Princess Margaret

Princess Margaret Rose died on February 9th 2002, aged 71

If the life of the British royal family is the world’s most brilliant soap opera, as some regard it, Princess Margaret was its most enduring and creative performer. In her prime she never failed to provide some new and intriguing twist in the script to beguile the less privileged millions as they faced another wearisome day. The competition was sometimes fierce. In the republics of Europe there are many who cling to their obsolete titles, countess this, marquise that. “First ladies” tend to adopt royal airs but their reigns abruptly end when their political husbands lose their jobs. For editors of newspapers and television, fierce guardians of the gates to fame, Princess Margaret was the real thing, an authentic living royal; moreover, and this was the important thing, she had a happily uninhibited streak. Our picture is of the princess at a London nightclub.

Margaret’s Uncle Edward was really the founder of Britain’s royal soap opera. He was the king who gave up his throne in 1936 so that he could marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American. Newspapers were more discreet then and television was in its infancy. But after the improbable story was made public, it ran and ran, became even more improbable when the couple were courted by Hitler, and never really faded until their deaths, of Edward in 1972 and Wallis in 1986.

The new king, George, seemed a dull stick. He was a disappointment after the lively Edward. However, George had two engaging daughters, Margaret, aged six, and her elder sister Elizabeth, ten. They were the first and second in line to the throne, and rapidly became the most famous children in the western world. Still, there is only a limited amount to say about children, however captivating, So, as is possible with soap operas, it is best to fast forward to a more interesting episode.

An American film called “Roman Holiday”, first shown in 1953, starred Audrey Hepburn as a princess who runs away to Rome in rebellion against her stuffy life at home. It won numerous Oscars and started Belgian-born Miss Hepburn on a successful Hollywood career. The clever script was written under a false name by Dalton Trumbo, who had fallen foul of Joe McCarthy while he was hunting communists. But what mostly interested many filmgoers was that Miss Hepburn resembled Princess Margaret and it was assumed that Margaret was a rebel too.

The mixture of unverifiable fact wrapped in fiction that came to be written about Margaret seems to date from this time. What was known about life behind palace walls 50 years ago sounded pretty gloomy. When Elizabeth became queen on the death of her father in 1952, her grandmother, a previous queen, had curtsied to her. Did Margaret curtsy to her sister? Presumably. It seemed a rum way to run a family.

When Elizabeth was crowned the following year an alert photographer snapped Margaret removing what seemed to be a piece of fluff from the uniform of one Peter Townsend. Princesses are not expected to be valets. What was the meaning behind this extraordinarily unroyal act? There was much deliberation among the knowing. A long episode of the soap opera began to unfold. Townsend had been a fighter pilot in the second world war, the first in the RAF to shoot down a German bomber, and had later become an aide to the king, Margaret’s father. Margaret, it was said, had become fond of him. But he was 16 years older than the princess and, worse, had been divorced.

Margaretologists noted that Townsendlooked a bit like Gregory Peck, who had starred with Audrey Hepburn. But in 1955 Margaret put an end to the guessing and said that she was not marrying him. She married Antony Armstrong-Jones, a photographer, in 1960. The 1960s seemed the decade she was born for. She was as much of the period as the Beatles, the mini-skirt and the joy of sex. Time magazine accorded London the adjective “swinging”. Margaret and Tony (by now a lord) made it their playground.

The marriage broke up in 1978. The frolics of the period had long begun to pall. Gossips said Margaret had a number of affairs. Jean Cocteau said she told him that she loved disobedience: “I’ve always been the naughty one.” Margaret became the princess who did not live happily ever after, which may or may not have been true. Royal despair may be different from the ordinary sort. For Margaret it was sitting next to a bore at a state dinner. However, thoughts she might have had about becoming queen had been put aside: she had fallen to 11th in line to the throne.

The guardians of true fame began to look elsewhere for interesting candidates. Margaret’s two children have turned out to be unhelpfully normal. However, in the late 1970s the guardians’ patience was rewarded by the emergence of Princess Diana, whose every public moment they diligently recorded until her death in 1997. In Diana’s time the palace walls had become more transparent, but it was Margaret who had first let in a little light. Those who were not alive when Margaret was in the spotlight may have been surprised by the vast amount of newspaper space and airtime that followed her death. But it was the media’s way of saying thank you.