No Margaret, a trifle is not an ashtray!
No biography is ever quite complete, even after it is finished. My book Ma’am Darling: 99 glimpses of princess Margaret came out at the end of September. Ever since, strangers have been approaching me with their memories of her.
after doing a talk at one bookshop, an elderly friend of princess Margaret came up to me, keen to have a word. My heart slightly sank, as i imagined she would want to tick me off for writing such an irreverent book, which describes, in some detail, the extraordinary demands Margaret made on her friends — keeping them up all night, vetoing fellow dinner guests, growing imperious with drink.
but no: ‘ you got her exactly right!’ she said, , ‘Though what i’ll l never understand d is why we let her r get away with it for so long.’
Many of the stories about the princess involved alcohol and/ or cigarettes. a man told me that his father had been in the royal Navy in the Sixties. ‘his task was to escort her round and wait on her with copious amounts of gin. at one point, he had to carry a silver tray so she could put her cigarettes out on it. he was a human ashtray. Not once did she even acknowledge him, let alone thank him.’
‘i met her when i was in the girl guides. She came to the raF camp i lived on,’ recalled one lady. ‘ She had lunch there and stubbed her cigarette out in her trifle dish. it was the talk of the place for weeks! Not very ladylike behaviour!’
in Ma’am Darling, i mention that princess Margaret claimed never to have spoken a word to princess Michael of Kent, even though they were neighbours in Kensington palace.
i knew princess Margaret had a reputation for sending her enemies to Coventry. She refused to speak to princess Diana (after the infamous panorama interview) and the Duchess of york (after the toesucking photograph).
but it had still struck me as bizarre that she claimed never to have exchanged a single word with the wife of her first cousin. Was it perhaps one of Margaret’s little exaggerations?
but, since the book came out, princess Michael has herself acknowledged that this was true, adding wittily that their disparity in height — princess Margaret was barely 5ft, while princess Michael is nudging 6ft — made it easy for them to avoid one another. ‘i would just look straight over her.’
a former Conservative Mp told me that, when Edward heath was prime Minister, he had been placed next to princess Margaret at a formal dinner.
after talking, or at least trying to talk, to the notoriously reticent heath for half an hour, princess Margaret suddenly lost her temper, saying: ‘ you are more boring than a provincial mayor!’ She then placed both hands on heath’s head and turned it away from her.
at another literary event, an elderly gentleman told me that he had been with Dr roger gilliatt when he had received the telephone call from antony armstrong-Jones asking him to be his best man. ‘ he was completely taken a aback, because he barely knew him.’ gilliatt was in fact chosen for the role only because the groom’s other m male friends were so clearly unsuitable.
perhaps most in interesting of all was the curator of a National T Trust castle who ca came up to have a copy of Ma’am D Darling signed. h he told me that he had recently found notes in the castle’s logbook of the occasion in october 1947 when princess Margaret had stayed. as it happened, she had been accompanied on her overnight visit by group Captain peter Townsend, who was, at that time, an equerry to King george Vi.
‘The log book clearly states that Townsend asked for his bedroom to be moved next to the princess’s,’ the curator told me.
AT THAT time, the princess was barely 17 years old. Their romance was not to become public for another six years: in his autobiography, Townsend claims not to have developed tender feelings towards her until 1951.
i have also been told that Townsend’s wife, rosemary, felt bitter at being made to be the sole guilty party in their subsequent divorce, so as to save the royal Family from embarrassment. My book may be finished, but the story goes on.