Princess Margaret: Experts on 'traumatising' affair

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Margaret grew to have a reputation as one of the world’s biggest celebrities, boasting a glamorous lifestyle and wild love life. She famously fell in love with RAF officer Peter Townsend, who proposed to her in the early Fifties. But Government officials felt he would be an unsuitable husband for the Queen’s sister, and the Church of England refused to support her marrying a divorced man.

Margaret abandoned plans to tie the knot with him, and married Antony Armstrong-Jones in the early Sixties.

They had a turbulent marriage, riddled with speculation and a media circus over numerous alleged affairs.

Yet, when they first met, sparks flew.

Having first met at a supper party in 1958, Margaret became curious.

The Channel 5 documentary ‘Princess Margaret: A Scandalous Affair’, which aired on Saturday, explored the blossoming and subsequent breakdown of their relationship.

The documentary’s narrator said that, after the first meeting, Margaret was “so intrigued” at his personality that she “jumped at the chance to be photographed by him a few months later”.

Royal expert Wesley Kerr told the documentary: “I think he was known to be quite a lady’s man. 

“Some said that he was also a bit of a gentleman’s man — I think lots of people fancied him.

“He was perhaps the most fashionable photographer of that era.”

This was echoed by journalist Daisy McAndrew, who said: “He was everything that the young Princess Margaret wanted.

“He was glamorous, he was different. He was, in some ways, anti-establishment.

“If you think of her as feeling like some sort of caged princess within Buckingham Palace’s confines, he was her way out of that prison as she saw it.”

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The couple soon fell passionately in love, and were married within two years of meeting. Their wedding only elevated their status as one of the world’s most sought after couples.

Margaret was very much a modern person, enjoying a party lifestyle and mixing with A-list celebrities including Mick Jagger and Peter Sellers. The Daily Mail’s editor-at-large Richard Kay said Margaret had been a “fixture of the nightclub scene in London”, and enjoyed socialising with high society.

Ms McAndrew, however, added that her relationship with Mr Armstrong-Jones was far from just an escape from her royal confines.

She told the documentary: “It would be easy to say this was just a rebellion. 

“This was just a princess who felt caged by the confines of the establishment and her position and what was expected of her, and therefore she saw this loose, young man who didn’t care about all that, and that she was almost using him to exact revenge or cock a snook at her family.

“Actually, I think the relationship was much more than that. I think she genuinely was intoxicated by everything that he offered.”

Mr Kay added there was a lot of “excitement” about their relationship. Yet, it was troubled from the early stages.

Reports of a rift first began as early as 1967. The Evening Standard reported that her husband, by this point the Earl of Snowdon, had engaged in a series of casual flings while away on photographic assignments.

Margaret too had a brief affair with Snowdon’s university friend Anthony Barton, and later with Roddy Llewellyn, a gardener 18 years her junior.

Snowdon had also embarked on an extramarital affair with Lady Jacqueline Rufus-Isaacs.

In February 1976, Margaret and Llewellyn were photographed in swimsuits together, and published on the front page of the News of the World.

Just a matter of days later, she and her husband publicly acknowledged their marriage was beyond repair. Their divorce was finalised in July 1978, the first divorce of a senior royal since 1901.

Despite the troubles in their marriage, the pair remained close friends until Margaret’s death in 2002.

‘Princess Margaret: A Scandalous Affair’ will soon be available on My5.

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