Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1930-2002)


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Its not "shocking" at all. I don't think Margaret was an alcoholic but it is unlikely that if she did get drunk a lot we'd find out about it...
But She certainly liked her drink and fags.....
 
On paper, Margaret’s alcoholic consumption is shocking to modern eyes. Most people don’t drink vodka for breakfast and graze on champagne and gin for the rest of the day. At least not in 2017. But in the 1960s and 1970s, alcohol was a huge part of daily life in a way that seems foreign today. Of course, all that’s really happened is that we have replaced drinking throughout the day with binge drinking which is probably far more harmful than the way Margaret drank.

In Guy Hunting’s book about royal service he says that much was made about the consumption of alcohol enjoyed by the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret but in fact that was pretty much the standard. It just seems excessive given that people are more health conscious these days and when you compare to the Queen and her immediate family who are not known to be strong drinkers.
 
Gaudete said:
In Guy Hunting’s book about royal service he says that much was made about the consumption of alcohol enjoyed by the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret but in fact that was pretty much the standard. It just seems excessive given that people are more health conscious these days and when you compare to the Queen and her immediate family who are not known to be strong drinkers.
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In Colin Burgess' book "Behind Palace Doors: My Service As the Queen Mother's Equerry", he also tells of what would seem to be excessive drinking at meals and walking (or rather, weaving) away from the table sloshed. It was the norm. It was how those meals went. You ate. You drank. You had cocktails or an aperitif to stimulate the appetite before the meal, you had different wines with different courses of the meal, a dessert wine and then a pousse-café after dinner to aid digestion.

I still remember cigarette ads prominent in TV commercials. The dangers of smoking wasn't as well know then as they are today. Doctors would advise women to take up smoking to relax and to lose weight.

Things were different and we didn't know then what we know now and from the sounds of it, was a whole lot of fun. So, Margaret probably drank what would be considered a normal amount daily and smoked for pleasure. She probably never thought of watching her carbs or whether something was gluten free and relished meals with red meats or insisted on things without trans fat and low calorie salad dressings.

If only I could sit and eat just one meal like they used to, I'd be a very contented Osipi! :D
 
Gaudete said:
On paper, Margaret’s alcoholic consumption is shocking to modern eyes. Most people don’t drink vodka for breakfast and graze on champagne and gin for the rest of the day. At least not in 2017. But in the 1960s and 1970s, alcohol was a huge part of daily life in a way that seems foreign today. Of course, all that’s really happened is that we have replaced drinking throughout the day with binge drinking which is probably far more harmful than the way Margaret drank.

In Guy Hunting’s book about royal service he says that much was made about the consumption of alcohol enjoyed by the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret but in fact that was pretty much the standard. It just seems excessive given that people are more health conscious these days and when you compare to the Queen and her immediate family who are not known to be strong drinkers.
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You are absolutely correct. In the 50s, 60s and 70s we drank and smoked to a heavy extent. Just look at old black and white movies of the times. Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Betty Davis, etc. always had a smoke or drink in their hand. We knew our limit as we had jobs to do and children to raise. This being said, very few of my knowledge were ever falling down drunk. I remember very well that when I was close to my first delivery and getting a bit nervous [we were not given "lessons or movies" in those days] the doctor told me to go home, relax have a nice glass of wine or scotch and a few cigarettes . Which I probably did. Doctors smoked all the time in their offices when they talked to you. I smoked for 28 years before one day throwing away and never touching again. Liquor and cigarettes were big advertisements on TV. So I truly don't feel that you can ever compare one area of time to another. As far as Margaret, I personally don't believe she was a drunk but she sure did enjoy a few drinks and probably daily. She had the money to do so and at the time society was drinking. Never went to a wedding, charity affair, house party or picnic when the liquor wasn't flowing. That being said, never knew anyone then who over did drugs, whether illegal or prescribed. That is this eras social media.
 
Even American TV shows of the period showed constant drinking and smoking. "Bewitched" comes to mind. PM's lifestyle was very much a typical "ladies who lunch" routine ... except maybe for that first early eye-opener.
 
That she chose not to stop or limit her drinking after being hospitalized for gastroenteritis and alcoholic hepatitis in 1978, suggests to me that she had a problem with alcohol. Sadly her lifestyle caught up with her in the end and she gave up both cigarettes and her whisky/gin too late to mitigate the damage they caused her.
 
I have tried a 3 martini lunch. I don’t know how people functioned in the afternoon. In the 70s, most of the people my father did business with had wet bars in their offices. Have a cocktail with the insurance agent, the CPA, etc. He could have had 4 cocktails by 4p. In Collins glass, not rocks glasses.
 
Things have changed now with the introduction of recommended units and what have you. According to modern NHS guidelines (for what that’s worth), Princess Margaret would be defined as an alcoholic and at risk of chronic liver disease. Which sounds very serious but then you consider that under the same guidelines on recommended daily intake, the Queen would be classed as a binge drinker! Even though the consensus seems to be that she has no more than four alcoholic drinks a day, in units that makes her just as big a risk for complications from booze as her late sister.

Margaret Rhodes said in an interview that the Queen always has the same drinks every day. A gin and dubonnet before lunch, a glass of wine with lunch, a martini before dinner and a glass of champagne with dinner. This would add up to 6 units a day which takes Her Majesty well over the recommended guidelines of 14 units a week. I daren’t attempt to tot up Margaret’s score but it would certainly be almost double.

(You can see now why nobody here in the UK seems to pay even the slightest attention to units and guidelines!)
 
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I think by the 1970s there would hardly be a time of the day when you wouldn't find Margaret with a glass in her hand.
 
As been pointed out, there are a lot of people like that. :D
 
CyrilVladisla said:
Royal Sisters: Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret by Anne Edwards
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That sounds interesting. I enjoyed watching their relationship with each other on "The Crown". I am not sure how much of it was factual, but it was an interesting dynamic.
 
duchessrachel said:
That sounds interesting. I enjoyed watching their relationship with each other on "The Crown". I am not sure how much of it was factual, but it was an interesting dynamic.
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I love the part when the Queen says Margaret is a "Born Queen".

We can't know if she ever really said that but I think we can all agree the character had a point there. :D
 
How is she a born queen? She was lazy, selfish, and self indulgent. She was never very popular.
 
She was popular. She was adulated by the public during the 50s.
 
in the 50s maybe, she was young and pretty.. but it did't last long. By the 70s she was pretty unpopular, and by the 80s she was sidelined.
 
Denville said:
in the 50s maybe, she was young and pretty.. but it did't last long. By the 70s she was pretty unpopular, and by the 80s she was sidelined.
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I think that’s a little unfair. Princess Margaret was hugely popular in the 1950s and 1960s but her popularity didn’t really wane until the 80s. And that wasn’t a slight on Margaret, it was because she was no longer so much in the spotlight. It wasn’t because she was sidelined - nobody could sideline Margaret!

But in the 1980s, Charles married and had two sons. Andrew married, Anne was already married and had children. Margaret’s place in the pecking order was dropping at a fairly regular rate and she understood that. Margaret was almost obsessed with rank and position and she understood that the longer she lived, the less important she would be in terms of the line of succession. How she dealt with that is another discussion entirely but it’s an unfair representation to say that she was unpopular or disliked by people.
 
She was increasingly unpopular in the 70s. I remember it well because I was a kid then and starting to take an interest in Royalty. She and Anne were not popular then. And In the 80s she was a back number, partly because Charles and Diana had taken over, and partly because she had no "capital of goodwill" wit the public.
 
I think it’s important not to confuse attention and popularity. Princess Anne has never been given the attention or recognition she deserves and is barely ever spoken about. And yet she’s universally respected, even among hardline republicans. Margaret disappeared from centre stage certainly but I don’t think that translates to public dislike.
 
I often wonder what her role would have been had she lived until know.

I assume she would have retreated to obscurity and left public life somewhere in the mid 2000s.
 
I would like to think that if she had the longevity of her mother and her sister, she would still be very close to her family but more or less not as visible as a working member of the "Firm". Its hard to believe but today, she would still be younger than the Queen is and I would imagine still a a crucial part of the Queen's support system and within the very intimate circle of the Queen.

I think she would have reveled in Harry's antics in Vegas and though it quite amusing. She would have danced at William's wedding and maybe be happy that Charles finally had a happy marriage. And.... she would still be enjoying her drinks and her smokes whenever she could.

My grandmother lived to a ripe old age of 95 and of course, had her drink every day for "medicinal purposes". :D
 
She had all but retreated to obcurtiy. Her ill health combined with a lack of public interest left her leading a quiet and retired life.
 
Before her accident in the bath, Princess Margaret was far from retired. She kept up a busy schedule of engagements with organisations she’d long been associated with. It was only that incident which saw her eventual decline and sad death.
 
Posting in this thread as originating from the Wm of Gloucester thread, where the below specifics were off-topic:

Denville said:
Princess Michael of kent did not "convert to his faith". She agreed to allow her children to be brought up as Anglicans...but P Michael was out of the succession because he was married to a Catholic.
And the queen did not "grant Margaret a divorce". She allowed the divorce to go ahead, but that was because Snowdon was having an affair with Lucy Lindsay Hogg who was pregnant..
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Sure, sure, thanks for correcting the technicalities. But sadly, the scandalous public revelations about Margaret's affair with Llewellyn certainly played a huge role in the Queen 'allowing the divorce to go ahead.'

Snowden having affairs, impregnating various women and engaging in rampant sexual misconduct himself was certainly not news to anyone in-the-know. Neither was the fact that Margaret & Snowden had both come to hate each other and were unfaithful in their marriage.
 
Gaudete said:
Before her accident in the bath, Princess Margaret was far from retired. She kept up a busy schedule of engagements with organisations she’d long been associated with. It was only that incident which saw her eventual decline and sad death.
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She wasn't that busy. For instance, she was a patron of Barnado's and went to a function once a year. When Diana took it over, she appeared between 6 and 8 times a year publicly for them and conducted private visits.

To be fair, there was not that much demand for her as she was known to be difficult to the extreme. Also, the principal Royals were garnering the good invitations. PM was never one for mid-winter visits to railroad stations and canneries.
 
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Leopoldine said:
Sh
To be fair, there was not that much demand for her as she was known to be difficult to the extreme. Also, the principal Royals were garnering the good invitations. PM was never one for mid-winter visits to railroad stations and canneries.
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I think as she grew older she had less work.. which suited her fine. As Diana and the younger Royals came along in the 80s, an older less popular Royal like Margo took a back seat. And I agree that she was generally felt to be a difficult imperious woman to accommodate at engagements.
 
People probably didn't think of her in that way. However, in 1930 the Prince of Wales was thirty six years old. Even in that period most men were married by their mid-thirties. And the York family were quite prominent. Prince Albert (heir to his brother) was the only son married and the public and Press loved the family and especially little Princess Elizabeth. So Margaret was born into intense public interest from the first. As the years went on that only grew.
 
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She and Elizabeth were "next in line" after the D of York, and he was next in line after the POW... nad they were pretty little girls, so of course the meida and the public took an interest. I don't know if people were really expecting Edward to marry, by the early 30s.. I suspect his family felt he was a settled bachelor...
 
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