Forbidden History - Royal Rebel: The Life of Princess Margaret

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast, we take a look at the life of Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II’s younger sister. Known for her beauty, style and glamorous lifestyle, Margaret was an intriguing figure who broke the royal mould and was often deemed the ‘rebellious royal’. Cast List: Dr. Tracy Borman: Royal Historian & Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces Hallie Rubenhold: Author & Historian James Sherwood: Author & Broadcaster Tony McMahon: Author & Historian Dominic Selwood: Author & Historian Christopher Warwick: Princess Margaret’s Authorised Biographer Giles Pegram: Former Appeals Director, NSPCC Eric Meyers: Narrator  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. Princess Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth II. Famous for her partying and colorful love life that saw her plastered on the front pages of newspapers around the world, she was a fashion icon, a drinker, a smoker, and someone who broke the royal mold. All of that may well be true, but is it only half the story?

In this episode of Forbidden History, we will examine the life of Princess Margaret. We'll discover whether the media has given us a false impression of her, reveal the real reasons her marriage to Lord Snowden broke down, and a secret that was only revealed after her death. And we'll find out if she really was the so-called party princess. The documents that we see in this folder really do tend to rewrite history. This letter paints a very different picture. It tells the historical version that we've all been led to believe on its head. There are so many people who could stand up and say that Princess Margaret was a decent human being,

a very kind and loving mother, but they never complain and never explain, and that's been drilled into them by the royal families. So Princess Margaret is really left undefended. Margaret wasn't just a sort of heavy drinking, chain-smoking party girl. She was a lover of music. She was hugely compassionate. She was involved in charity work. And so how well we know the private Margaret is actually quite questionable.

How have the well-worn cliches masked a totally different side to Princess Margaret? Will a look into her private life reveal that her widely publicized affairs with men have unfairly eclipsed her dedication to the affairs of state? And how did her divorce lay the groundwork for the monarchy we know today? This is the life of Princess Margaret. The image most of us have of Princess Margaret arguably dates to the 40s and 50s when she was a young adult. She loved dressing up in the latest fashions, engaging in flirtations and staying out until the early hours of the morning. At the age of 19, she caused a storm by lighting up in

public using her characteristic cigarette holder. Undeniably, she was the total opposite of the rather stayed, hidebound British monarchy. In short, she gave it charm, and the press seized upon it. The press has always liked to create foils. So you have the queen, who is very up, and represents Britain and is good and moral and stands for the Church of England. And then of course you have to have the person who is the shadow side of that. And that's Margaret. And Margaret is the one who is hard drinking, partying, chain smoking, has this string of tragic affairs, this woman who is not in control of herself.

I would imagine that Princess Margaret's life was not half as much fun as it looked, you know, because the tabloids, all they wanted to see was scandal. They wanted to see a very indolent woman enjoying her royal privileges, but actually not paying back in official ribbon cutting and tree planting and all the things that she actually did. You had a kind of clash in the early 1950s between the make-do and mend attitude of the war and Christiane Jor's new look, you know, which had these kind of pinched wastes and all this fabric being used in the dresses, which to some more conservative people seemed quite indecent in an era of rationing. But Margaret championed what was called the new look. It even became called the Margaret look. So in contrast to her more buttoned-up sister the queen, Margaret was a gift to the fashion industry. During this period,

the newspapers were after images of two women that everyone wanted to read about. One was the actress Elizabeth Taylor, and the other was Princess Margaret. But while the young Margaret's lifestyle was certainly getting her attention, it was just the tip of the iceberg of what was to come. And that all began in 1944 with the appointment of an equerry. Princess Margaret's father, King George VI, wanted to honor officers who distinguished themselves during the Second World War. he came up with the idea of appointing such people as his equerry for a period of three months at a time. In March, 1944, the position was given to a tall, slim, dashing former fighter pilot. The royal household loved him, and the king saw him as the son he'd never had.

So he decided to keep him on permanently. And his name was Peter Townsend. Peter Townsend was born in Burma. He went to school at Halebury, which he hated, but he joined the RAF. At 27 he was a wing commander, and in the Second World War, a very successful one. He shot the first bomber to be brought down in England since the First World War. There he is, you know, the intrepid RAF pilot in the thick of battle, shooting down Measures Schmitz from, you know, his little hurricane,

and then being decorated for gallantry, the medals pinned on his chest, and then what does he do? He sells the medals to help children. who've been affected by the war. I mean, he is the classic wartime hero. Townsend and Margaret got on particularly well, and so the king sent him to accompany the 18-year-old princess on the first important mission of her royal career.

When in September 1948, she was sent as the king's representative to the inauguration of Crown Princess Juliana as Queen of the Netherlands. For now, relations between the pair were probably, innocent enough. Peter was still married after all, but the press became interested and rumors began to spread. The point about Peter Townsend was that he was old enough to be Princess Margaret's father, and that genuinely was the point that they became close when the King, King George the 6th, died, by which time Peter Townsend's marriage was faltering, to say the least, and I do believe

that Margaret saw him as a father figure. As the train bearing the body of King George 6th arrives in London, hushed crowd stand mutely, as picked members of the King's Grenadier Guards remove the casket before the sorrowing gaze of Britain's new Queen, her mother, and sister. It is a tragic moment for them. King George VI died on the 6th of February, 1952, and Princess Margaret's sister ascended the throne as Queen Elizabeth II. Margaret and the now Queen Mother had to move out of Buckingham Palace to Clarence House. So, was Princess Margaret jealous of her sister becoming queen?

Well, no. Margaret herself tired of the constant comparisons to her sister. In reality, not being queen gave her far more freedom to simply be herself. With the king's death, Peter Townsend became controller to the queen mother, and she and Margaret moved to Clarence House. Margaret and Townsend saw much of each other, and he provided a great amount of comfort to her at this difficult time. The pair grew very close.

Townsend's marriage fell apart, and he and his wife divorced in November 1952. One could say that Peter Townsend got married in haste after the war, as did many couples. They knew that life was short, so they had to grasp it while they could. They would probably get married to somebody who might not automatically be the person that they wanted to spend. that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with,

because life was cheap and life was short after the war. Rumors of a romance between Townsend and the Princess had persisted for some time, but they had always swiftly denied them. But in reality, their love was blossoming. And in April 1953, Townsend proposed marriage to Margaret. This was to begin a very difficult period of Margaret's life, because Townsend was not seen as a suitable match

as a suitable match for the sister of the queen. He was 15 years older, a commoner and a divorcee at a time when the Church of England didn't recognize divorce. Well, you have to remember that we were in the age of deference when Peter Townsend and Princess Margaret's romance blossomed. Divorce at the time in 1952 would have been absolutely unheard of in royal circles. A divorcee couldn't even enter the royal enclosure

at Royal Asca, never mind marry a royal princess. It was just unheard of unthinkable. Despite all this, Princess Margaret said yes to Townsend's proposal. But due to the 18th century Royal Marriages Act, she needed her sister, the Queen's permission, for the marriage to go ahead. The Queen, bound by her position as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, told the pair she couldn't get involved. Nevertheless, she was sympathetic and did want her sister.

to be happy. So she made only one request. The Queen stated, Under the circumstances, it isn't unreasonable for me to ask you to wait a year. She believed that Margaret should make up her own mind, and that if she held off, she would be better placed to decide if this was truly what she wanted. Perhaps she hoped that the whole thing would just blow over. Maybe the Queen was also thinking of the slight loophole in the Royal Marriages Act, which stated that the monarch's consent was not needed if the person in question was over 25 and both houses of Parliament approved. So perhaps time would provide its own solution.

Through the gates of Buckingham Palace rolls the ornate golden coach of state, carrying a beautiful and radiant girl of 27 years to her coronation. The stories of Margaret's romance with Peter Townsend were already making headlines abroad. But in Britain, the press remained remarkably quiet. Until at the Queen's coronation, Margaret brushed a bit of lint from Townsend's uniform. This sort of physical contact between a princess and a commoner was a sign, and it opened the floodgates. First, the British newspaper The People wrote an article on the romance. Peter Townsend was a divorced man.

He was somebody who would be considered rather unsuitable as a potential spouse for Margaret, especially bearing in mind the abdication crisis. The royal household and the government would have taken a very dim view of another scandal after the Duke of Windsor abdicating the throne for the love of a twice-divorced American lady. So it just could not be allowed to happen.

There couldn't be any more scandal surrounding the House of Windsor. let's face it. With the genie out of the bottle, Prime Minister Winston Churchill informed the Queen that the only way the government could not object to the marriage would be if Princess Margaret took the bold step of renouncing her right to the succession for herself and her heirs and gave up her government income. I think that Princess Margaret was probably hard done by the advisors rather than by the queen. So it would be the church standing up and saying the marriage was untenable. It would be the

state standing up and saying the marriage was untenable. And the queen cannot really go against church and state, so she had to bow and not allow Princess Margaret to marry the man she loved. The huge press speculation meant that for now, Townsend had to go. While marriage was still what the pair wanted, he and Margaret agreed that for the time being this was the only option. He was given a choice of where he was to be posted. And since his two sons were at school in Kent, he chose the closest option, Brussels. The arrangement was that Peter Townsend would be packed off to Brussels as an air attache living miserably in a hotel room. And I think most of the public thought this was bonkers. You know, this was some 18th century piece of legislation

which was intervening in somebody's love. But nevertheless, that's what happened, and off to Brussels he went. Margaret felt utterly lost without Townsend. Nonetheless, she put on a brave face and got on with her life. And in November, the Queen and Prince Philip embarked on a six-month coronation tour of the Commonwealth. It was May 1954 when the Queen and Prince Philip returned to England. Margaret reminded her sister that the year was up and that she had waited as she was asked. only imagine the disappointment on the Queen's face upon learning that the Townsend's situation hadn't blown over. It was only equaled by the disappointment on Margaret's face when her sister asked her that she wait another year. The Queen was no doubt acting on ministerial advice, but another year

would also bring Princess Margaret within reach of that important 25th birthday when she and Townsend could decide what to do for themselves. But that extra year would see the press interest reach fever pitch, as the newspapers talked about a royal family member's private life in a way that had rarely been seen before. Excitement bubbles like champagne in London, as Group Captain Peter Townsend returns from diplomatic duties in Belgium to call on Princess Margaret. Another impossibly a climactic phase opens in the much-publicized royal romance that's had the Western world agog. This was the point that the press really got quite intense,

and you had the Daily Mirror screaming headlines saying, come on Margaret, make up your mind. This is quite irreverent language to use when you're talking about a senior member of the royal family, come on Margaret, make up your mind. It must have really irritated the Windsors to see that, you know, Princess Margaret was being turned into tabloid fodder. The Daily Mirror was to get its wish,

and by the 31st of October, 1955, Margaret did make up her mind. As Peter Townsend drove out of London and Princess Margaret dined alone in Clarence's house, the BBC interrupted its scheduled programming with a statement that the pair had written together. I have decided not to marry Peter Townsend. I have been aware that, subject to my rights of succession,

it might have been possible for me to contract a civil marriage. But, mindful of the church's teachings, that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before others. And that settled it. The two years of intense speculation were over. Princess Margaret had put her position before her love. But is that really the whole truth? Royal historian Tracy Borman is heading to the National Archives to meet Princess Margaret's authorized biographer Christopher Warwick to examine documents that he believes turned the whole Margaret and Townsend saga on its head. And what we've got here are documents from the Prime Minister to the Prime Ministers of Commonwealth

countries. So this is briefing them on essentially what they're offering Margaret, the deal they've come to? Yes, absolutely. And they've got here, you know, Her Majesty would not wish to stand in the way of her sister's happiness. There it is in black and white. And yet the Queen is seen as just completely scuppering the whole thing, isn't she? Yeah, which is a nonsense.

But this document also goes to prove that the princess wouldn't have lost anything but her place in the line of succession. So what's happening? From Margaret's point of view then, she's been given this generous offer, her sister's showing no objections, but the marriage obviously doesn't happen. The marriage doesn't take place, and we have here the most important document, really, which is the letter Princess Margaret wrote to the Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, from Balmoral Castle in August of 1955. She says that Townsend will be coming back to England in October and she hopes to be able to see him then. Crucially, this is the admission of doubt.

She does not know how she feels after two years apart. She writes, it is only by seeing him that I feel I can properly decide whether I can marry him or not. Those are not the words of a woman still passionately in love. It's an admission that she doesn't feel the same way. It tells the historical version that we've all been led to believe on its head. When you look at the statement, there had to be a reason, and they kind of had to give some sort of explanation as to why they were not. going to marry. So that was the official line, but here is the truth. But here is the truth that

they'd really fallen out of love. So the Margaret and Townsend affair wasn't a case of forbidden love after all. While the pair did remain friends, they moved on romantically, and in 1956, Margaret received another marriage proposal. Billy Wallace was an old friend of Princess Margaret, grew up very much in the same social milieu. And he appears to genuinely believe that he was the love of her life and not Peter Townsend. And eventually, as the Townsend saga wore on, he plucked up the courage to make a proposal of marriage to the princess. Margaret accepted Billy Wallace's proposal.

She said that she felt better marrying someone she at least liked, rather than remaining on the shelf. But after all the furor over Townsend, she told Billy she would have to ask her sister for her blessing first. Billy, convinced Princess Margaret was in the bag, took a vacation to the Bahamas, and, rather unbelievably, had a fling. On returning, he confessed all to Margaret. Quite understandably, she threw him out. But Wallace was not the only man to whom Princess Margaret would become romantically attached after Townsend. In February 1958, she attended a private dinner party and was introduced to someone else who would capture her heart. Anthony Armstrong Jones.

So had she finally found a compatible match? Someone perhaps more suitable for the sister of the Queen? Well, not quite. The affair with Anthony Armstrong Jones got off to quite a slow start. She thought he was gay. He was, you know, a commoner. He was a bit of a playboy. He didn't want to be constrained by the royal family.

And actually, with regards to his sexuality, even when they were married, Margaret still seems to have had lingering doubts. On one occasion, she was asked how the Queen was doing, and she said, who? My mother, my sister or my husband. After the press intrigue that had grown up around her relationship with Peter Townsend, Princess Margaret was determined to keep this one very private indeed. And so, she and Tony would meet in secret away from the press. prying eyes of central London at his apartment in Rotherhithe in the East End.

They would cook simple meals together, and it is said that Margaret would do the dishes. It became a romantic idol. In private, they could simply play at being an ordinary couple. So Margaret would arrive in headscarf, dark glasses, very incognito, and the two of them have this kind of weird roleplay as a suburban couple, but what they were really doing, was having a completely private affair. So they would eat shepherd's pie, cheap wine from the local off-license, and then they'd wash the dishes together,

calling each other pet and love. I think it was an attempt to strive for normality. But of course, they were anything but an ordinary couple. Princess Margaret's position meant Tony was going to have to give up his career and support Margaret on her official engagements, always walking the obligatory one pace behind. They were a world apart, but Love's young dream won out.

For now. Margaret was bored out of her mind in the very Victorian 19th century setting of the palace, while outside, you know, you have the 1950s, 1960s, this much more bohemian, beatnik, you know, the counterculture and so on. And I think Margaret wanted to tap into that. Anthony Armstrong Jones was if you want a kind of doorkeeper to a bohemian world that she didn't want to throw herself into, but she wanted to at least experience at some level. Their engagement was announced on the 26th of February 1960, and it took the world by surprise. The press were incredulous. They couldn't believe this had been going on without their knowledge.

But the public was ecstatic. Margaret had finally found happiness. However, among the royal families of the world, well, the response was mixed, to say the least. At the Royal Opera House, Colvin Garden, London, Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong Jones make their first public appearance together since news of their engagement. A cheering throng, not especially in visiting culture, lines the sidewalk. It's interesting that there was so much press surrounding Peter Townsend and Princess Margaret. I mean, there was an absolute maelstrom, an avalan. of press. So Princess Margaret evidently wanted to keep the relationship with Anthony Armstrong

Jones very quiet. So it was sprung on the public as a surprise, but it was also a rather delightful surprise because at last this fairy tale princess got her prince, well not her prince, she got her Randy photographer. Through cheering crowds of hundreds of thousands, Princess Margaret rides to Westminster Abbey on her wedding day. The wedding took place at Westminster Abbey on Friday the 6th of May. most foreign royalty rejected their invitations to attend, the day was a huge success. The mall was lined with white banners emblazoned with the intertwined initials of M and A, and a crowd of 500,000 gathered.

Outside Clarence's house, a huge archway made of 30,000 pink and red roses span the roadway. The nation rejoiced. This was the first royal wedding to be televised, and it was watched by 300 million people around the world, and it was a national day of celebration, much like we experienced today with royal weddings. The honeymoon was a six-week Caribbean cruise on the Royal Yacht Britannia, during which Princess Margaret would be given a plot of land on the island of Mystique as a wedding present. It would come to be a prized escape later in her life.

Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconnor, if you want, bought Mustique, this little tropical island in the Caribbean as a sort of playground for the rich. And to Margaret, he gave a small plot of land on the island to build a villa, and that was the wedding present. I think one would look at the honeymoon on the Royal Yacht and, you know, chasing around the Caribbean and as rather new voreche.

It didn't look so good because England was still in a state of austerity. And there was this glamorous Princess Margaret and her sort of toy boy, Tony Armstrong Jones, flying around the world. On their return, Margaret and Tony moved to Kensington Palace.

They were London Society's golden couple, the essence of modern royalty and the epitome of the swinging 60s. Tony was given a title, Earl of Snowden, and they had to be a title. two children, David and Sarah. To the public, it seemed that Margaret had finally found happiness. But in private, the cracks were already beginning to show, and the match made in heaven

turned out to be anything but. I do think that the decision to marry Tony Armstrong was an absolute disaster because the two were completely ill-fitted temperamentally. You see Princess Margaret, who sets great store by rank and by religion. You see Tony Armstrong-Jones, really running with dogs, and sadly it was Princess Margaret who caught the fleas. One person with whom Princess Margaret discussed these turbulent times was her authorised biographer Christopher Warwick. Royal historian Tracy Borman speaks with him. So Chris, how soon into the marriage did the affairs actually start?

What we have to remember is that Tony was already in the relationship with Princess Margaret. And at the same time, he was having an affair with the wife of his best friend, Camilla Fry. Margaret knows nothing about this going on. They get married in May of 1960, and they're on honeymoon in the Caribbean, and it's three weeks after they've married that Camilla Fry gives birth to her daughter, Polly,

who in only as recently as 2004, through a DNA test that she asked Tony, turns out that Tony was her biological father. That's unbelievable. So even before the marriage, he was very much embroiled. Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And it's awfully difficult to kind of picture Tony Armstrong Jones, not in one affair or another. You know, this was a man who became when he was married, a serial adulterer. I mean, he really was. He was going round the block like it was going out of fashion. But while Tony was working his way through a string of women, Margaret wasn't totally faithful herself. But her first dalliance, rather unbelievably, was engineered by Tony.

If you yourself are playing around, it makes it so much easier if your husband or wife or partner is doing the same thing. So in 1966, he invited Anthony Barton, who was a great friend of them and their daughter Sarah's godfather, to come and keep Princess Margaret company. So he actually arranged the affair? Well, he was most certainly the engineer behind it, yes. But such was the complexity of this man. He'd organized this, he'd engineered this, come and look after.

Come and stay with Margaret, come and visit him, whatever it was. whatever it was, and then really seriously objected when they had this fling. But there was kind of this, there was this kind of very sad pattern. He was off having his relationships. And, you know, the impact of this failing marriage was particularly great on her. She wanted that marriage to succeed.

Remarkably, while all this was going on, Princess Margaret didn't shirk her duties. Aside from her official functions as Princess, she was patron or president of over 80 organizations, from the Girl Guides to the St. John's Ambulance Brigade. Particularly close to her heart was the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. But while she was clearly a big name for the charity's headed paper, in reality, she became more involved than she is often given credit for. Royal historian Tracy Borman speaks with Giles Pigram, who was the Appeals Director at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children,

to find out just how involved she really was. Would you say, Giles, that Princess Margaret had a keen sense of duty and went indeed beyond the call of duty? Well, she has a very strong sense of duty, to the extent she would do whatever she was asked to do. But at the beginning of our full-stop appeal, which was for 250 million pounds, there'd never been an appeal beyond 100 million,

and we were going for 250 million pounds. And we wanted to get a group of NSPC supporters of the most influence and the most wealth, corporate, philanthropic, etc. And we wanted to get them together in order to form a steering group. And we thought what venue could we use, that would actually get those people to turn up.

And Princess Margaret offered us her private apartments, which I think is unprecedented. And so the invitations went out to these 13 people to have a reception in Princess Margaret's private apartments in the drawing room with a TV and the video and a little cushion saying it's hard being a princess. And she was the perfect host. There were no staff present.

and as a result of that, because she was so good, because she'd allowed us to use her private apartments, we got a steering group set up, we had a chair, and we ended up raising 274 million pounds. But I do not believe that if we hadn't had the royal apartments, you know, Princess Margaret's apartments as the venue, we would simply not have got those people to turn up. So I think that was going to be on the call of duty.

I think we've been so busy trashing Princess Margaret as a fallen woman that her charity work has been completely ignored. She was a lifelong supporter of the Girl Guides, St John's Ambulance, and I think very pertinent to our age, the NSBCC. You know, she was unstinting in her support for the work that was being done to help abuse children. And in fact, she'd even speak to some of those children, not as a princess, but as a mother.

And she was clearly deeply moved by the plight of these young people. It's been totally forgotten in the midst of time that Princess Margaret was one of the... first people to stand up and support the London Lighthouse, the AIDS charity, which was incredibly unpopular. You know, it was looked on as something that nobody should be interested in, never mind a member of the royal family like Princess Margaret. You know, the fact that she had so many gay friends probably made sense for her to support

a very unpopular cause. And now, of course, if you need a poster girl for HIV and AIDS, it's Princess Diana. It's not Princess Margaret, but she was the first. She put her head above the parapet and she didn't. did the business. But the brave face in public couldn't change what was going on behind the scenes. Margaret and Tony would have blazing arguments. At times, Tony was charming, but he could also prove to be a pain in the neck. He would provoke her and destroy her self-confidence. By the early 1970s, the cracks in the marriage had become deep divisions, and Margaret and her husband were living all but

separate lives. She was desperately unhappy and increasingly turned to her vices of drinking and smoking and sought to escape Tony on the island of Mustique. But it was on Mustique that Margaret would hit the headlines once again when she was photographed apparently having a fling with a man 17 years her junior. That man was Roderick or Roddy Llewellyn. She was looking for somebody new in her life. And Colin Tennant actually introduced her to Roddy Llewellyn, who was a 27-year-old,

and the two of them went off to Mustique. Clearly had a holiday that she enjoyed massively. The problem was that they were photographed, you know, her and her bikini, him and his swimming trunks, that got into the tabloids. And even though Roddy Llewellyn was, I think, very good for her, nevertheless, the whole thing was projected to the public

as something essentially sordered. Compared to Tony, Buddy was a lot of fun, a caring individual, and they had one big thing in common, their love of music. It is often said that if Margaret were not a princess, she would surely have had a career on stage. Margaret had very broad music tastes, and she loved jazz. At one party, she's supposed to have taken the microphone, asked the band to play some Cole Porter songs, and started, you know, some slinky gyrations. seeing some of the naughty cold porter lyrics,

until apparently she was barracked from the back of the room by the artist Francis Bacon, and she threw the mic down and walked off. She was also big friends of the Rolling Stones, and she knew the Beatles so well, in fact, that George Harrison apparently approached her a party and asked if she could help with a drugs bust, and apparently she said,

I don't think so, George, that could be getting a little sticky. I was told that Princess Margaret was a great fan of country and Western music, and that her heroine was Dolly Parton and that she said it was one of the greatest achievements in her life as meeting Dolly Parton. I just love the thought of Princess Margaret doing a sort of hoe-down in Balmoral

instead of doing a Highland reel, just dreaming of Dolly and the big boobs and the blonde hair. This mutual love of music saw Roddy and Margaret spend lots of time together. And while the papers painted them as lovers, it appears more likely their relationship had evolved into a strong friendship. I have a funny feeling that Roddy Lowellon was set up with Princess Margaret,

that her friends knew that she'd been unhappy once again, unlucky in love once again. And he was almost presented like a morsel on a dinner table. He was there for entertainment, and he certainly entertained Princess Margaret. I think in the early days there must have been an element of a sexual relationship, but it turned into a more slightly maternal, funnily enough, you know, that he was the court jester and she was the princess. At the time, this was no doubt a refreshing contrast to the bitter and intense marriage

with Anthony Armstrong Jones. By 1976, Margaret and Tony were living mostly separate lives, and two years later, they were divorced. It was the first royal divorce since the reign of Henry the 8th. The divorce between Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden was a, a, a huge shame and a huge disaster because no member of the royal family had been divorced since Henry, the 8th and Catherine of Aragon. And if we reverse that process and look at how common divorce is today in the royal family, Princess Margaret set the president, and it was a sad precedent to set to be the first. Princess Margaret's lifestyle began to take its toll on her health and led to an increasing number of visits to the hospital. In 1985, she had part of her left

lung removed and about of pneumonia eight years later gave her the determination to give up cigarettes once and for all. She also gave up drinking, substituting famous grouse for fruit juice. From 1998, she suffered a number of strokes which left her paralyzed and with only partial vision, and then an accident in the bath, caused by a faulty thermostat, left her with scolds on her feet, which would never heal. For someone previously so vibrant and full of life, the change shocked those around her. It's sad, really, that Margaret's health became the story.

You know, as early as the 1970s, Cecil Beaton, the photographer, made a really catty comment about her skin looking like dirty pink satin. And, you know, it became rather like that the vultures swooping overhead, looking at Margaret's health, waiting for her to fail, I think the great shop for the public was when Billy Tallon wheeled Princess Margaret out in front of Clarence's house. It was a horrible last sight of Princess Margaret, and she certainly didn't deserve that.

Draped in her own blue and crimson standard, Princess Margaret's coffin leaves the King Edward I.7 hospital. The princess died here at 6.30 this morning after suffering a stroke. On Saturday, the 9th of February 2002, the year of the goal. Golden Jubilee, Buckingham Palace released a statement from the Queen, announcing the death of her beloved sister. Princess Margaret had passed away at 6.30 that morning at the age of 71, her son and daughter by her bedside. Her life was made for newspapers. You know, it was full of tragedy, it was full of scandal. And printing this aspect of her life is what sold news. And so it was great, makes good copy.

But it wasn't necessarily who she was. Chris, do you think the public ever knew the real Margaret? The short answer is no. A friend of mine was saying just the other day that the first thing his parents who was talking to came up with was, ah yes, well, of course she didn't want to marry Peter Townsend because she didn't want to give up who she was. The other side is that she was boozy, sex-mad.

That is the image that people retain of her. The real Princess Margaret was a much, much nicer woman, much kinder, much warmer, just goes to prove how powerful the news media is and the pictures that it can paint. While the press coverage of Margaret's sometimes rather colorful love life has skewed the public's perception of her, it is also fair to say that much of what was deemed controversial at the time would be far less so today. Margaret's desire to lead her own life as she chose to brought the rather rigid monarchy into the 20th century. Without her paving the way, perhaps Prince Charles wouldn't have been able to divorce Diana. Prince William wouldn't have married a commoner, Catherine,

and Prince Harry's marriage to an American actress, Megan Markle, would have been unthinkable. But what people often forget is that Margaret was devoted to duty, even if it didn't always make the headlines. History is destined to remember few of its princesses, but Margaret will never be forgotten. Thank you.