Margaret poked her tongue out at Jeremy Thorpe. ‘You voted against our money,’ she whined
Concluding the riotously indiscreet memoirs of Britain’s ‘gossip-in-chief’
FOR decades, Fleet Street society diarist Kenneth Rose mingled with the Royal Family and the nation’s movers and shakers. But he kept the juiciest gossip for his private journals — which are about to be published. Our extract yesterday revealed nuggets about the Queen and Prince Philip. Today, Rose spills the beans on Prince Margaret and her glamorous young beau . . . FEBRUARY 26, 1960
PReSS Agency reports official engagement of Princess Margaret to Antony ArmstrongJones. Staggering.
MARCH 10, 1960
I KnOW Tony Armstrong- Jones a little. I taught him at eton 12 years ago and found him intelligent and agreeable. At the end of one half, he gave me some not very good photos he secretly took of me in school as I held forth: I thought it a good joke. Since then I have seen him from time to time. But of course he has a past which needs living down.
MAY 6, 1960
PRInCeSS Margaret’s wedding. A lovely sunny day. Superb seat in Abbey. See John Betjeman wandering about gazing up at details of architecture.
Then the Royal Family. The Queen has a sulking Queen Victoria face throughout the entire service — not a ghost of a smile. Queen Mother, on the other hand, like a great golden pussycat, full of sad little smiles. Prince Philip full of funny jokes and a great pink flower in coat.
AUGUST 3, 1961
DInneR party at my flat. Martin Gilliat [Queen Mother’s private secretary] stays behind to talk about Princess Margaret and Tony Armstrong-Jones. We agree that at the present time of economic difficulty, some gesture waiving the £50,000 to be spent on their new house in Kensington Palace is needed. Their popularity is lower than ever.
Martin says John Griffin [Queen Mother’s press secretary] thinks I am the only person apart from Princess Margaret who has any influence on Tony. And Martin thinks it would be wise if I talked to Tony about this.
AUGUST 4, 1961
I TELEPHONE Tony to ask to see him. ‘It’s nothing awful, is it?’ he nervously enquires. I agree to see him before lunch at their present house in Kensington Palace. Wearing a check jacket, trousers, suede boots, no coat and huge spectacles. He is rather deaf from having been to his shooting school this morning in readiness for Balmoral.
Leads me up to his bed-sitting room. The house is so small, he says, that ‘for the first time in my life, I have no room of my own except a bedroom’.
Then Princess Margaret comes in, warm in her welcome. But she tiresomely interrupts everything Tony says.
I launch into my set speech on the need for them to make some gesture towards the economic needs of the country, such as announcing that they have asked for the postponement of renovations to their larger KP house.
This is not at all well received. With a shrug of her shoulders, the Princess whines: ‘We must have a roof over our heads.’
And when, a few minutes later, I am alone again with Tony, he bursts out: ‘She has given 20 years of service to the country, works very hard indeed and deserves something in return.’
I don’t bother to point out that she is still only 30, and already receives £15,000 a year from the State for a far from heavy burden of public duties.
Instead, Tony takes me to see the terrible tumbledown state of 1A, which the Ministry of Works has wantonly neglected. Inside it is no more than a ruin, with gaping holes in the floorboards.
Agree with Tony that the public has no idea of the state of the place. He asks me to draft a letter for him to send to the Minister of Works.
Rose duly wrote Tony’s letter for him, pointing out that regardless of who went to live at 1A, the Ministry would have to spend £50,000 to stop this ‘magnificent example of Wren architecture crumbling to ruins.’ The Commons subsequently approved a payout of £85,000.
OCTOBER 11, 1961
On THe subject of Tony Armstrong- Jones’s peerage, Strutt [Sir Austin Strutt, deputy under secretary at the Home Office] tells me that Prince Philip was against it.
Princess Margaret not only insisted, but made herself quite ill with rage when she learned that the peerage patent would not be ready in time for Tony to carry out an official engagement in Glasgow as earl of Snowdon.
OCTOBER 24, 1961
LETTER to Armstrong-Jones.
‘It was very pleasant to hear your voice again today. I am only sorry that our conversation should so often be about the misdemeanours of the Press.
‘May I offer a word of general advice. now that you have become a member of the Royal Family, you are going to be perpetually exposed to a great deal of comment in the newspapers. Indeed, if there were not an intense public interest in even the most trivial details of royal life, we should soon have a republic.
‘Mostly, I think, the comment will be fair. But sometimes, as you have good cause to know, it will be nasty and malicious. But anybody who chooses to enter public life — which in a sense you have done — must accept this nagging criticism in parts of the Press as inevitable.
‘Harold nicolson once told me that when he first became an MP in 1935, Stanley Baldwin, who was then Prime Minister, gave him this advice: a) Always be nice to the Opposition. b) Cancel your subscription to a Press-cutting agency. c) Grow another skin.
‘I am sure that you always follow a). You should certainly follow b). As for c), I expect it just grows with time.’
NOVEMBER 16, 1961
JOHn GRIFFIn [Queen Mother’s press secretary] to dine at the flat. He says the Household at Clarence House are very bored indeed with Tony. When drinks are being poured out, he expects this to be done for him by the Household, and so on. They are also much shocked by his extraordinary dress.
JUNE 20, 1962
PAM BeRRY [ wife of Daily Telegraph owner Baron Hartwell] telephones, full of a story about Princess Margaret and Tony. Apparently, they tried to photograph the Chichester Festival Theatre, but were driven away by Laurence Olivier with rude cries of ‘no Press, no Press!’
DECEMBER 13, 1971
LIBeRAL Party leader Jeremy Thorpe comes to dine. He tells me that at the State Banquet the other day at Buckingham Palace, Princess Margaret put out her tongue at him.
When he raised his eyebrows in interrogation, she whined: ‘You voted against our money.’
DECEMBER 22, 1971
PRInCeSS Margaret telephones to say how much she would like to come to my party. She is so exactly like Jeremy Thorpe’s imitation of her that I almost say: ‘For heaven’s sake, do stop clowning!’
FEBRUARY 8, 1978
PRInCeSS Margaret comes to my flat for a drink. We talk of learning languages. She says she does not know any German.
‘You see, my mother and father made the mistake of beginning my German lessons in 1939. As I determined during the war never to talk to a German again, I didn’t get very far.’
ExTRACTEd from Who’s In, Who’s Out: The Journals Of Kenneth Rose Volume 1, 1944-1979, edited by d.R. Thorpe, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on November 1 at £30. © The Executors of the Estate of Kenneth Rose, Lord Waldegrave and Marie-Louise Spencer Hamilton 2018. Editorial matter © C.d.R. Thorpe. To buy this book for £24 (20 per cent off), call 0844 571 0640 or go to mailshop.co.uk/books. Offer valid until November 6, 2018. p&p is free on orders over £15. Spend £30 on books and get free premium delivery.