Snowdon and Margaret: Inside a Royal Marriage
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Tony Snowdon was one of the most flamboyant and charismatic figures of the 1960s, a talented photographer who charmed everyone around him. Princess Margaret was one of the most eligible women in the world.
The Snowdons epitomized "The Swinging Sixties" - by far and away the most glamorous and modern members of the Royal Family. Their volatile marriage ended in scandal and divorce in 1978 - the first royal divorce for over four hundred years. At the time, Princess Margaret was blamed. Tony was seen as the wronged husband.
Tony and Margaret: Inside a Royal Marriage tells a different story, drawing on extensive archive footage, unprecedented access to Lord Snowdon's friends and family and exclusive material gathered by his biographer, Anne de Courcy.
Ugly son
The programme explores the effect of Tony's troubled childhood on his character and behaviour. His parents divorced when he was only five and his socially ambitious mother married a peer and subsequently rejected Tony as her "ugly son".
When he was sixteen he was nearly died from polio and was left with one leg slightly shorter than the other. Both experiences would contribute to his twin obsessions with work and sex.
When Princess Margaret first met Tony Armstrong Jones at a dinner party in 1958, she told her official biographer, Christopher Warwick, that she thought he was amusing, but that she "didn't think he was interested in women".
Quite the opposite was true. Ahead of his time in so many ways, Tony had many gay and bi-sexual friends but in the 1950s the future royal husband anticipated the sexual mores of the 60s in having a succession of girlfriends - many of them simultaneously.
While Tony was courting numerous girls, Margaret was at a vulnerable point. Twenty eight, she was recovering from a long doomed love affair with Group Captain Peter Townsend. They had wanted to marry, but he was divorced.
In the 1950s divorce was a scandal and the princess had finally said that she couldn't marry Townsend because "Christian marriage was indissoluble." In contrast to Tony, Princess Margaret took religion so seriously that she was a member of a prayer group.
Sexual spark
Tony started dating the Princess after a photographic session at which a sexual spark was lit. But he continued to see other women, including his on-off live-in girlfriend, actress Jacqui Chan, and an 18-year-old debutante, Gina Ward. Added to this mix was Camilla, one of many ex-girlfriends now married to one of his greatest friends, bisexual Jeremy Fry.
Around the time Tony became engaged to Margaret in the autumn of 1959, Tony went to stay several times with the Frys. Avant garde, the couple hosted wild house parties and during one of these Tony and Camilla had a fling with consequences that would only be revealed years later.
Despite Camilla and Gina, Tony, never predictable, had fallen deeply in love with Princess Margaret and she with him. When the couple became engaged, friends were privately horrified. One of them, Jocelyn Stevens, sent Tony a telegram saying "never was there a more ill fated assignment."
Bohemian Tony
Many who knew the couple worried how the free and easy, bohemian Tony would cope with the confines of royal protocol.
Tony and Margaret were married in Westminster Abbey on 6 May, 1960 and for a couple of years Tony kept his wild maverick side under wraps and fulfilled the role of royal husband, giving up work and walking a few paces behind his wife.
In November, 1961 their first child was born and Tony was a devoted father. But by 1962, Tony felt driven to go back to work and he took up a job on the Sunday Times where he produced a vast range of iconic photographs, including campaigning pictures highlighting the plight of the dispossessed and the desperately ill.
During the mid-60s the Snowdons were a glamorous, iconic couple. Tony had converted Princess Margaret from prayer groups to parties with actors, pop stars and writers. But as Tony reached for more and more freedom, Princess Margaret became more and more possessive and demanding.
As Anne de Courcy puts it, the princess "had a very shrewd suspicion that when he was away on is travels, he was, so to speak, playing away". Snowdon's colleague, Bob Belton, remembers her calling Tony when he was working and "I would generally have to answer the phone and say that he was doing the pictures so he couldn't come to the telephone. It was quite difficult making some excuse."
Increasing hostility
Friends witnessed Tony's increasing hostility towards his wife. Once on holiday, he climbed up on to the roof of the place they were staying, as he put it to "get away from the bloody woman". Feeling deeply unhappy and neglected, the Princess had a couple of brief affairs.
Tony's reaction was to retreat from his wife and he embarked on an affair with Jackie, the daughter of the Marquis and Marchioness of Reading, sixteen years his junior. In 1971, when the papers threatened to reveal the relationship, all concerned denied it.
Ironically, the exposure five years later in a newspaper of Margaret on holiday on Mustique with Roddy Llewellyn finally prompted Tony to abandon the doomed marriage.
Theirs was the first royal divorce for over 400 years and caused shockwaves. Princess Margaret was largely vilified and Tony played the part of the wronged husband. But, as is now revealed, Tony's sexual activities put Princess Margaret's indiscretions in the shade.
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This programme is on Channel 4 at 9pm on Wednesday 25th June 2008.
Image credit: Channel 4
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