A Terrible Thing Happened by Margaret M. Holmes

Tony did not make things easier, deliberately arriving late back from the slopes. One evening, Tony and Anthony Barton, an old friend from university days at Cambridge, came back from skiing to find Anthony's wife Eva with her hair half curly, half straight - she had been at the salon when a message came through that Her Royal Highness wanted some company, so Eva had to leave with her hair half-done. In the evening, when the others, physically tired after a day on the slopes, felt like bed, Margaret wanted to stay up late drinking whisky and being entertained.

She would emerge to drink several glasses of gin before lunch.

Plain Mr Armstrong Jones had been created Lord Snowdon the year before, following the birth of their son, David The couple at the Badminton Horse Trials in 1962. In the winter, she insisted on coming skiing with him and his friends but spent all morning in bed while Tony, who adored skiing, got up early. She did not always understand how much her behaviour frustrated him. He remained there until persuaded down by magazine publisher Jocelyn Stevens, who was also in Rome and who'd been rung by the frantic Margaret when her own pleas for her husband to come down had met with no response. 'It's the only place I can get away from her,' he said of his wife.

On holiday in Rome with their friends Judy Montagu and her husband, who lived in an elegant flat in the ancient Jewish quarter, Tony climbed out of a window and on to the roof. 'The moment people became too matey, her reaction was: 'Don't forget who I am'.' 'She was very much a schizophrenic in that sense,' said her cousin, Lord Lichfield. Chiefly, this was because of his urge to work, but it also involved the streak of contrariness in his nature that manifested itself in various floutings of established custom or order.Įqually Margaret, despite dipping her toes in Tony's world, would go on fulfilling the royal role to which she had been brought up - and behaving in the way she had always behaved. He was never going to spend his time as a permanent number two, his prime job to be the perfect royal consort. Yet by 1972, when this picture was taken, the marriage was heading for the rocks - and a shocking Royal divorceīy the summer of 1965, five years after their May 6 wedding, the constraints of marriage to a Royal were beginning to chafe on Tony. They had been viewed as one of the most glamorous couples in the world when they got together in the spring of 1960.

Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon during yet another argument.

A Terrible Thing Happened by Margaret M. Holmes