Margaret also made clear what she thought of the bubbly Sarah, Duchess of York, after a newspaper had published photographs of her lying topless on a sun-lounger on the Côte d’Azur with her big toe being sucked by her financial adviser.
Yet it had all begun so well. The Duchess of York’s autobiographical account of the moment she exchanged wedding vows in July 1986 sounds a triumphant note, almost as though she had just come from the back of the field to reach the final of the hundred-yard Windsor sprint:
In a trice, I had become Princess Andrew and the Duchess of York, as well as the Countess of Inverness and Baroness of Killyleagh. In the order of royal precedence I now outranked Anne and Margaret; among the women I stood fourth, behind the Queen, the Queen Mother, and the Princess of Wales.
While we signed the marriage books, I replaced the flowers that had anchored my veil with a diamond tiara for my return trip down the aisle. It was my time to be Cinderella. I had stepped up as the country girl, now I would walk back as a Princess.
But her triumph was to be short-lived. In 1992 a newspaper carried photographs of her topless with her ‘financial adviser’ John Bryan. The main photograph, published throughout the known world, had a surreal quality about it, the bald head of the businessman looking uncannily like another big toe.
On the morning of the publication of the Daily Mirror exclusive – ‘FERGIE’S STOLEN KISSES’ – the Duchess was staying at Balmoral. Forewarned, she took breakfast in her bedroom, creeping down to apologise to the Queen at 9.30 a.m. The Queen, she recalled, was ‘furious’. At dinner that evening, she felt that everyone was staring at her. ‘I knew they must be seeing me topless, or being nuzzled by a bald American. The courtiers eyed me sneakily, discreetly. The butlers and footmen gaped, and I felt naked in their sight … I felt disgust in that dining room and a queasy fascination, as if they were looking at a burn victim.’
Down in Kensington Palace, Princess Margaret took the publication of the Duchess’s topless photographs particularly hard. ‘She was more furious than I have ever seen her,’ noted one visitor. ‘And that is saying something.’ Over the telephone, Margaret impressed her fury on the Queen, who dutifully passed it on to the Duchess.
On her return to Kensington Palace, the Duchess attempted to assuage any unpleasantness by sending Margaret a bouquet of mixed spring flowers, accompanied by a note of apology. They failed to do the trick. A handwritten letter arrived from Princess Margaret. It did not beat around the bush:
Not once have you hung your head in embarrassment even for a minute after those disgraceful photographs. You have done more to bring shame on the Family than you could ever have imagined. Clearly you have never considered the damage you are doing to us all. How dare you discredit us like this and how dare you send me those flowers.
The letter was leaked to the newspapers. Was Princess Margaret responsible for the leak? Given the circumstances, it is unlikely to have been the Duchess.
From that day on, their relationship, never warm, turned freezing cold. Princess Margaret told friends that she had chided the Queen for still bothering with the fallen Duchess. But a quarter of a century on, Fergie seems to have recovered her bounce. In a later volume of autobiography, Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself,* she passes on the secret of a happy life: one simply repeats the mantra ‘I love myself more than I ever imagined possible and others love me too,’ twenty-five times a day.
In an interview to promote an accompanying TV series on the Oprah Channel, she took the trouble to recite her daily inventory of the parts of her body she had learned to love. ‘I love my hands and my wrists and ankles. I’ve got a really good waist and a great pair of bosoms. Plus the pins aren’t bad.’
By the time of this notably upbeat broadcast, Princess Margaret had been dead for well over a decade.
* The Duchess of York has published numerous volumes, among them distillations of her hard-won wisdom: What I Know Now, Reinventing Yourself with the Duchess of York, Moments, Dining with the Duchess and Dieting with the Duchess. Beneath a photograph of a pink flower in a forest on the back cover of Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself is a brief checklist headed ‘Wisdom from the Duchess’. It includes ‘Be open’, ‘Make time for quiet reflection and listen to your heart’, and ‘Face your fears’. It ends with the less reassuring ‘Free your mind and your bottom will follow’.