Princess Margaret’s scandalous affair with Group Captain Peter Townsend

She was a 17-year-old princess, he was her father’s equerry, 15 years her senior – and what happened next nearly imploded the monarchy.

Princess Margaret’s love life would hit the headlines many times but the first, and arguably the most scandalous relationship, was her first.

The man who captured the young princess’ heart would tragically be a person to whom a marriage would have cost her her home, family and country. Margaret’s romance with Group Captain Peter Townsend was passionate, lengthy and absolutely forbidden.

A teenage Margaret first fell devastatingly in love far, far away from the grey skies in England. It is widely reported that it was during the royal family’s 1947 tour of South Africa that the then-17-year-old developed feelings for Townsend, one of the King’s courtiers.

Their tragic love affair was one of the key plotlines in season 2 of the Netflix’s drama The Crown.

Margaret was just 17 when she fell in love with Townsend, who was 32. Picture: Supplied

Throughout the three-month trip, “we rode together every morning in that wonderful country, in marvellous weather,” the Princess reportedly told a friend, with the royal slowly falling for the dashing war hero.

Their love had, from the start, had the makings of a Shakespearean tragedy: He was not only 15 years her senior (and had first met her when she was only 14) and worked for her father but most shockingly, was already married. In 1921 he had wed Rosemary Pawle and they had two sons.

Throughout the 40s their love for one another deepened as they conducted their love affair clandestinely, keeping her family in the dark.

After the King’s death in 1952, the couple found “increasing solace in one another’s company … the King’s death had left a greater void than ever in Princess Margaret’s life, while my own was clouded by the failure of my marriage”, Townsend wrote in his 1978 autobiography, Time and Chance.

Later that same year, Townsend was granted a divorce (his wife had been having an affair with John de Laszlo, the son of a renowned society painter), removing one roadblock to the couple having a future. Around this time, according to Townsend, he and Margaret officially revealed their secret romance to the royal family, to very mixed results.

The Queen Mother is reported to have burst into tears when her younger daughter told her that she was in love with the family’s loyal retainer. The Queen is said to have reacted with more equanimity but was far from thrilled, hoping that the affair would naturally run its course. When Townsend told his boss, the Queen’s Private Secretary, Sir Alan Lascelles, the reaction was blunt. “You must be either mad or bad,” Lascelles is reported to have said.

For months, the pair kept their romance hidden, knowing her family – and the British public – would disapprove. Picture: Supplied

Despite the fact that both Margaret and Townsend were single, their path to marriage was complicated. Under the laws of the time, should Margaret wed before the age of 25 she needed the Queen’s approval, while after that age she needed parliament’s consent to wed.

Her sister asked Margaret to wait until after her coronation in June in 1953 before pushing ahead with a potential marriage. She also insisted on removing Townsend from the Queen Mother’s staff, a situation Margaret swiftly solved by adding her paramour to her household as an extra equerry. That same year, Queen Mary passed away at age 85. A staunch moralist, her death meant one less potential objector in the Windsor clan.

While rumours about Margaret and Townsend’s romance had whirled in London society, the relationship between the royal family and the press was significantly different to today. The papers observed a self-imposed blackout when it came to publishing personal details about the monarch and their family, thus the public were unaware of the intrigue going on behind the palace gates.

All of that changed at the Queen’s coronation.

As Margaret followed her sister out of Westminster Abbey she saw Townsend. In one accidental moment, the Princess revealed the true nature of their connection when she brushed a small piece of lint off his RAF uniform. Cameras caught the intimate, telling moment and now the world knew of their romance.

Townsend was a close member of the royal family’s staff, travelling almost everywhere with them. Picture: AP Photo/PA

The news ricocheted around the world, with newspapers, radio broadcasts and politicians feverishly debating the shocking pairing. “It is quite unthinkable that a Royal Princess, third in line of succession to the throne, should even contemplate a marriage with a man who has been through the divorce courts,” one British editorial thundered. Despite this, the British people were on Margaret’s side, with a Daily Mirror poll finding 95 per cent of people surveyed thought the couple should be allowed to tie the knot.

Hoping to weather the storm, Townsend was swiftly dispatched to Brussels on a two-year posting as an air attache with the Palace hoping that the furore would die down. The distance did nothing to dull their passion however, with the pair writing or phoning nearly daily. Only once during this time did they meet, with Townsend being smuggled back into London for a brief, but joyous, reunion with Margaret.

With his official European stint over in 1955, Townsend returned to England weeks after Margaret turned 25. They would now be free to marry, should the cabinet approve. Townsend returned to be greeted by a wall of cameras in September of that year at the remote airport he landed at and was immediately besieged by the media in frantic scenes that would become all too familiar to the royal family. When he and Margaret decamped to the country house of a friend hoping to escape the media melee, the press staked them out, with reporters trying to bribe the family’s butler – and even their seven-year-old daughter with promises of chocolate should she reveal what was going on behind closed doors.

Margaret loved Peter passionately, and was dismayed that her family did not approve. Picture: Supplied

The government finally came back with a decision: If Margaret did wed Townsend, she would lose her title and her income, could not marry in a Church and would have to agree to live overseas for a designated period of time. It was an incredibly steep price to pay for love.

Margaret was faced with a terrible choice: Farewell the luxurious life she had always known, along with her friends and family, for a life of relative penury, exiled to a foreign country and cut off from everyone she loved. As she and Townsend mulled the decision, the royal family, the government and the country faced what was shaping up to be a second crisis horrifying familiar to the King Edward VIII’s 1936 abdication.

Finally, Margaret and Townsend reached an answer. On October 31, they said goodbye to one another for decades to come. “We were both exhausted, mentally, emotionally, physically. We felt mute and numbed at the centre of this maelstrom,” he later wrote.

He flew back to Brussels on that day and she put out a heart-rending statement, which started: “I would like it to be known that I have decided not to marry Group Captain Townsend.”

Her choice was hailed as a noble act of self-sacrifice, a woman putting the Crown and her sister’s reign ahead of her own happiness.

(He later married a Belgian woman named Marie-Luce Jamagne in 1959.)

In 1993, nearly 40 years since they had last seen each other, Townsend arrived at Kensington Palace to have lunch with Margaret. Afterwards, her longtime friend and lady-in-waiting Lady Anne Glenconner asked her, “How did it go?”

“He hasn’t changed at all,” she tellingly said.

Daniela Elser is a royal expert and freelance writer with 15 years’ experience who has written for some of Australia’s best print and digital media brands.