Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1930-2002)

[kelly9480]

In those days, you didn't go out when you were visibly pregnant. "Confinement" meant just that. There are some photos of EIIR when visibly pregnant, but not many, and none past the point where she seems to be more than six months into the pregnancy.

 

[Elspeth]

As I recall, it was considered fairly daring and "modern" of Princess Anne and the Princess of Wales to be out and about during the last stages of their pregnancies.

How times change!

 

[lashinka2002]

Oh my!! What are you suppose to do with yourself in hiding for so long?

 

[Georgia]

Pregnant? Do you really believe that? Surely with the new freedom of information act as well as the 30year rule we would know this for sure? I think it seems a little far fetched that Princess Margaret could give birth and for it to be quiet all these years. As Elspeth said in 1950 Elizabeth was pregnant with Andrew so margaret would have been out and about more often. I suppose Maragret could have been pregnant with Peter Townsend's baby, however I don't believe the pregnancy would ever have gone ahead.

 

[iowabelle]

Pregnant? Do you really believe that? Surely with the new freedom of information act as well as the 30year rule we would know this for sure? I think it seems a little far fetched that Princess Margaret could give birth and for it to be quiet all these years. As Elspeth said in 1950 Elizabeth was pregnant with Andrew so margaret would have been out and about more often. I suppose Maragret could have been pregnant with Peter Townsend's baby, however I don't believe the pregnancy would ever have gone ahead.

The 1950 baby was Anne. Andrew came in 1960, just before Margaret's wedding.

 

[tiaraprin]

Here is another shocker. According to one book I read (I have to find it) Princess Margaret was encouraged to enjoy lesbian relationships so that she would remain virginal but yet release her sexual energy. The Queen Mum knew of this!!

 

[Elspeth]

Well, depending on the reliability of this source, the story could be anything from true to a total fabrication. I'd have thought that the Queen Mother, with her horror of the wrong sort of publicity, wouldn't have wanted to encourage anything that might have even the minutest chance of causing embarrassment in the press.

 

[iowabelle]

I think I have read that before too.

Back in the 1950's Margaret was friends with the daughter of the American ambassador. I think her name was Charmain Douglas, and she lived a pretty adventurous lifestyle (which sucked Margaret along in its wake). To be fair, I'm not sure if Charmain is one of the people in this "plot", but she was pretty lively for the times.

 

[portergirl]

Thanks for the beautiful photos

Thank you for the beautiful photos of Princess Margaret! I'd always thought she was beautiful but kind of forgot about it over the years. I always felt rather sorry for her because she wasn't allowed to marry the love of her life, Capt. Townsend, and as a result, it was the heartbreak that affected her whole life. How simple that seems today - but then it would have been shocking to marry an unsuitable person! I don't know that Princess Margaret was that sympathetic to Diana, but she should have been, because she was basically beaten down for her fun personality and "wild" ways (meaning she smiled and was friendly, unlike many others in her family) just like Diana was.

 

[james]

Iv'e never felt sorry for Margaret over the Townsend affair as it seems to have been her relationship with him that led to his divorce in the first place. The popular myth is that he just happened to be a divorced man but many sources from the time have shown another side to this. Eileen Parker, wife of Prince Philip's great friend Mike Parker, has said on record, " It wasn't easy for Rosemary (Townsend's wife) as Princess Margaret at the age of 17 was openly flirting with Peter and demanding he go riding with her when he was trying to spend time with his wife and children in between his Royal duties". Apparently this went on for years eventually leading to a full blown affair but when Rosemary had an extra marital relationship of her own Peter took the moral high ground and divorced her.

 

[rchainho]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/monarchy/story/0,2763,1553442,00.html

'Princess Margaret was the Windsor wild child, a godsend for editors'

[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Cristina Odone's diary, Sunday August 21, 2005, The Observer
[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Who would want to have the Queen for a sister? Quiet and dowdy despite being rich and powerful, her every breath a matter of public record, her every word and action governed by Germanic self-discipline, Elizabeth II would be a truly irritating sibling. What could have been easier for her lively and attractive younger sister than to become the Queen's glamorous and dangerous foil, the Windsor wild child everyone had a soft spot for?[/FONT]

 

[PrincessDianafan]

Pictures that I took of HRH Princess Margaret

In remembrance of HRH Princess Margaret, Countess Snowdon on the occasion of her Birthday I have attached two pictures that I took of her back in May 1992. Hope you like them. Thanks Tiaraprin, I didn't know it was her birthday.

 

[tiaraprin]

Originally Posted by james
Has anyone seen the recent reports that Margaret had an illegitimate child with Peter Townsend. A 50 year old accountant from Jersey (That's Jersey in the channel Islands for American posters) named Robert Brown has revealed some dynamite information in relation to this which I read in the highly respected Daily Mail newspaper in Britain. This man claims to be the child concerned and, although his reasons regarding his claim are too numerous to detail, certain aspects of his argument seem too strong to discount. Primarily, he is willing to take a DNA test, and secondly, the Palace have refused to deny his claims. Additionally the day after the article was printed the Mail reported that they had been contacted by a 71 year old man who was quoted as saying, " I am surprised this story has taken over 50 years to break. As a 14 year old errand boy (working at an estate in Wales which is now owned by The National Trust) I remember a baby arriving at the house. The senior servants, who witnesed all the goings on above stairs, told us that the baby was Princess Margaret's and Peter Townsend's and that it was going to be adopted out".


This guy is kidding right?? When did Margaret disappear for months for this pregnancy and delivery??

Hey James, I have heard of the Jersey Islands!! I will bet they are a lot nicer than New Jersey, USA!!!

 

[lashinka2002]

Iv'e never felt sorry for Margaret over the Townsend affair as it seems to have been her relationship with him that led to his divorce in the first place. The popular myth is that he just happened to be a divorced man but many sources from the time have shown another side to this. Eileen Parker, wife of Prince Philip's great friend Mike Parker, has said on record, " It wasn't easy for Rosemary (Townsend's wife) as Princess Margaret at the age of 17 was openly flirting with Peter and demanding he go riding with her when he was trying to spend time with his wife and children in between his Royal duties". Apparently this went on for years eventually leading to a full blown affair but when Rosemary had an extra marital relationship of her own Peter took the moral high ground and divorced her.

I don't feel sorry for her either. I've heard that she was given the option of renouncing her HRH in order to marry Townsend but declined, unable to live without the privilidges that the HRH status gave her. If she truly loved Peter, if he was the love of her life and she couldn't bear to be without him she would have followed him to hell and back. She would have renounced her HRH happily and married him never regretting it. This obviously was not the case. I think he was to her a silly little infatuation that challenged her because as a married man she could not have him and as a princess she was used to demanding and recieving everything and anything she wanted.
What a homewrecker!!! I think that she hurt a lot of lives and walked over a lot of people in her lifetime simply because she could. Not very nice!

 

[Idriel]

A portrait of Lord Snowdon

Lord Snowdon: Royal refusenik

His whole life has been a counterblast to royal dignity, royal mystique, royal protocol and royal unassailability

By John Walsh

Published: 27 August 2005

It is always a little awkward watching one's wife committing adultery. It can become tiresome watching her at parties drinking, smoking dope and engaging in long sapphic kisses with an American bisexual heiress. But it's surely worst of all watching yourself being impersonated by an actor as an aggressive, louche and faithless husband. So spare a thought for Lord Snowdon, as Channel 4 unveils its scandalous £2m drama, The Queen's Sister, to be screened in November, about the raunchy heyday of Princess Margaret in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.

Full article

 

[Warren]

What a rebel!

Lord Snowdon: Royal refusenik
His whole life has been a counterblast to royal dignity, royal mystique, royal protocol and royal unassailability
By John Walsh Published: 27 August 2005 Full article

Thanks for this Idriel; an interesting story. But I find it odd that even today there is this sense of condescension when stating that Lord Snowdon did "ordinary" things; for example this quote from the article:

"When not building up his thespian portfolio, he inspected the low-life purlieus of Covent Garden market where the traders unloaded sacks of fruit at dawn, and the pubs and butchers' shops of the East End."

As if "respectable" people never went to the Covent Garden market, and certainly not to East End butcher shops. What a rebel Lord Snowdon must have been! Although note that it doesn't say he actually bought a beer or a sausage, just that he "inspected". And I won't even go into the use of "low life" to describe the market traders.
.

 

[Idriel]

As if "respectable" people never went to the Covent Garden market, and certainly not to East End butcher shops. What a rebel Lord Snowdon must have been! Although note that it doesn't say he actually bought a beer or a sausage, just that he "inspected". And I won't even go into the use of "low life" to describe the market traders.
.

Indeed. But of course if he had spent his life in the food hall of Harrods, he would have been branded a hopeless snob...

 

[Elspeth]

Well, places like Covent Garden Market would have been wonderful for a professional photographer to hang out; I remember seeing the market before they moved it, and the combination of the produce, the people, and the setting was a photographer's dream.

 

[gogm]

Princess Margaret's Other Child (?)

I just read this thread about Princess Margaret's illegitimate child.

Nothing is certain so maybe she did and maybe she didn't.

However, the final trimester is kind of obvious. Did she go into seclusion and drop out of the public eye for some period of months back then? Did anyone take a photo of her in a family kind of way?

 

[iowabelle]

I don't see how it would have been possible for Margaret to have a "hidden" love child. She was too visible during the early years of the Queen's reign (and there were not many female members of the Royal Family performing duties). People would have noticed if she was gone for very long, unless she had joined her family at Balmoral.

I wonder if there's an archive of the Court Circular where we could find out where Margaret was.

 

[kelly9480]

Iv'e never felt sorry for Margaret over the Townsend affair as it seems to have been her relationship with him that led to his divorce in the first place. The popular myth is that he just happened to be a divorced man but many sources from the time have shown another side to this. Eileen Parker, wife of Prince Philip's great friend Mike Parker, has said on record, " It wasn't easy for Rosemary (Townsend's wife) as Princess Margaret at the age of 17 was openly flirting with Peter and demanding he go riding with her when he was trying to spend time with his wife and children in between his Royal duties". Apparently this went on for years eventually leading to a full blown affair but when Rosemary had an extra marital relationship of her own Peter took the moral high ground and divorced her.

Rosemary cheated first, and if she'd had any evidence that he had cheated before her, she would have entered it in court so as to avoid being the "guilty party" and therefore ostracised by polite society. She didn't enter any, so either she was too stupid to realise what allowing herself to be legally blamed for the breakup would mean, or there wasn't any. I've never read that Rosemary was stupid...

 

[james]

I have no knowledge of the intelligence levels of Rosemary Townsend but I know that naming the daughter of the King as the woman whom her husband was commiting adultery with would have been, in itself, a certain way to attain social exclusion. Even with this consideration aside, taking on the establishment, especially in those days, would probably have seemed terrifying.

 

[kelly9480]

I have no knowledge of the intelligence levels of Rosemary Townsend but I know that naming the daughter of the King as the woman whom her husband was commiting adultery with would have been, in itself, a certain way to attain social exclusion. Even with this consideration aside, taking on the establishment, especially in those days, would probably have seemed terrifying.

Even if she had been unwilling to name Margaret, Peter could have been trapped with another woman and named as the guilty party that way.

There is simply no reason to think, or evidence to prove, a teenaged Princess Margaret, who was very proper when it suited her, would have slept with a married man, regardless of her disgraceful behavior in middle-age. And there's certainly no evidence that Townsend consummated the relationship with Margaret before his death -- some doubt whether it was ever consummated at all, even after his divorce.

Eileen Parker, in her divorce from Michael, made some comments about Prince Philip and infidelity that haven't been proven even now, five decades after she made them, even though numerous journalists have tried to corroborate her story. She doesn't have much credibility, and I say this as someone who doesn't think either Philip or Margaret are/were paragons of virtue. Nothing she's said has been able to be proven, and therefore anything she said has to be taken with a heap of salt.

 

[susan alicia]

Royal rage over a right Carry On

Queen Victoria would not have been amused - and neither was Princess Margaret when she visited the set of one of the Carry On films.

rest of article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4229554.stm

 

[james]

Why does Eileen Parker have no credibility? Intimate relations between two people are almost always impossible to prove but she was part of the Royal Family's inner circle at the time and an eyewitness to events so her accounts are actually very informative indeed.

 

[kelly9480]

She lacks credibility because she can't back up what she's said. Intimate relations involving a man who's constantly tailed by police and the press shouldn't be that hard to prove, especially as other stories about him have gotten out. She was married to a member of the inner circle, but Mrs Townsend is proof that doesn't necessarily mean the wife is part of the inner circle. Her accounts are worthless without proof, and she's never offered any, and no one else has ever been able to offer any either.

 

[james]

Well Prince Charles has lived his adult life in a far more aggressive media age than the Royals in the 1950's did yet no one knew of his affair with Camilla for years so that disproves the last theory.

 

[kelly9480]

Rumours were flying around since the mid-80s about affairs in the Wales' marriage -- they just weren't printed in the press. The Wales' own private secretary said it would be hard for them to have a third child because they rarely slept in the same county, much less the same bed. Nothing is disproved at all.

 

[james]

Well if the press were reluctant to print those kind of stories in the 1980's they certainly were not going to to it in the 1950's.

 

[kelly9480]

But they have printed the stories about the Waleses since then. If any evidence proving Eileen Parker's allegations to be true existed, it would have been printed by now. The press is always looking for dirt on Philip and comments about the state of the Queen's marriage were made in the 1950s and 1960s. No irrefutable evidence has been found (even after five decades of looking for some), so Eileen's comments can't be backed up -- therefore, she has no credibility.