The princess and the snapper

At the age of 30, Princess Margaret was beautiful, lively, flirtatious -- and still single. That she had star quality was not in doubt, but she was widely perceived as a tragic figure who had been denied the opportunity to marry the man she loved. The end of her love affair with Group Captain Peter Townsend had been played out in public, and even republicans could see that she had become an object of ghoulish fascination.

At the age of 30, Princess Margaret was beautiful, lively, flirtatious -- and still single. That she had star quality was not in doubt, but she was widely perceived as a tragic figure who had been denied the opportunity to marry the man she loved. The end of her love affair with Group Captain Peter Townsend had been played out in public, and even republicans could see that she had become an object of ghoulish fascination.

Margaret nevertheless managed to enjoy a few dalliances, undetected by the press. And in February 1960, most people were taken by surprise when the Queen Mother announced the engagement of her “beloved daughter” to society photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones. Public reaction was enthusiastic. The pretty, smiley Princess was not going to be left on the shelf, after all.

There were exceptions to the general rejoicing, though. Among the first sceptics was one of the groom’s oldest friends, the publisher Jocelyn Stevens, who employed Armstrong-Jones on his magazines. He cabled his friend from America: “Never has there been a more ill-fated assignment.” Noël Coward, during a lunch with Marina, Duchess of Kent, and her daughter, Princess Alexandra, detected a certain “froideur” when the subject of the engagement came up.

And novelist Kingsley Amis was openly mocking. “Such a symbol of the age we live in,” he sneered, “when a royal Princess, famed for her devotion to all that is most vapid and mindless, is united with a dog-faced, tight-jeaned fotog of fruitarian tastes such as can be found in dozens in any pseudo-arty drinking cellar in London. They’re made for each other.”

Elsewhere, there was considerable relief that the lucky man was not from the old “Princess Margaret set”. The beginning of the Swinging ’60s was no time for dukes’ sons and chinless wonders. Nor was there any suggestion of “convenience” or “arrangement”: the young couple were very obviously in love.

They were, in many ways, well-suited – sharing a love of the arts and a strong streak of irreverence. But the irreverence was inevitably more pronounced in him than in her. Margaret was naturally cheeky, prone to mockery and mimicry, but, in the final analysis, she was a king’s daughter and a queen’s sister – two facts she seldom forgot, and then not for long.

He, on the other hand, was an outsider. Right from the start, he had misgivings about marrying into the royal family. His friend, the journalist John Moynihan, recalls that in the days before the announcement, he and Armstrong-Jones had shared a girlfriend and “(Tony) wept on her bare breasts when he revealed that he was dreading getting engaged to ‘royalty’”.

Even in the early days, the marriage was never easy or straightforward. The Princess’s staff, long accustomed to dealing with only her, regarded her husband as an interloper. They talked about him “raiding the larder” or “making off with the car”, as if he were not entitled to help himself to food in his own house or to drive the Rolls-Royce in his own garage.

Armstrong-Jones – who was given the title Earl of Snowdon shortly after the marriage, and has gone by the name Snowdon ever since – had particular problems with Ruby MacDonald, the Princess’s bossy dresser (Ruby’s sister, Bobo, performed a similar service for the Queen). It was Ruby’s custom to bring up an early-morning tray for her royal mistress. Even today, Snowdon looks back with disbelief on the tray routine. Each morning, it came; each morning it held just a single teacup and a single glass of orange juice. There was nothing for him.

Eventually, there was a battle of wills and the dresser was dismissed. The royal family, though, were less easily dealt with than a stroppy servant. Along with their associates, they treated Snowdon as if he had come from “the gutter”, he told me.

The use of the word “gutter” seemed an extreme way of expressing the gulf that existed between him and his in-laws. In our conversations, he used it often and with feeling. Certainly, when they announced their engagement, there was a definite sense that Princess Margaret was marrying “beneath herself”. The Duke of Gloucester apparently greeted Harold Macmillan at Sandringham with the words: “Thank heavens you’ve come, Prime Minister. The Queen’s in a terrible state – there’s a fellow called Jones in the billiard room who wants to marry her sister.”

But those who mattered, namely the Queen and the Queen Mother, had in fact raised no doubts about the suitability of the match. And, anyway, Armstrong-Jones’s background would have been considered by most people as upper-class, or at worst upper-middle. His father was a wealthy QC and his mother was a countess – married, second time around, to the Earl of Rosse. By average standards, he was almost grand.

But that didn’t stop royalty and a certain sort of aristocratic courtier from sneering at Armstrong-Jones’s relatively newly double-barrelled name, his supposedly common Welsh ancestry and his lowly occupation. They scoffed that he had no idea how to deal with servants – such as Ruby – because he had never had any of his own.

Such condescension annoyed him, particularly when he visited Balmoral for the first time. He didn’t fish, which the family didn’t hold against him. After all, what would a mere photographer be doing with fishing? It was also assumed – correctly – that he wouldn’t shoot.

But the new Earl of Snowdon was a competitive little man and, back in London, he signed up at a shooting school. When he next returned to Balmoral he was able to shoot rather better than most of the royal party. “They hated that even more,” he recalls with a cheerful smile.

At official functions, there was embarrassment over where to place this new commoner-appendage – on the platform or in the gangway? On a tour of the Wedgwood porcelain factory, the instructions were for him to walk around “a dozen yards in the wake of Her Royal Highness”.

After two years of this kind of treatment, Snowdon decided that he wasn’t cut out to be a conventional royal consort. So he accepted a full-time job as a photographer on The Sunday Times colour magazine, a new publication that was edited by his old Cambridge friend, Mark Boxer.

At this stage, the Snowdons were still openly in love – and unable to keep their hands off each other, according to friends. It was noted that on an official visit to Jamaica they spent most of their spare time in bed together. “Good for them!” said the historian Lady Antonia Fraser, who was on the same trip.

In their social life, the couple enjoyed the company of interesting but – as far as royalty was concerned – unlikely friends. There was a particularly surreal dinner at the home of the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan – renowned for being the first man to say “f..k” on television. The other guests were the comedian Peter Cook and his wife, and playwright Harold Pinter and his then wife, actress Vivien Merchant.

The evening got off to a bad start when Merchant was introduced to the Princess and merely extended a vague hand while continuing her conversation with Cook and remaining seated. At dinner, Merchant sat next to Snowdon, who had just taken a picture of her as Lady Macbeth. Jabbing a finger at Princess Margaret, she told him: “The only reason we artistes let you take our pictures is because of her.”

Everyone heard, including Margaret. They all started to drink “steadily”.

After dinner, Tynan decided to show blue movies. He had warned Snowdon in advance, who retorted that it would do his wife good. “The atmosphere began to freeze,” recorded Tynan, when he screened a silent film about convicts in love. It was full of penises, intercut with lyrical fantasies set in undergrowth. “No one was laughing now,” Tynan recalled.

Mercifully, Peter Cook came to the rescue by supplying an improvised commentary in the style of a Cadbury’s Flake ad. “Within five minutes, we were all helplessly rocking with laughter, Princess M included,” wrote Tynan.

This was all very sophisticated and very ’60s, but the relationship between the Princess and her husband soon became a roller-coaster of highs and lows. By the late ’60s they had two much-loved children, but even their friends could see that the marriage was ailing. On one occasion, Lieutenant Colonel “Johnny” Johnston, an old friend of the Princess, arrived for dinner. Afterwards, Snowdon disappeared. When it was time to leave, Johnston told me, “The Princess and I went off for me to say goodnight to Tony (Snowdon). We went into his room and he was on the phone.
“It was obvious he was talking to someone he shouldn’t have been. He had been caught in the telephonic equivalent of in flagrante delicto.”

Johnston learnt the next day that, after his departure, the situation had quickly deteriorated. Words had been exchanged and objects thrown. The marriage was clearly in disarray. One reason was that Snowdon was often away on photographic assignments, where he indulged in a series of casual liaisons. Margaret, too, had a brief fling – with Snowdon’s old Cambridge friend Anthony Barton.

Barton happened to be godfather to the couple’s daughter, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, so it was practically a family affair. The Princess later confessed tearfully to Barton’s wife, which was probably ill-advised.

A year or so later, Margaret had a brief but passionate liaison with the aristocratic nightclub pianist Robin Douglas-Home, who subsequently committed suicide. Then in 1969, Snowdon embarked on a serious affair with Lady Jacqueline Rufus-Isaacs, daughter of the Marquess of Reading. Life at Kensington Palace, where the Snowdons lived, had degenerated into “open warfare”, according to one of her ladies-in-waiting.

But the lowest point of the marriage was reached when the couple was invited to visit Australia in 1975. The invitation from Canberra was addressed to the Princess. “If Lord Snowdon were to accompany you, it would give us added pleasure,” it said. Unfortunately, his presence could no longer give any pleasure to his wife. When Snowdon said yes, he would like to go, Margaret said she would cancel the trip. After a tussle, he withdrew, and she went alone.

There were some high points on the tour when it did actually take place. The Princess enjoyed the performance of The Two Pigeons by the Australian Ballet and the chief protocol officer of the Moonee Valley Racing Club praised her “dedication and cooperation” under what he described as “appalling conditions”.

There was also a ticklish occasion when the Princess mulishly told Anne Tennant, her lady-in-waiting, that she was not, as scheduled, going to step on to Bondi Beach, meet the lifeguards and see them demonstrate traditional and modern methods of life-saving. Lady Anne, who had been prepared for trouble, said that she really felt the Princess ought to, because to be seen to be snubbing the lifeguards could be construed as a dreadful insult to the Australian nation.

The Princess insisted and explained that she was wearing the wrong sort of shoes, and the one thing she couldn’t stand was getting sand between her toes. With an air of triumph, Lady Anne said she just happened to have a pair of flat shoes in a bag with her. Princess Margaret conceded defeat and stepped on to the beach.

Later, in the autumn of 1975, there was an encounter in France with the museum director Sir Roy Strong. Strong was delivering a lecture and Princess Margaret was just back from Australia, which she told him she “hated”. She complained that there had been no crowds and the traffic lights had been left on. He noted in his diary that she “raved about Snowdon and how awful he was – alienating the chauffeur and going off at weekends without telling her where or with whom”.

Who was most at fault? There are always two sides in any marriage break-up, but I found it fascinating that so many people I talked to disliked Snowdon in a visceral way. Interestingly, even those who liked him were inclined to blame him more than Princess Margaret for what went wrong. There was also an almost universal sense that, charming though he may have been, he was not easy.

The beginning of the end came in 1973 when Colin Tennant, an old boyfriend of the Princess, introduced her to Roddy Llewellyn, the 26-year-old son of the showjumper Sir Harry Llewellyn. Roddy was 17 years younger than Margaret and good-looking in a slightly androgynous way. They got on spectacularly well, and she soon invited him to Mustique, the tiny Caribbean island where she always felt happiest. The island was then owned by Tennant, who had given a parcel of land to the Princess when she married.

Now, more than four decades on, Snowdon could barely bring himself to hear the name Tennant – or Lord Glenconner, as he became. “That shit,” he said. The wedding gift had been for Margaret alone – “Odd, don’t you think?” said Snowdon.

The house she subsequently had built on Mustique, Les Jolies Eaux, was her favourite place. And it was always off-limits to her husband, who, in any case, preferred to unwind at a cottage in Sussex, south of London. In Mustique, life was relaxed, mildly bohemian, very informal and quite intimate. It was here that Margaret’s relationship with Llewellyn flourished. Before long, it was acknowledged, and even accepted, by many of her close friends.

The split with Snowdon duly came, though not quite as the Princess had planned. One Sunday, fuzzy snaps appeared in a tabloid of Margaret and Llewellyn on Mustique – she in a bikini, he in a swimming costume. The pictures were intimate enough to appear compromising. Snowdon summoned his wife’s private secretary, Nigel Napier, to his office. What was the meaning of this, he demanded to know.

An exasperated Napier told Snowdon not to be ridiculous. He knew perfectly well what the meaning was; the relationship between his wife and Llewellyn had been going on for ages, and Snowdon himself had been having an affair (which would lead to marriage) with television producer Lucy Lindsay-Hogg. Snowdon then buzzed his own secretary, Dorothy Everard, and told her crisply: “Dotty. We’re leaving.” Turning to Napier, he said: “We’ll be out by the end of the week.”

Napier was elated. He had a problem, though: how was he going to relay the news to Princess Margaret on Mustique? Communications on the island were relatively primitive, and there was no secure line. In fine melodramatic mode, he hit on the idea of using a code. So, when he finally made contact with the Princess on the phone, he told her: “Ma’am, I have been talking to Robert and he has given in his notice.”

There was a pause. Then Margaret spoke. “I’m sorry, Nigel. Have you taken leave of your senses? What exactly did you say?”

Very slowly, like a secret agent in an old film, Napier repeated: “Robert has given notice.” Another pause. Only then did the Princess, evidently remembering that her husband’s third Christian name was Robert, cotton on.

“Oh, I see,” she said. “Thank you, Nigel. I think that’s the best news you’ve ever given me.”
True to his word, Snowdon was gone by Friday. The marriage was over. 

Abridged extract from Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled, by Tim Heald,published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, $35. © Tim Heald 2007.

* * *

THE PRINCESS, THE PEACOCK & THE PEA 

In 1978, Princess Margaret was to attend the formal independence ceremony of Tuvalu, which had been part of the British Empire. But things did not go as planned.

An improbable-sounding Foreign Office pair called H.A.H. Cortazzi and J.M.O. Snodgrass were to attend the ceremonies. Later they both recalled the occasion vividly and were united in their adverse reactions to the Australian representative, the foreign minister Andrew Peacock.

“My main memory,” wrote Hugh Cortazzi, “was of the way Andrew Peacock flirted (outrageously?) with the Princess before we ever got to Tuvalu. I found him arrogant and conceited.”

John Snodgrass was also ill-disposed towards Peacock, who had a reputation as a ladies’ man. “He attached himself from the outset to the attractive lady representing the Americans. When the time came for the farewell gifts, the Tuvaluans evidently assumed she was Mr Peacock’s wife. To their embarrassment, and the amusement of many of the guests, the gift for the Australians was presented to them where they were sitting together. I don’t know what happened to the gift for the American representative.”

In the event, the Princess left early. In the middle of the night before the ceremonies, the phone rang in Lord Napier’s cabin. It was the Princess and she was barely audible. “Thank heaven you’re there,” she began. She was ill. Very.

The ship’s doctor was summoned and diagnosed probable viral pneumonia. He recommended she be flown to Sydney, where she could be hospitalised and X-rayed. If gentle convalescence was all that was required Sydney would be fine, for she knew the governor of NSW, Sir Roden Cutler, the doughty holder of the Victoria Cross, and his wife, and she had stayed in their official residence before.

Her few quiet days with the Cutlers seemed to work wonders. The X-rays were clear but the reality was less comfortable. The Princess took such a dislike to the Cutlers that Lord Napier had to phone our man in Japan, Sir Michael Wilford, and ask if the royal party could come early because any more time spent in the vice-regal lodge was likely to provoke an incident.

A lady-in-waiting confirmed that the Cutlers were unbelievably stuffy. Every time the Princess came down the front stairs the couple would be standing rigidly to attention, facing away from the royal presence. The instant the Princess’s foot hit the floor they would turn to face her. The Governor would perform a courtly bow and his wife would curtsy. They would then escort their guest to the drawing room and wait standing until she sat in the special royal chair with which she was provided. Princess Margaret could not stand it.

There is some dispute about this. Lady Cutler did not win favours but Margaret was impressed by Sir Roden’s VC, his height and military bearing

Life with the Cutlers was so oppressive that Lord Napier telephoned a friend of the Princess, David Wilkinson (see story below), and asked if he could bring her and her entourage to dinner one night in order to escape “the excessive formality” of Government House.

Wilkinson still remembers the Princess winking at him that night and saying that the last few days chez Cutler had been “like being locked up in a very formal boarding school”.
Tim Heald

* * *

MARGARET AND ME

An Australian architect tells of his friendship with the Princess.

Princess Margaret must have had a thing for gardeners. At the same time her affair with landscape gardening student Roddy Llewellyn – 17 years her junior – was regularly on front pages around the former empire, she was also hitting the town with an even younger Australian landscaping student.

David Wilkinson, now a 57-year-old Melbourne architect, had never spoken about his friendship with the fading but still glamorous Princess 30 years ago. It was a world before Diana Spencer, when, if you wanted royal scandal, you went to Margaret and her then failing marriage to Snowdon.

Wilkinson, who recalls Margaret as funny, artistic and temperamental, squired her around London and to house parties in the country as her life descended into a tabloid hell in 1976 and 1977. And even though they took no special precautions to keep the relationship secret, no one seemed to notice him.

Asked to spell out the exact nature of the friendship, Wilkinson replies: “No, no look, that’s for readers of the book (Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled) to judge. It’s not for me to comment on.”

When author Tim Heald contacted him, it was the first time he’d spoken publicly about the relationship. Unfortunately, the book does not bring further illumination, but Wilkinson was happy to elaborate when contacted by The Weekend Australian Magazine.

He met Margaret during her 1975 Australian tour, at the country home of Edwina and Peter Baillieu, Milton Park, near Bowral in the NSW southern highlands. Ms Baillieu said Margaret was a very pleasant house guest. She was still married to Snowdon, but their rift was common knowledge.

Wilkinson says he only got talking to her the next day at the nearby house of Sir Jock and Lady Marjorie Pagan, Kennerton Green, with its famous formal gardens. It was former military man Sir Jock who taught him the protocols of dealing with royalty.

For example, one must never initiate a conversation with a royal, one must wait until a subject comes up. That’s why, when the conversation turned to green issues as the rain poured down outside, he couldn’t stop her. “At that stage I was about to leave and go and do this landscaping course in England and she said she’d like to help me and that’s how it all started ...

“Sir Jock used to brief me about how to write to her. How to sign off absolutely by the book. That probably impressed her. I wouldn’t have known as an architect growing up in Sydney how to get the protocol right. If the protocol’s right they like you a bit better. She was very, very protective of those royal traditions.”

Just before Wilkinson arrived in London, Margaret’s affair with Llewellyn was exposed in the media, quickly followed by her formal separation from her husband. Speculation swirled about Llewellyn and whether she might marry him, but during this period (1976-77), Wilkinson was also hitting the town with Margaret.

“We just got along really well and we used to go off to things together (always in a group, he later stresses), but I think it was, you know, just that she was without an escort. An escort in London for divorced women is pretty sought after. Even now there are a lot of people who need an escort.”

On their weekends away, it was as if he had stepped into a P.G. Wodehouse novel. He had to borrow formal attire to dress for dinner. After dinner there’d be charades, or perhaps singing – Princess Margaret excelled at both. “She was a great mimic and a great actress,” he says. He tells of a weekend party “at a little house up north called Chicheley Hall”, at which there were six male and six female guests and he was “just the balancing male for Princess Margaret”. Tory MP Norman St John-Stevas dropped in for drinks on the Sunday evening, just as he and Margaret were leaving. “He just looked me up and down and said, ‘Oooh, so you’re Roddy’s replacement.’ A rather cryptic comment from an elder statesman.”

Heald says it’s not surprising that Wilkinson’s presence was not picked up by the media. Citing his experience of charting the life of Prince Philip, who found it easy to slip under the media radar, Heald said: “It’s not as difficult as you might think to stay private.” Llewellyn, on the other hand, was trying to launch a singing career and publicise a nightclub he part-owned.

Wilkinson recalls that after the house party he travelled back to London with Margaret. As they approached Kensington Palace, they saw a street protest. She ducked down. “Don’t let them see me. They’re protesting against my divorce. They’re still so upset.”
As the chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce drew closer, nearing a row of embassies, Wilkinson started to make out the words on the placards.

“Ma’am,” he said, for he always called her ma’am, “they’re anti-whaling protesters. There are signs saying, ‘Don’t kill the whales’.”

“Oh,” she said.

To Wilkinson, it showed how Margaret was not cut out for public life. “She was really very human, whereas I think her sister would have kept upright and ridden it out. She was more colourful, artistic, temperamental. Those sort of people aren’t good at toeing the line.”

Wilkinson last saw the Princess in 1989 while visiting London with his wife and two young children. “She asked us to lunch at Kensington Palace. She was in great form. It was very much a little at-home lunch.”

Mark Whittaker