The TRUTH about the man who claims he’s Margaret’s love child
After a 10-year fight, this middle-aged accountant says he’s on the brink of proving he’s a royal heir. But here’s the real story . . .
FOR the past decade, he’s made headlines with his attempts to prove he is the illegitimate son of the Queen’s sister Princess Margaret. Now Robert Brown has won a significant High Court victory in his battle to see the contents of her will.
Born in Kenya but educated at King’s School, Canterbury, Mr Brown — who earns a modest living from properties he owns on Jersey — has spent £100,000 trying to prove his royal lineage.
The 58-year- old accountant believes Princess Margaret secretly gave birth to him on or about January 5, 1955, but that the later stages of her pregnancy were covered up using body doubles and that he was sent to Kenya to be brought up as the child of a well- connected couple, Cynthia and Douglas Brown.
At the time, the Princess was unmarried and recovering from her ill-fated love affair with the divorced Group Captain Peter Townsend. Brown insists his claims could be vindicated by examining the contents of Margaret’s will — and that the Royal Family’s battle to stop this happening shows they have something to hide.
The convention of royal wills being kept secret was established in 1911, when Queen Mary applied to have the will of her younger brother, Prince Francis of Teck, sealed to stop the public learning that he had left jewellery to a mistress.
Robert Brown has been given leave to appeal in the High Court against a ruling that he could not see the will of the Queen’s sister, who died in 2002. And it is likely a further application by him will succeed.
Far-fetched as his claims seem, they are undoubtedly tantalising, and Brown has managed to convince lawyers of the merits of his case. Yet I believe his claim is shot through with flaws — and that he is definitely not Margaret’s son.
Speaking at his farmhouse home, Brown says he knows he is right despite being branded a ‘fantasist loon’. He recalls an ambiguous meeting he had as a young boy with a woman he thinks was Princess Margaret while she paid an official visit to Kenya. She did, indeed, make a visit in October 1956.
‘This woman told me to stand on a tree-trunk and repeat: “I’m the king of the castle, you’re the dirty rascal,” again and again. It was meant to be fun, but it wasn’t. There was a poignant subtext to it.
‘I had a gut feeling that there was a royal connection, even though my logical side said there must be some other explanation.’
It would be a remarkable child who could recall meeting anyone, let alone a princess, at the age of 18 months. But he will not be deflected.
It emerges that his relationship with Cynthia, his mother, was difficult. He cites her coolness and detachment — compared with how she treated his supposed sibling William — as an explanation for why she was not his birth mother.
A glamorous former model for royal dressmaker Hardy Amies, Cynthia was born in 1921 the daughter of a racing journalist, Bob Lyle, and grew up in Surrey. After war service, she married a Germanborn commercial clerk, Ekhard Werner- Hirsch, who, in 1940, changed his name to Edgar Werner and enlisted in the Royal Artillery.
The marriage failed and by the early Fifties Cynthia was in Nairobi and had befriended Douglas Brown, a prosperous builder.
Robert Brown recalls this time and cites a conversation he had with an uncle. A raised eyebrow, a nod and a wink, suggested that all was not as it should be. Robert drew the conclusion he must have been adopted by the couple.
However, a more likely explanation is that Cynthia and Douglas were not married at the time of his birth. While there’s a birth certificate, no marriage can be found for the couple in British or colonial records — and Brown himself says that the marriage certificate he was finally shown bore signs of having been tampered with.
Brown talks a lot about childhood memories but offers little hard proof that the Princess had a secret baby in January 1955.
Indeed, for a woman who might have been nearly at term, Margaret had been very active on royal duty.
On December 1 she had attended
She was dancing happily days before the ‘birth’ ‘A baby out of wedlock? It’s fatuous nonsense’
a dress show in London with the Queen Mother. Hundreds were present, but not one person reported a swelling in the Princess’s famously trim waistline.
A week later, Margaret attended a performance of Cinderella On Ice at Earl’s Court. Again, no one noticed this single woman was in an advanced stage of pregnancy. On December 21, Margaret attended the Royal Family’s annual staff party at Buckingham Palace and despite it being less than a fortnight from the supposed secret ‘birth’, was able to lead off some lively dancing with Cyril Dickman, a Palace footman.
Brown gives as his last piece of ‘evidence’ a report the Princess was confined to bed with a ‘ hacking cough’ at the time of his birth.
If she was, she managed to shake it off swiftly, for on January 7 — just two days after having the ‘baby’ — she appeared in the best of health having taken the train from Sandringham to London en route to Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.
Yet Brown argues: ‘ None of Princess Margaret’s friends has ever said: “This man is barking mad. I was with her all the time he claims that she was pregnant, and I can assure you she wasn’t.” ’
Alas for poor Brown, her friends are only too ready, even all these years later, to contest his claims. First, that weekend at Blenheim. Lady Rosemary Muir, sister of the Duke of Marlborough and one of the Queen’s maids of honour at the Coronation, is now 84 but has a very clear recollection of Margaret’s arrival at the family seat.
‘On the Saturday there was a shoot, then on the Sunday she came to church at Woodstock and stood godmother for my son Alexander. There was no evidence she had just given birth. I should know — having just done so myself.’
Lady Rosemary also points out that Margaret had been at Blenheim in November to attend a highprofile Dior charity fashion show, attended by the public and covered extensively by TV and film crews.
‘She was the focus of attention and looked absolute perfection on that occasion, so how this baby could have appeared in the time between that visit and the next, six weeks later, is beyond comprehension! These claims are absolute poppycock. It’s lunacy to suggest she gave birth to a child out of wedlock, then or at any time.’
Her son, Alexander Muir, says: ‘There are many, many photographs of the Princess from this time which show quite clearly her slim figure.’
For Brown’s claim to hold water, he would need to find a father as well as a mother.
For some time he suggested he was the fruit of Margaret’s relationship with Group Captain Townsend, but he has now recanted that claim — just as well, since at the time of Brown’s conception, Townsend was under virtual house arrest in Brussels where he’d been exiled after his affair with Margaret was uncovered.
The two did not meet throughout the spring and summer of 1954 (though they did again later).
Brown has also suggested his father might have been Robin Douglas Home, younger brother of Prime Minister Alec Douglas Home. But as Douglas Home’s son Sholto points out: ‘My father’s romance with Princess Margaret was in 1967 and this man was born in 1955.’
Back to Brown for more suggestions. ‘Alec Douglas Home? The Duke of Buccleuch? Colin Tennant? They were all in the same set, all in the frame to marry her.’
Indeed, in late April and early May 1954, the Princess’s boyfriend was Colin Tennant. He died in 2010 but his widow Anne, Lady Glenconner, tells me very firmly: ‘The relationship between Colin and Princess Margaret was platonic.’
Lady Glenconner, 81, a life-long friend of the Princess and her lady-in-waiting for many years, added: ‘This is fatuous nonsense. Princess Margaret did not have a baby out of wedlock. In the many, many conversations I had with her over the years, she told me a lot of things I could never repeat about her life, but there was never a hint of that.
‘At the time she would have had
to become pregnant, her boyfriend was Colin and theirs was a platonic relationship. She was photographed everywhere. There is no way, with that slim waist for which she was famous, that she could have concealed a pregnancy. I am outraged at the suggestion she had an illegitimate child — outraged.’
If she had given birth, it would have been by Caesarean section. For, according to her biographer Tim Heald, she abhorred the idea of natural childbirth. That operation would have made it impossible for her to have appeared at Blenheim Palace a few days later — as numerous photographs attest.
Such facts should have put paid to Brown’s bid for recognition as a backdoor royal. But his pursuit of a phantom parent does not appear to be motivated by greed nor status. Nor does he especially hope for money.
Although he admits the legal case is ‘an emotionally draining process’, he says that if the case progresses, he will submit to DNA tests.
Rather than wait to see if the court will allow Margaret’s DNA to be sourced, it would be much easier to compare his own with that of his younger brother William. Tests could conclusively prove whether they had the same parents or whether Robert’s parentage was different. But William went missing ten years ago.
Although he may appear to be a sadly misguided man and a fantasist who is causing the Royal Family damage, Robert Brown’s battle to see Margaret’s will undoubtedly raises important points of principle regarding open justice and the public interest. In that respect, he may just have done us all a favour — but a royal heir he simply isn’t.