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00:00princess Margaret sister of Queen Elizabeth the second famous for her partying and colorful love
00:09life that saw her plastered on the front pages of newspapers around the world she was a fashion
00:16icon a drinker a smoker and someone who broke the royal mold all of that may well be true but is it
00:26only half the story in this episode I'll examine the private life of princess Margaret I'll discover
00:34whether the media has given us a false impression of her reveal the real reasons her marriage to
00:40Lord Snowden broke down and a secret that was only revealed after her death and I'll find out if she
00:47really was the so-called party princess the documents that we see in this folder really
00:56do tend to rewrite history this letter paints a very different picture it turns the historical
01:04version that we've all been led to believe on its head there are so many people who could stand up
01:10and say that princess Margaret was a decent human being a very kind and loving mother but they never
01:16complain and never explain and that's been drilled into them by the royal family so princess Margaret
01:20is really left undefended Margaret wasn't just a sort of heavy drinking chain-smoking party girl she
01:28was a lover of music she was hugely compassionate she was involved in charity work and so how well we
01:35know the private Margaret is actually quite questionable how have the well-worn cliches masked a totally
01:45different side to princess Margaret will a look into her private life reveal that her widely publicized
01:53affairs with men have unfairly eclipsed her dedication to the affairs of state and how did her divorce lay the
02:01groundwork for the monarchy we know today this is the private life of princess Margaret
02:31the image most of us have of princess Margaret arguably dates to the 40s and 50s when she was a young adult by this point she was a staggeringly beautiful woman she loved dressing
02:48up in the latest fashions engaging in flirtations and staying out until the early hours of the morning age 19 she caused a storm by lighting up in public
02:59using her characteristic cigarette holder undeniably she was the total opposite of the rather staid
03:08hidebound British monarchy in short she gave it sex appeal and the press seized upon it
03:16the press has always liked to create foils so you have the queen who is very upstanding and represents
03:24britain and is good and moral and stands for the church of england and then of course you have to
03:30have the person who is the shadow side of that and that's margaret and margaret is the one who is hard
03:40drinking partying chain smoking has this this string of tragic affairs this woman who is not in control of
03:50herself i would imagine that princess margaret's life was not half as much fun as it looked you know
03:56because the tabloids all they wanted to see was scandal they wanted to see a very indolent woman enjoying
04:02her royal privileges but actually not paying back in official ribbon cutting and tree planting and all
04:08the things that she actually did you had a kind of clash in the early 1950s between the
04:15make do and mend attitude of the war and christian jaws new look you know which had these kind of
04:22pinched waists and all this fabric being used in the dresses which to some more conservative people
04:28seemed quite indecent in an area of rationing but margaret championed what was called the new log
04:34it even became called the margaret look so in contrast to her more buttoned up sister the queen
04:40margaret was a gift to the fashion industry during this period the newspapers were after images of
04:46two women that everyone wanted to read about one was the actress elizabeth taylor and the other was
04:53princess margaret but while the young margaret's racy lifestyle was certainly getting her attention
05:00it was just the tip of the iceberg of what was to come and that all began in 1944 with the appointment of
05:08an aquari princess margaret's father king george the sixth wanted to honor officers who distinguished
05:17themselves during the second world war he came up with the idea of appointing such people as his
05:23aquari for a period of three months at a time in march 1944 the position was given to a tall slim dashing
05:32former fighter pilot the royal household loved him and the king saw him as the son he'd never had so
05:40he decided to keep him on permanently and his name was peter townsend peter townsend was born in burma
05:48he went to school at halebury which he hated but he joined the raf at 27 he was a wing commander and in
05:55the second world war a very successful one he shot the first bomber to be brought down in england since the
06:01first world war there he is you know the intrepid raf pilot in the thick of battle shooting down
06:08messerschmitts from uh you know his little hurricane and then being decorated for gallantry the medals
06:13pinned on his chest and then what does he do he sells the medals to help children who've been
06:19affected by the war i mean he is the classic wartime hero
06:23townsend and margaret got on particularly well and so the king sent him to accompany the 18 year old
06:34princess on the first important mission of her royal career when in september 1948 she was sent as the
06:42king's representative to the inauguration of crown princess juliana as queen of the netherlands
06:50for now relations between the pair were probably innocent enough peter was still married after all
06:56but the press became interested and rumors began to spread the point about peter townsend was that
07:02he was old enough to be princess margaret's father and that genuinely was the point that they became
07:07close when the king king george vi died by which time peter townsend's marriage was faltering to say
07:14the least and i do believe that margaret saw him as a father figure as the train bearing the body of
07:21king george 6 arrives in london hushed crowds stand beautifully as picked members of the king's grenadier
07:27guards remove the casket before the sorrowing gaze of britain's new queen her mother and sister
07:32it is a tragic moment for them
07:34king george the sixth died on the 6th of february 1952 and princess margaret's sister ascended the
07:45throne as queen elizabeth ii margaret and the now queen mother had to move out of buckingham palace
07:52to clarence house so was princess margaret jealous of her sister becoming queen well
07:58no margaret herself tired of the constant comparisons to her sister in reality not being
08:06queen gave her far more freedom to simply be herself with the king's death peter townsend became
08:15comptroller to the queen mother and she and margaret moved to clarence house margaret and townsend saw
08:21much of each other and he provided a great amount of comfort to her at this difficult time
08:27the pair grew very close townsend's marriage fell apart and he and his wife divorced in november 1952
08:37one could say that peter townsend got married in haste after the war as did many couples they knew
08:42that life was short so they had to grasp it while they could they would probably get married to somebody
08:47who might not automatically be the person that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with
08:52because life was cheap and life was short after the war rumors of a romance between townsend and the
09:00princess had persisted for some time but they had always swiftly denied them but in reality their love
09:08was blossoming and in april 1953 townsend proposed marriage to margaret this was to begin a very difficult
09:17period of margaret's life because townsend was not seen as a suitable match for the sister of the queen
09:24he was 15 years older a commoner and a divorcee at a time when the church of england didn't recognize divorce
09:32well you have to remember that we were in the age of deference when peter townsend and princess
09:38margaret's romance blossomed divorce at the time in 1952 would have been absolutely unheard of in royal
09:45circles a divorcee couldn't even enter the royal enclosure at royal ascot never mind marry a royal
09:50princess it was it was just unheard of unthinkable
09:53despite all this princess margaret said yes to townsend's proposal but due to the 18th century royal
10:02marriages act she needed her sister the queen's permission for the marriage to go ahead
10:10but the queen bound by her position as supreme governor of the church of england told the pair
10:16she couldn't get involved nevertheless she was sympathetic and did want her sister to be happy
10:23so she made only one request under the circumstances it isn't unreasonable for me to ask you to wait a
10:30year she believed that margaret should make up her own mind and that if she held off she'd be better
10:37placed to decide if this was truly what she wanted and to be honest perhaps she hoped that the whole thing
10:45would just blow over maybe the queen was also thinking of the slight loophole in the royal
10:53marriages act which stated that the monarch's consent was not needed if the person in question
10:59was over 25 and both houses of parliament approved so perhaps time would provide its own solution
11:07through the gates of buckingham palace rolls the ornate golden coach of state
11:12carrying a beautiful and radiant girl of 27 years to her coronation the stories of margaret's romance
11:19with peter townsend were already making headlines abroad but in britain the press remained remarkably
11:26quiet until at the queen's coronation margaret brushed a bit of fluff from townsend's uniform such physical
11:34contact between a princess and a commoner was a sign and it opened the floodgates first the british
11:41newspaper the people wrote an article on the romance peter townsend was a divorced man
11:50he was somebody who would be considered rather unsuitable as a potential spouse for margaret
11:58especially bearing in mind the application crisis the royal household and the government would have
12:04taken a very dim view of another scandal after the duke of windsor abdicating the throne for the love of a
12:10twice divorced american lady so it just could not be allowed to happen there couldn't be any more
12:16scandal surrounding the house of windsor let's face it with the genie out of the bottle prime minister
12:24winston churchill informed the queen that the only way the government could not object to the marriage
12:30would be if princess margaret took the bold step of renouncing her right to the succession for herself
12:36and her heirs and gave up her government income i think the princess margaret was probably hard
12:43done by by the advisors rather than by the queen so it would be the church standing up and saying the
12:49marriage was untenable it would be the state standing up and saying the marriage was untenable
12:54and the queen cannot really go against church and state so she had to bow
12:58and not allow princess margaret to marry the man she loved
13:05the huge press speculation meant that for now townsend had to go
13:11while marriage was still what the pair wanted he and margaret agreed that for the time being
13:16this was the only option he was given a choice of where he was to be posted to
13:22and since his two sons were at school in kent he chose the closest option brussels
13:30the arrangement was that peter townsend would be packed off to brussels as an air attache living
13:36miserably in a hotel room and i think most of the public thought this was bonkers you know this
13:41is some 18th century piece of legislation which was intervening as somebody's love
13:46but nevertheless that's what happened and off to brussels he went
13:51margaret felt utterly lost without townsend nonetheless she put on a brave face and got
13:58on with her life and in november the queen and prince philip embarked on a sixth month
14:03coronation tour of the commonwealth it was may 1954 when the queen and prince philip returned to england
14:11margaret reminded her sister that the year was up and that she'd waited as she was asked one can
14:17only imagine the disappointment on the queen's face upon learning that the townsend situation hadn't
14:23blown over was only equaled by the disappointment on margaret's face when her sister asked her that she
14:30wait another year the queen was no doubt acting on ministerial advice but another year would also bring
14:39princess margaret within reach of that important 25th birthday when she and townsend could decide
14:46what to do for themselves but that extra year would see the press interest reach fever pitch as the
14:52newspapers talked about a royal family member's private life in a way that had rarely been seen
14:58before excitement bubbles like champagne in london as group captain peter townsend returns from diplomatic
15:04duties in belgium to call on princess margaret another impossibly a climactic phase opens in the
15:10much publicized royal romance that had the western world agar this was the point that the press really
15:16got quite intense and you had the daily mirror screaming headlines saying come on margaret make up
15:21your mind um this is quite irreverent language to use when you're talking about a senior member of
15:26the royal family come on margaret make up your mind it must have really irritated the windsors to see that
15:32you know princess margaret was being turned into tabloid fodder the daily mirror was to get its wish
15:39and by the 31st of october 1955 margaret did make up her mind as peter townsend drove out of london
15:48and princess margaret dined alone in clarence house the bbc interrupted its scheduled programming
15:54with a statement that the pair had written together i have decided not to marry peter townsend
16:04i have been aware that subject to my rights of succession it might have been possible for me to
16:10contract a civil marriage but mindful of the church's teachings that christian marriage is indissoluble
16:19and conscious of my duty to the commonwealth i have resolved to put these considerations before others
16:33so that was that the two years of intense speculation were over princess margaret had put
16:39her position before her love but is that really the whole truth i'm heading to the national archives to
16:46meet princess margaret's authorized biographer christopher warwick to examine documents he
16:52believes turn the whole margaret and townsend saga on its head so this is where it is this is the box i'm
17:03so excited to see this
17:04now the documents that we see in this folder really do tend to rewrite history and what we've got here
17:18are documents from the prime minister to the prime ministers of commonwealth countries so this is
17:26briefing them on essentially what they're offering margaret the deal they've come to yes absolutely
17:33and they've got here you know her majesty would not wish to stand in the way of her sister's happiness
17:38there it is in black and white the queen is seen as as just completely scuppering the whole thing
17:43isn't she yeah which is a nonsense but this document also goes to prove that the princess
17:52wouldn't have lost anything but her place in the line of succession
17:58so what's happening from margaret's point of view then she's been given this generous offer her
18:07sister's showing no objections but the marriage obviously doesn't happen
18:14the marriage doesn't take place and we have here the most important document really
18:20which is the letter princess margaret wrote to the prime minister anthony eden from balmoral castle
18:32in august of 1955 this is margaret's own this is margaret's own writing this is margaret's own writing
18:39this is the four page letter she says that townsend will be coming back to england in october and she
18:48hopes to be able to see him then crucially this is the admission of doubt she does not know
18:57how she feels after two years apart she writes it is only by seeing him
19:05that i feel i can properly decide whether i can marry him or not those are not the words of a woman
19:13still passionately in love it's an admission that she doesn't feel the same way
19:20it turns the historical version that we've all been led to believe on its head when you look at the
19:30statement there had to be a reason and they kind of had to give some sort of explanation
19:38as to why they were not going to marry so that was the official line but here is the truth but here
19:45is the truth that they'd really fallen out of love so the margaret and townsend affair wasn't a case of
19:56forbidden love after all while the pair did remain friends they moved on romantically and in 1956
20:05margaret received another marriage proposal billy wallace was an old friend of princess margaret grew up
20:13very much in the same social milieu and he appears to genuinely believe that he was the love of her
20:20life and not peter townsend and eventually as the townsend saga wore on he plucked up the courage
20:28to make a proposal of marriage to the princess
20:33margaret accepted billy wallace's proposal she said that she felt better marrying someone she at least
20:39light rather than remaining on the shelf but after all the ferrari over townsend she told billy she
20:46would have to ask her sister for her blessing first billy convinced princess margaret was in the bag
20:52took himself after the bahamas and rather unbelievably had a holiday fling on returning
20:59he confessed all to margaret quite understandably she threw him out
21:08but wallace was not the only man to whom princess margaret would become romantically attached after
21:14townsend in february 1958 she attended a private dinner party and was introduced to someone else who
21:21would capture her heart anthony armstrong jones so had she finally found a compatible match someone
21:28perhaps more suitable for the sister of the queen well not quite the affair with anthony armstrong jones
21:36got off to quite a slow start she thought he was gay he was you know a commoner he was a bit of a
21:43playboy he didn't want to be constrained by the royal family and actually with regards to his sexuality
21:48even when they were married margaret still seems to have had lingering doubts on one occasion she was
21:53asked how the queen was doing and she said who my mother my sister or my husband
22:02after the press intrigue that had grown up around her relationship with peter townsend princess margaret
22:08was determined to keep this one very private indeed and so she and tony would meet in secret
22:15away from the prying eyes of central london at his flat in rotherhithe in the east end they would cook
22:23simple meals together and it said that margaret would do the washing up it became a romantic idyll
22:31in private they could simply play at being an ordinary couple
22:35so margaret would arrive in headscarf dark glasses very incognito and the two of them
22:44had this kind of uh weird role play as a suburban couple but what they were really doing
22:49was having a completely private affair and so they would eat shepherd's pie cheap wine from
22:55the local off license and then they'd wash the dishes together calling each other pet
22:59and love i think it was an attempt to strive for normality
23:07but of course they were anything but an ordinary couple princess margaret's position meant tony was
23:13going to have to give up his career and support margaret on her official engagements always walking
23:19the obligatory one pace behind they were a world apart but love's young dream won out for now
23:27margaret was bored out of her mind in the very victorian 19th century setting of the palace while
23:35outside you know you have the 1950s 1960s it's much more bohemian beatnik you know the counterculture
23:43and so on and i think margaret wanted to tap into that anthony armstrong jones was if you want a kind
23:48of doorkeeper to a bohemian world that she didn't want to throw herself into but she wanted to at least
23:55experience at some level
24:02their engagement was announced on the 26th of february 1960 and it took the world by surprise
24:09the press were incredulous they couldn't believe this had been going on without their knowledge
24:14but the public was ecstatic margaret had finally found happiness
24:19among the royal families of the world meanwhile well the response was mixed to say the least
24:27at the royal opera house colvin garden london princess margaret and anthony armstrong jones make
24:32their first public appearance together since news of their engagement a cheering throng not especially
24:37interested in culture lines the sidewalk it's interesting that there was so much press surrounding
24:43peter townsend and princess margaret i mean there was an absolute maelstrom an avalanche of press
24:49so princess margaret evidently wanted to keep the relationship with anthony armstrong jones very
24:53quiet so it was sprung on the public as a surprise but it was also a rather delightful surprise
24:59because at last this fairy tale princess got her prince well not her prince she got her randy photographer
25:05through cheering crowds of hundreds of thousands princess margaret rides to westminster abbey on her
25:11wedding day the wedding took place at westminster abbey on friday the 6th of may while most foreign
25:19royalty rejected their invitations to attend the day was a huge success the mall was lined with white
25:26banners emblazoned with the intertwined initials of m and a and a crowd of 500 000 gathered
25:34outside clarence house a huge archway made of 30 000 pink and red roses spanned the roadway the nation rejoiced
25:47this was the first royal wedding to be televised and it was watched by 300 million people around the world
25:57and it was a national day of of celebration much like we experience today with royal weddings
26:05the honeymoon was a six-week caribbean cruise on the royal yacht britannia during which princess
26:12margaret would be given a plot of land on the obscure island of mystique as a wedding present it would
26:18come to be a prized escape later in her life colin tennant lord glenconnor if you want um bought mustique
26:27this little tropical island in the caribbean as a sort of playground for the rich and to margaret he gave
26:35a small plot of land on the island to build a villa and that was the wedding present i think one would
26:42look at the honeymoon on the royal yacht and you know chasing around the caribbean as rather nouveau
26:47riche it didn't look so good because england was still in a state of austerity and there was this
26:53glamorous princess margaret and her sort of toy boy tony armstrong jones flying around the world
27:04on their return margaret and tony moved here to kensington palace they were london society's golden
27:12couple the essence of modern royalty and the epitome of the swinging 60s tony was given a title
27:19earl of snowden and they had two children david and sarah to the public it seemed that margaret had
27:28finally found happiness but in private the cracks were already beginning to show and the match made
27:34in heaven turned out to be anything but i do think that the decision to marry tony armstrong was an
27:41absolute disaster because the two were completely ill-fitted temperamentally you see princess margaret
27:48who sets great store by rank and by religion you see tony armstrong jones really running with dogs
27:54and sadly it was princess margaret who caught the fleas
28:03one person with whom princess margaret discussed these turbulent times was her authorized biographer
28:10christopher warwick so i'm meeting him again to find out what really went on behind closed doors
28:16so chris how soon into the marriage did the affairs actually start what we have to remember
28:23is that tony was already in the relationship with princess margaret and at the same time he was having an
28:31affair with the wife of his best friend camilla fry margaret knows nothing about this going on
28:38they get married in may of 1960 and they're on honeymoon in the caribbean and it's three weeks
28:44after they've married that camilla fry gives birth to her daughter polly who in only as recently as
28:522004 through a dna test that she she asked tony um turns out that tony was her biological father
29:02that's unbelievable so even before the marriage he was very much embroiled oh absolutely absolutely and
29:09it's it's it's awfully difficult to kind of picture tony armstrong jones um not
29:16uh in one affair or another you know this was a man who became when he was married
29:24a serial adulterer i mean he really was he was going around the block like it was going out of fashion
29:32but while tony was working his way through a string of women margaret wasn't totally faithful herself
29:39but her first dalliance rather unbelievably was engineered by tony if you yourself are playing
29:47around it makes it so much easier if your husband or wife or partner is doing the same thing so in 1966
29:58he invited anthony barton he was a great friend of them and their daughter sarah's godfather to come
30:05and keep princess margaret company so he actually arranged the affair well he was most certainly
30:11the engineer behind it yes but such was the complexity of this man he'd organized this he'd engineered this
30:20come and look after come and stay with margaret come and visit whatever whatever it was and then
30:26really seriously objected when they had this this fling but there was kind of this there was this kind of
30:37very sad pattern he was off having his relationships and you know the impact of this failing marriage
30:46was particularly great on her it she wanted that marriage to succeed
30:56the tragedy of anthony armstrong jones was that he was a stud and he was a bitch you know he was
31:02bitchy in in in the sense that that a woman might be considered bitchy you know leaving notes in princess
31:08margaret's books saying i hate you or saying you look like a jewish manicurist or sort of flicking light
31:14of matches at her just for sport it was there was a cruelty there and i don't understand what lord
31:20snowden had to complain about and why he hated this woman so much who had given him so much
31:31remarkably while all this was going on princess margaret didn't shirk her duties aside from her
31:38official functions as princess she was patron or president of over 80 organizations from the girl guides
31:46to the saint john's ambulance brigade particularly close to her heart was the national society for the
31:53prevention of cruelty to children but while she was clearly a big name for the charity's headed paper
31:59in reality she became more involved than she is often given credit for
32:04i'm meeting giles pegram who was the appeals director at the nspcc to find out just how involved she really was
32:16would you say giles that princess margaret had um a keen sense of duty and went indeed beyond the
32:22call of duty um i've already said that she has a very strong sense of duty to the extent she would
32:29do whatever she was asked to do um but at the beginning of our full stop appeal which was for
32:35250 million pounds there'd never been an appeal beyond 100 million and we were going for 250 million
32:40pounds and we wanted to get a group of nspcc supporters with the most influence and the most
32:46wealth corporate philanthropic etc and we wanted to get them together in order to form a steering group
32:54and we thought what you know what venue could we use that would actually get those people to turn up
33:02and princess margaret offered us her private apartments which i think is unprecedented and so
33:08the invitations went out to these 13 people to have a reception in princess margaret's private apartments
33:15in the drawing room with a tv and the video and a little cushion saying it's hard being a princess
33:20and she was the perfect host there were no staff present um and as a result of that because she
33:29was so good because she'd allowed us to use her private apartments we got a steering group set up
33:34we had a chair and we ended up raising 274 million pounds but we i do not believe that if we hadn't
33:40had the royal apartments you know princess margaret's apartments as the venue we would simply not have
33:46got those people to turn up so i think that was going to be on the call of duty
33:52i think we've been so busy trashing princess margaret as a fallen woman
33:56that her charity work has been completely ignored um she was a lifelong supporter of the girl guides
34:02st john's ambulance and i think very pertinent to our age the nsbcc uh you know she was unstinting
34:09in her support for the work that was being done to help abuse children
34:13and in fact she'd even speak to some of those children not as a princess but as a mother and
34:17she was clearly deeply moved by the plight of these young people
34:23it's been totally forgotten in the mists of time that princess margaret was one of the first people
34:28to stand up and support the london lighthouse the aids charity which was incredibly unpopular you know
34:34it was the gay plague it was looked on as as something that nobody should be interested in never mind
34:40a member of the royal family like princess margaret you know the fact that she had so many gay
34:45friends probably made sense for her to support a very unpopular cause and now of course if you need
34:50a poster girl for hiv and aids it's princess diana it's not princess margaret but she was the first she
34:56put her head above the parapet and she did the business
34:59but the brave face in public couldn't change what was going on behind the scenes margaret and tony would
35:10have blazing arguments at times tony was charming but he could also prove to be a rather nasty piece
35:17of work he would wind her up and destroy her self-confidence by the early 1970s the cracks in the
35:25marriage had become deep divisions and margaret and her husband were living all but separate lives
35:32she was desperately unhappy and increasingly turned to her vices of drinking and smoking and sought to
35:38escape tony on the island of mystique but it was on mystique that margaret would hit the headlines once
35:47again when she was photographed apparently having a holiday fling with a man 17 years her junior
35:54that man was roderick or roddy llewellyn she was looking for somebody new in her life and colin tennant
36:03actually introduced her to roddy llewellyn who was a 27 year old and the two of them went off to
36:09mustique uh clearly had a holiday that she enjoyed massively the problem was that they were photographed
36:15uh you know her in her bikini him in swimming trunks that got into the tabloids uh and even though
36:21roddy llewellyn was i think very good for her nevertheless the whole thing was projected to
36:25the public as something essentially sordid compared to the bitchy confidence destroying tony
36:35roddy was a lot of fun a caring individual and they had one big thing in common their love of music
36:43it is often said that if margaret were not a princess she would surely have had a career on the stage
36:52margaret had very broad music tastes and she loved jazz uh at one party she's supposed to have taken the
36:59microphone asked the band to play some cole porter songs and started you know some slinky gyrations
37:05singing some of the naughty cole porter lyrics until apparently she was barracked from the back of the
37:10room by the artist francis bacon and she threw the mic down and walked off uh she was also big
37:15friends of the rolling stones and she knew the beatles uh so so well in fact george harrison
37:20apparently approached her to party and asked if she could uh help with the drugs bust and apparently
37:25she said i don't think so george that could be getting a little sticky
37:31i was told that princess margaret was a great fan of country and western music and that that her heroine
37:37was dolly parton and and that she said it was one of the greatest achievements in her life was
37:42meeting dolly parton i i just love the thought of princess margaret doing a sort of hoedown and
37:47in balmoral instead of doing a highland reel just dreaming of dolly in the big boobs and the blonde hair
37:55this mutual love of music saw roddy and margaret spend lots of time together and while the papers painted
38:02them as lovers it appears more likely their relationship had evolved into a strong friendship
38:08i have a funny feeling that roddy was set up with princess margaret that her friends knew that she'd
38:14been unhappy once again unlucky in love once again and i he was almost presented like a morsel on the
38:20dinner table he was there for entertainment and he certainly entertained princess margaret i think in the
38:26early days there must have been an element of a sexual relationship but it turned into a more
38:31slightly maternal fungily enough you know that he was the court jester and she was the princess
38:42at the time this was no doubt a refreshing contrast to the bitter and intense marriage with anthony armstrong
38:49jones by 1976 margaret and tony were living mostly separate lives and two years later they were
38:58divorced it was the first royal divorce since the reign of henry the eighth the divorce between princess
39:06margaret and lord snowden was a huge shame and a huge disaster because no member of the royal family had
39:12been divorced since henry the eighth and catherine of aragon and if we we reverse that process and
39:19look at how common divorce is today in the royal family princess margaret set the precedent and it
39:24was a sad precedent to set to be the first princess margaret's lifestyle began to take its toll on her
39:36health and led to an increasing number of visits to hospital in 1985 she had part of her left lung removed
39:44and a bout of pneumonia eight years later gave her the determination to give up cigarettes once and
39:51for all she also gave up drinking substituting famous grouse for fruit squash from 1998 she suffered a
40:00number of strokes which left her paralyzed and with only partial vision and then an accident in the bath
40:07caused by a faulty thermostat left her with skulls on her feet which would never heal for someone
40:14previously so vibrant and full of life the change shocked those around her it's sad really that
40:23margaret's health became the story you know as early as the 1970s cecil beaton the photographer
40:30made a really catty comment about her skin looking like dirty pink satin and and you know it became
40:36rather like that the vultures swooping overhead looking at margaret's health waiting for her to
40:41fail i think the great shock for the public was when billy tallon wheeled princess margaret out in
40:47front of clarence house and there was this character like joan crawford in um whatever happened to baby
40:53jane with dark glasses and looking crippled and the the right side drooping it was a horrible last
41:00sight of princess margaret and she certainly didn't deserve that draped in her own blue and crimson
41:09standard princess margaret's coffin leaves the king edward the seventh hospital the princess died here
41:15at 6 30 this morning after suffering a stroke on saturday the 9th of february 2002 the year of the golden
41:25jubilee buckingham palace released a statement from the queen announcing the death of her beloved
41:31sister princess margaret had passed away at 6 30 that morning aged 71 her son and daughter by her bedside
41:44her life was made for newspapers you know it was full of tragedy it was full of scandal
41:51and and printing this aspect of her life is what sold newspapers and so it was great makes good copy
42:01but it wasn't necessarily who she was
42:06chris do you think the public ever knew the real margaret the short answer is no
42:12a friend of mine was saying just the other day that the first thing
42:17his parents he was talking to came up with was ah yes well of course she didn't want to marry peter
42:25townsend because she didn't want to give up who she was the other side is that she was boozy
42:34sex mad that is the image that people retain of her the real princess margaret was a much much nicer woman
42:45much kinder much warmer uh just goes to prove how powerful the news media is and the pictures that it can paint
43:00while the press coverage of margaret's sometimes rather colorful love life has skewed the public's
43:06perception of her it is also fair to say that much of what was deemed risque at the time
43:12would be far less so today margaret's desire to lead her own life as she chose to
43:19brought the rather hidebound monarchy into the 20th century
43:26without her paving the way perhaps prince charles wouldn't have been able to divorce diana
43:32prince william wouldn't have married a commoner katherine
43:35and prince harry's marriage to an american actress megan markle would have been unthinkable but what
43:42people often forget is that margaret was devoted to duty even if it didn't always make the headlines
43:49history is destined to remember few of its princesses but margaret will never be forgotten
43:56let's just hope it's for the right reasons
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