BBC follows The Crown’s lead with Princess Margaret series
THE BBC is to explore the private life of Princess Margaret in a new documentary series after Vanessa Kirby’s sympathetic portrayal in The Crown led to a reappraisal of the Queen’s younger sister.
The programme will include interviews with Basil Charles, former owner of Basil’s Bar on Mustique, where the Princess had a holiday home.
“She was a trailblazer, she was a little bit of a rebel. She wanted to have the [royal] life but she also wanted to have a normal life,” Mr Charles tells the programme.
There will also be contributions from Lady Anne Glenconner, a childhood friend and later lady-in-waiting, and Craig Brown, who catalogued the Princess’s celebrated rudeness in a recent biography, Ma’am Darling.
“It was almost as though, early in life, she had contracted a peculiarly royal form of Tourette’s syndrome, causing the sufferer to be seized by the unstoppable urge to say the wrong thing,” Mr Brown wrote.
The BBC said the two-part documentary, to be broadcast later this year, would be a “compelling” profile of a woman “whose life and loves reflected the social and sexual revolution that transformed Britain during the 20th century … this deeply personal account reveals how Princess Margaret’s character combined the rebellious force of modernity and a deep respect for tradition”. It will also be shown in the US, where The Crown has proved a hit for Netflix and Kirby has been nominated for an Emmy.
The Queen’s only sibling was born Margaret Rose in Glamis Castle in Scotland, in August 1930. Her social life and fashion choices were heavily featured in the press throughout her life.
She wed photographer Antony Arm- strong-Jones, ennobled as Earl Snowdon, in 1960 and divorced in 1978.
She died in 2002, after several battles with lung diseases related to a heavy lifelong smoking habit.
The documentary forms part of BBC Two’s history strand, and is one of several programmes announced today.
An hour-long film will show the historical roots of the Windrush scandal, with first-hand testimony from those who arrived in Britain from the Caribbean between 1948 and 1972.
Another programme, Handmade, will tell the story of Britain’s manufacturing past.