Ladies’ man who married a Princess
. . . even though everyone told him it would be a disaster – and it was. But before the affairs and bitter split, Lord Snowdon – who has died at 86 – and Princess Margaret were the most dazzling couple of the Sixties
tO the world at large Lord Snowdon, who died yesterday, was a frail figure in a wheelchair who had once been married to the Queen’s sister. In his heyday, though, he was not only a photographer more famous than most of his subjects, but a lover whose liaisons propelled him regularly into the headlines.
Few could resist his looks, charm, wit and intense romantic appeal.
Before he was 25 he had begun to revolutionise theatre photography, which had previously consisted of formulaic, perfectly posed portraits of the stars.
Instead, tony Armstrong- Jones — as his name was before he married Princess Margaret — would prowl among the cast at rehearsals, flitting about in well- worn jeans while snapping away with a small hand-held camera.
the results were blown up into grainy, gritty poster-size shots of the actors in full flow that compelled from across the street or dominated the theatre foyer.
Nothing like it had been seen before — the elderly actress Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies was found up a stepladder one night trying to rip an Armstrong- Jones photograph off the theatre wall and pleading for ‘something more flattering by dear Angus’ [McBean, then the doyen of theatre photographers].
Bread and butter work was provided by the debutantes who flocked to the tiny studio in Pimlico Road — pictures that would later appear in the social pages of glossy magazines. Some became girlfriends. ‘I didn’t fall in love with any of them,’ he told me. ‘But I was often infatuated.’
For along with the charm, the looks, the boundless energy and intense creativity went a highly charged libido. his mainsprings were sex and work.
the latter covered everything from the photography that earned him such a handsome income to his favourite off-duty ploy of ‘making things’, from a lake at his country house to a dog kennel carved like a pagoda.
In private life he was given to ‘compartmentalising’ — keeping friends completely separate. his engagement to Princess Margaret, for instance, was the best-kept royal secret of the last century, a courtship so clandestine that no one, bar a very few, knew of it — certainly not the women with whom he was involved at the time.
equally, he was silent about his own physical condition, always bearing the pain and unpleasantness of his polio and his gradually declining mobility with the utmost fortitude. In all the years I knew him I never once heard him complain.
though few got away without having to pick up the tab for lunch or taxi, he was generous with invitations, presents, time and compassion.
he worked for disabled people and was the first member of the Royal Family to rush to Aberfan after the coal slip disaster of 1966; once there, he visited family after stricken family, silently making cups of tea or just sitting, holding some anguished parent’s hand.
‘he changed everything for a lot of people,’ said Lord tonypandy.
his legendary discretion was one of the reasons he managed to stay on excellent terms with the Royal Family.
the Queen was always the Queen, perfectly friendly, but formal — he always called her Ma’am — but he lunched regularly with the Queen Mother and received invitations to all big royal occasions.
In his archive are jokey letters from Princess Anne, friendly ones from Prince Philip, affectionate ones from the Prince of Wales and Diana.
even Princess Margaret, a few sterilising years after their divorce, would write to him as ‘Darling t’, signing her cards ‘love M’ — as he always called her.
Perhaps his most salient characteristic was, in the words of one friend, ‘an urge to swim against the tide’ in anything — from the way that he would go out shooting (where tweed shooting suits and caps were de rigueur) in a poloneck sweater and carrying an umbrella, to his demands in restaurants for something that was not on the menu.
Antony Charles Robert ArmstrongJones was born on Friday, March 7, 1930. his mother, the former Anne Messel, was a noted beauty and sister of the brilliant stage and set designer Oliver Messel.
She was so socially ambitious that she was nicknamed tugboat Annie — ‘because she went from peer to peer’ — and glided along the surface of life like a dragonfly.
When tony was five his parents divorced. three weeks later Anne married Michael Parsons, the sixth earl of Rosse. From then on, tony and his older sister Susan — the person to whom he was closer than any other — took second place in Anne’s affections to her two sons by Rosse, a distancing that affected his whole emotional development.
his childhood was spent shuttling between two households.
there was the outdoor life with his father Ronald Armstrong-Jones QC at the family home, Plas Dinas, near Caernarfon, North Wales, where barbecues on the beach and messing about with boats was the norm.
And then there was the grandeur of the Rosse stately home, Birr Castle in Co. Offaly, Ireland, where the children had their own suite of rooms and had to enter the dining room by a different door from the adults.
the most influential male figure in his life was his beloved gay uncle Oliver. tony, fascinated by Oliver’s work and creative talent, spent as much time as he could in the high camp atmosphere of Oliver’s house in Pelham Place, Chelsea — helping make set models, masks and pieces of furniture — where he was admired by many of Oliver’s set.
Inventiveness started early. At eton, where he revived the moribund Photographic Society, he made tiny crystal wireless sets (the boys were then forbidden radios) that he sold for half a crown each, a gadget for rolling cigarettes and an alarm system to warn him if anyone was approaching his room.
At 16 he developed polio, then lifethreatening, spending six months in Liverpool Infirmary — where his mother failed to visit him. It left him with a slight limp and a determination to build up his physique.
At Cambridge, where he read architecture, he coxed the eight in their epic three-and-a-half length victory over Oxford in the 1950 Boat Race — the boat had a rudder designed by tony and a calibrated timepiece he’d made from a darkroom timer that set the stroke rate.
But the university did not appreciate the hours spent on the water to the detriment of his work and he was asked to go down for a year. (‘Not sent down,’ he’d explain carefully. ‘All the same, I thought it a waste of time to go back.’)
to his parents’ horror, he told them he wanted to become a photographer. Photography did not then have the status it does today and for someone with a public school education, it was just Not Done.
When he took the wedding photographs of the hon Colin tennant (later Lord Glenconner) and his bride Lady Anne Coke, daughter of the earl of Leicester and a great friend of Princess Margaret, he was shown to the tradesmen’s entrance of holkham hall.
Along with his creativity went his libido. ‘he was the randiest man I ever knew,’ said one colleague.
In his early days as a young photographer there were the beautiful debutantes, models and actresses he photographed for the society pages. Most notable among them was his first real love, the tiny, exquisite actress Jacqui Chan.
At 26, his career as a royal
Tony didn’t tell his other women he was engaged
photographer began — the Queen had seen and admired his photographs of the children of her great friends Lord and Lady Rupert Nevill — but it was not for another four years that he and her sister Margaret met and fell in love.
The scene was an intimate dinner party given by the Princess’s lady- in-waiting, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish (aunt of the present Duke of Devonshire) at her mother, the widowed Duchess’s house in Chelsea. Tony, who knew Lady Elizabeth through a mutual friend, had been asked because she thought he might ‘ amuse’ the Princess. It was the beginning of a series of secret trysts and mysterious assignations that caused a rift between Tony and the long-suffering Jacqui.
Sometimes the Princess would come to his small studio in Pimlico Road, entering through a littleknown door in the road behind that led to the studio courtyard.
Sometimes he would whisk her to the ‘secret’ room he had acquired at 59 Rotherhithe Street.
Here swans floated past the window at high tide, the white walls were dominated by an 18th-century portrait of an admiral he had bought for £1 in a junk shop and the loo on the landing was thoughtfully supplied with lilac toilet paper.
To the Princess, used to the rigid formality of Palace life, their dates — including a visit to an East End pub — were all thrillingly different from the smart dinner parties, theatres and nightclubs to which her circle of land- owning, aristocratic admirers had taken her.
A further bond was their shared love of the arts.
Margaret — beautiful, wilful, passionate, haloed with the mystique of royalty — was the ultradesirable figure of her day. No man on whom she turned her wonderful violet-blue eyes could have resisted. Tony certainly couldn’t.
‘You will ruin your career,’ said his father. His best friend Jocelyn Stevens cabled him: ‘Never was there a more ill-fated assignment.’
Tony, always bent on following his own path and madly in love, took no notice. Noel Coward summed up the Snowdon wedding in three words: ‘Sex. Sex. And Sex.’
At first the marriage was blissful. The Snowdons were the iconic couple of the Sixties, the centre of a glittering circle of novelists, writers, actors, politicians, dancers, beauties, inventors.
Tony drove an open Aston Martin, introduced the fashion of white polo-necks for evening under a dinner jacket instead of a black tie — and went back to work.
He was attached to the Design Council, designed the aviary for the London Zoo, did magazine photography and made TV films.
His portraits were collectors’ pieces; his sensitive photographs of old, poor or disabled people gave these subjects a moving dignity and respect as human beings.
Their son David (Viscount Linley) was born on November 3, 1961, their daughter Sarah — now Lady Sarah Chatto — on May 1, 1964. Soon afterwards, the cracks in their marriage began to show.
In many ways they were perfect partners, from the intense mutual physicality of their relationship to their shared sense of humour, ability to make each other laugh, their joint tastes for ballet, theatre, waterskiing, swimming and sunbathing.
But both were used to being centre stage — and each wanted their own way.
The Princess, as the Queen’s sister, was not used to contradiction, while Tony’s sunny manner, wit and easy charm concealed an intensely manipulative streak coupled with a ruthless determination that could persuade, cajole or occasionally bully almost anyone into doing what he wanted.
Nor did he enjoy the irritations of royal life.
The Princess’s maid, Ruby Gordon, would hardly admit his existence. She would wake ‘ her’ Princess with an early morning cup of tea — but never bring one for him.
The children’s nanny hated him coming to the nursery and would often flounce out of the room saying ‘I’ll go to the Queen,’ if he crossed her.
Margaret found herself miserable as they drifted apart.
She detested Old House, the large Sussex cottage he inherited from his uncle Oliver, partly because of the lack of privacy — it was far too small for her maid and detective to have separate quarters — partly because she said it was haunted.
She, and one of her detectives, had seen a man in 18th- century riding dress and a cravat walk
‘He was the randiest man I ever met’
through the sitting room past them. Tony, on the other hand, was much happier at Old House than at Kensington Palace, rolling up his shirt sleeves, shooting rabbits in the hedgerow, going for a swim in the nearby lake, making anything from a fake Palladian frontage for the summerhouse to a near invisible clock hidden in a crystal ball.
Amid rancour, public rows and extra-marital affairs the marriage disintegrated. She had her freezing royal stare, he was quicker-witted and more merciless; both sought comfort with others.
Margaret had well-documented flings with the society pianist Robin Douglas-Home and a handsome Cambridge friend of Tony’s, vineyard owner Anthony Barton.
Tony’s relationships were longer and stronger — a long love affair with beautiful model Lady Jackie Rufus Isaacs, daughter of Lord Reading and a Sussex neighbour.
At the same time (‘I believe in serial and simultaneous,’ he told me), former girlfriends were contacted.
Meanwhile, Princess Margaret had met Roddy Llewellyn, in appearance a younger, better-looking version of Tony and considerably kinder to her. Their affair became known through a photograph of them together on the Caribbean island of Mustique (or ‘Mistake’ as Tony always called it), and in 1976 Tony and Margaret separated.
Tony, filming in Australia with Lucy LindsayHogg, the woman who became his second wife, issued a dignified statement.
Within 18 months he had begun an affair with a journalist, Ann Hills, that would last for 25 years. His divorce from the Princess was finalised in May 1978 and in December 1980 he married Lucy.
Ann Hills, who had known nothing of the relationship, was devastated, but decided to continue their liaison, even though the Snowdons had a daughter, Frances, the following year.
In 1981, during The International Year of Disabled People, Tony started the Snowdon Award Scheme to help handicapped young men and women, founding it on the £14,000 royalties he had earned from royal photographs during his marriage. Then, in Decem- ber 1998, the different strands of his life began to fray.
On New Year’s Eve, Ann Hills, dressed in a black dress and high-heeled shoes, lay down on her roof terrace to die after drinking a cocktail of champagne and sleeping pills.
With Tony’s the last voice on her answering machine, it was not long before their affair became public knowledge.
Lucy, discreet, loyal and courageous, remained by his side.
However, the next revelation, only 18 months later, was to prove too much. Tony had been invited to guest edit the November 6, 1997 edition of Country Life ( celebrating its centenary that year) and had begun work on it in early spring, 1997.
That May, he had begun an affair with its features editor, baronet’s daughter Melanie Cable-Alexander, 34, who had been deputed to act as his assistant. On April 30, 1998, their son Jasper was born.
It was too much for Lucy, who moved out of the pretty house in Launceston Place, West London, camping with friends until she found a flat.
Divorce proceedings were put into motion but halted after the decree nisi was given so that both — as Tony frequently reminded people — were still married.
As his lameness increased, his life was spent mainly between two rooms: his downstairs studio, where he spent the day, seated on a chair with casters in front of his desk with its photographs of all those he loved or had loved, and the kitchen, its glittering antique crystal chandelier further evidence of his eclectic taste.
At night he would haul himself upstairs by a rope banister to the blue and white bedroom — usually accompanied by whichever woman was in favour.
A telephone was always to hand to counter any hint of boredom. ‘Hullo? It’s Tony. Ring me. Lots of love,’ was the peremptory message I and countless others would find on their phone.
I quickly learned that it was no good asking if there was a reason why he had rung — what he wanted was news and gossip. His own life provided more than enough.
His lover committed suicide on New Year’s Eve