma’am Darling as an almost pathologically lonely figure, never happy in herself. As a child, her mode of communication was the tantrum.
Her loyal nanny , Crawfie, having published anodyne stories about ‘the little princesses’ in American magazines, was banished from her side and not even sent Christmas cards. When Crawfie died in 1988, ‘ wreaths from the Royal F amily were nowhere to be seen’.
Brown interestingly argues that Princess Margaret was forbidden to marry the alleged love of her life, Group Captain Peter Townsend, not only because he was a divorcé, but also because he was 16 years her senior. Townsend had sons who were Princess Margaret’s age.
He later went on to marry a Belgian, Marie-Luce Jamagne, who, when he first met her , was only 14. Anyway , Princess Margaret was never going to renounce her royal rights and forgo her unearned income — it was a pragmatic decision she made. With no real role in life, the P rincess believed she could plunge into ‘the glittering world of bohemia ’, mix with the camp types she thought she liked. They did nothing save snigger behind her back . Brown, having scoured the diaries of Andy Warhol, Roy Strong , Cecil Beaton and James Lees -Milne, notes they went out of their way to be catty.
‘A poor midget brute’ is one of the descriptions scribbled down. ‘F at, ugly, dwarflike, lecherous and revoltingly tastelessly behaved Princess Margaret’ was a jotting of Alan Clark’s.
When, at a reception, the Princess began singing Cole Porter numbers, painter Francis Bacon started to boo. ‘Someone had to stop her,’ he reasoned. ‘I don ’t think people should perform if they can ’t do it properly.’ Her voice was notoriously high-pitched, with ‘yes’ coming out as ‘ears’ and ‘no’ as ‘nyair’. THINKING
she was impersonating Spike Milligan, Michael Hol - royd once said: ‘If I may say so, Ma ’am, I think that ’s your funniest yet.’ P rincess Margaret was speaking in her normal voice.
In this milieu, P rincess Margaret met Antony Armstrong-Jones, the future Lord Snowdon, a jet- set photographer, described by Auberon Waugh as ‘a W elsh dwarf of artistic leanings’.
Brown presents Snowdon as the psychopathic husband in Gaslight, deliberately tormenting his wife.
Snowdon had a spiteful habit of flicking matches at her across the dinner table. He openly cheated on her with other women, and possibly other men. He enjoyed leaving charming little notes about their private quarters: ‘You look like a Jewish manicurist’ or ‘I hate you’.
Was there conceivably a sado - masochistic sexual game afoot? The P rincess sought solace with Peter Sellers, who was delighted that her breasts were in the Sophia Loren class. There was also a guileless market gardener and pop singer, whose debut album sold 13 copies: Roddy Llewellyn. He stayed with the P rincess at her villa on Mustique, which was ‘less Balmoral than a hen party on Ibiza’.
In her youth ‘exquisitely beautiful, very small and neat and shapely’, Princess Margaret became blowsy with age and attained ‘a Minnie Mouse look’. She scalded her feet in the bath, suffered a series of strokes and died, generally unmourned, in 2002.
When she was cremated in Slough, no crowds lined the route.