Margaret’s war on Diana

‘I’ve always adored Margo,’ the Princess once told Andrew Morton – but her Panorama interview changed everything. The Queen’s sister cut her off, wrote a wounding letter – and called the public’s sea of f lowers after her death ‘f loral facism’

ROYAL author Andrew Morton’s new book about the Queen and her sister, Princess Margaret, challenges conventional wisdom about their relationship. Here, in the final part of our serialisation, he reveals how the two women’s bond was unbreakable, despite Margaret’s wild love life.

PRINCESS MARGARET’S sudden illness during a Royal visit to Paris had taken everybody by surprise. Coughing loudly, she told aides she was too unwell to attend an official lunch where she would be guest of honour and would rest instead. Only later did it emerge that far from being ill, Margaret had spent the day having her hair done by one of France’s most celebrated stylists before going on to a dress fitting with Dior.

For Cynthia Gladwyn, wife of the British Ambassador to France, the 29-year-old Princess’s actions had been unforgivably rude. ‘She wishes to convey that she is very much the Princess, but at the same time she is not prepared to stick to the rules if they bore or annoy her,’ she said.

It was a pattern of behaviour that had been increasingly evident following the Princess’s split from her divorced lover Peter Townsend four years earlier. Since then, according to senior courtier Tommy Lascelles, Margaret had become ‘selfish, hard and wild’, enjoying the perks of Royalty while reluctant to embrace its responsibilities.

Margaret’s attitude towards her sister, the Queen, was similarly erratic and often discourteous. On the one hand, she was the most loyal of supporters. ‘My task in life is to help the Queen,’ she often said. But on other occasions her actions betrayed a resentment and indifference towards her sister that left even longserving courtiers who knew her well shaking their heads.

At a state banquet in 1957, when the Queen was complimented by a Government Minister on her evening dress, Margaret casually remarked in front of other guests: ‘Darling, that does show your bosom too much.’

And when the Queen and Prince Philip celerecalled: brated their tenth wedding anniversary in the same year, Margaret missed a celebration dinner, to go to a West End musical with friends. She returned to Buckingham Palace at midnight when the party was nearly over, without a present, a card or even an apology.

Nor did her mother escape Margaret’s apparent resentment and withering putdowns.

‘Why do you dress in those ridiculous clothes?’ the Princess would regularly demand. After she visited the Queen Mother’s beloved Scottish retreat, the Castle of Mey, which had inspired her spiritual recovery after the death of George VI, Margaret was similarly dismissive.

‘I can’t think why you have such a horrible place,’ she sneered. Her mother replied: ‘Well, darling, you needn’t come again.’ And she didn’t.

Princess’s Margaret’s contrary and contradictory behaviour defined not only her legacy as a working Royal but her tumultuous love life. While she seemed to think nothing of embarrassing the Monarchy with her hedonistic lifestyle and sexual excesses, she was rigidly intolerant of other Royal Family members who appeared to be letting the side down.

This would take its extremest form in her vehement disapproval of Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York.

PERHAPS it was not surprising that when Margaret fell in love again following the Townsend debacle, it was with a man who, like her, was full of contradictions.

Talented and charming, the renowned society photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones was also impetuous and unpredictable, and occasionally cruel.

In the early days of their relationship, he knew how to strike exactly the right balance between daring and deference. He always addressed Margaret as ‘Ma’am’, even as he enticed her into his unorthodox, bohemian lifestyle.

For the most part, though, it was a one-dimensional relationship. As one of her husband’s friends ‘What he had foremost in common with Princess Margaret could be put in three words: sex, sex, sex.

‘Theirs was a terribly physical relationship. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other, even with other people present. He was very well made and obviously that had a lot to do with it.’

In the summer of 1959, Margaret’s family were told of her secret relationship, with the Queen Mother declaring herself thoroughly enchanted by this charming, easy-going but eminently talented young man. She did everything she could to support her daughter’s unconventional romance, allowing them to use her home, Royal Lodge, Windsor, where they indulged their fondness for ‘skinny-dipping’ at midnight in the pool.

After their 1960 wedding and a six-week honeymoon, the couple set up home in Kensington Palace, where an invitation to supper or a singalong around the grand piano became the hottest ticket in town.

Their social circle included designer Mary Quant, writer Edna O’Brien, actor Peter Sellers and his wife Britt Ekland, ballet dancers Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn, and trend-setting hairdresser Vidal Sassoon.

Now called the Snowdons, they befriended The Beatles, with John Lennon nicknaming the couple ‘Priceless Margarine’ and ‘Bony Armstrove’.

‘I adored them because they were poets as well as musicians,’ the Princess later recalled. Margaret was a pioneer in trying to remove the barriers of snobbery and protocol – but not all. There was for ever a gulf, a self-conscious line that few crossed.

‘I often stayed with them for weekends and you never quite knew what you were going to get; friendly Margaret or “Ma’am”,’ observed Lord Snowdon’s business manager Peter Lyster-Todd.

Sadly, the marriage turned sour within only a few years. The traits that had at first united the couple, similar in so many ways, now gradually divided them.

With their personalities ‘too alike, too selfish’, as friends recalled, they were bound to clash. In the battle of wills, Snowdon, as the Queen’s biographer Sarah Bradford noted, was much better at being nasty than Margaret.

He resorted to writing cruel oneliners, such as ‘You’re fat and I hate

She told the Queen in front of guests: ‘Darling, that dress does show your bosom too much’