Jan. 7, 2026
372: The Margaret Set
A famous socialite circle runs wild in the mid-20th century.
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WEBVTT
00:00.031 --> 00:01.760
[SPEAKER_00]: Royal Teagan Wild.
00:02.203 --> 00:02.987
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jason Horton.
00:03.269 --> 00:04.013
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Rebecca Leib.
00:04.455 --> 00:05.923
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is Ghost Town.
00:21.344 --> 00:40.568
[SPEAKER_00]: Though most people know who Princess Margaret is, maybe through history, the Netflix show the Crown, or her very famous sister, the Queen of England, not many people know just how subversive, how outrageous, and how well-facinating Princess Margaret countess of Snowden actually was.
00:41.138 --> 00:45.265
[SPEAKER_00]: as some say you're only as interesting as the people you associate with.
00:46.066 --> 00:54.300
[SPEAKER_00]: Though she was third in line to the throne, Margaret's friends were what amplified the princess as a point of controversy and fascination.
00:54.340 --> 01:06.100
[SPEAKER_00]: They were the real British royalty, at least according to the English social scene in the 50s, 60s and 70s,
01:06.080 --> 01:16.376
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Vogue Grider, Hamish Bulls, Margaret was, quote, a chain smoking, chain drinking, man-eating monster with flashes of wit, and unsteady charm.
01:17.337 --> 01:17.938
[SPEAKER_00]: And her friends?
01:18.679 --> 01:23.667
[SPEAKER_00]: While they were socialites who took Margaret's reputation to a whole new level.
01:24.288 --> 01:30.399
[SPEAKER_00]: Commoners in the Rat Pack, Brat Pack, Pussy Pussy, and the Bundy Drive Boys take a seat.
01:31.020 --> 01:35.308
[SPEAKER_00]: Because today on Ghost Town, we're talking about the Margaret Set.
01:36.350 --> 01:48.692
[SPEAKER_00]: Margaret was born on August 21, 1930, the younger daughter of Prince Albert Duke of York, later known as King George VI, and Elizabeth Duchess of York, later Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
01:48.672 --> 01:55.271
[SPEAKER_00]: She was affectionately known within the family as Margo, and developed her skills at singing and playing the piano as a girl.
01:56.013 --> 02:04.116
[SPEAKER_00]: Getting, along with her older sister Elizabeth, a limited education, only enough to make them into well-mannered young ladies.
02:04.096 --> 02:18.538
[SPEAKER_00]: In December 1936, Margaret's uncle and King at the time, Edward VIII, abdicated the throne to Mary Wallace Simpson, a twice-divorced American woman, whom neither the Church of England nor the government would accept as Queen.
02:18.578 --> 02:23.425
[SPEAKER_00]: It was then Elizabeth and Margaret's father George VI became King.
02:24.206 --> 02:28.753
[SPEAKER_00]: George loved his daughters, underlining the fact that they were intrinsically different.
02:28.733 --> 02:30.816
[SPEAKER_00]: he described Elizabeth as his pride.
02:30.877 --> 02:32.800
[SPEAKER_00]: Margaret as his joy.
02:32.840 --> 02:45.621
[SPEAKER_00]: As the two young women grew up, Elizabeth began her education as the heir apparent while Margaret, well, she didn't really know it was next for her incredibly privileged sheltered life.
02:46.383 --> 02:47.805
[SPEAKER_00]: But one thing she held
02:47.785 --> 02:55.319
[SPEAKER_00]: But one thing she held fasty was that she was, in fact, her father's joy, well liked, funny, and great in social settings.
02:56.241 --> 03:09.625
[SPEAKER_00]: The Princess could quote, charm the pearl out of an oyster, her father would say, After Elizabeth married, Princess Margaret became one of the most eligible single women in the world, and the tabloids of course, love it.
03:10.313 --> 03:22.375
[SPEAKER_00]: As her sister learned the royal ropes in 1947, the 17-year-old Margaret began a friendship with War Hero and her father's equity, Captain Peter Townsend, who was 12 years her senior.
03:23.216 --> 03:28.626
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1952, when George VI passed away, Elizabeth ascended to the throne.
03:28.606 --> 03:37.222
[SPEAKER_00]: It was at that point that Margaret, then 22, and Townsend, then 38, decided to ask for Elizabeth's permission for them to marry.
03:38.124 --> 03:52.470
[SPEAKER_00]: After a very long back and forth, which could be its own episode in and of itself, Elizabeth, in essence, said that unless Margaret wanted to be stripped of her titles and privileges, and royal stipend that the answer was no.
03:52.450 --> 03:53.311
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason?
03:54.092 --> 04:03.686
[SPEAKER_00]: Townsend was a commoner, divorced himself, and the scandal surrounding Edward the Eighth's abdication to Mary Simpson was in the public's not-so-distant memory.
04:04.688 --> 04:11.978
[SPEAKER_00]: This personal tragedy for Margaret might have been the start of the rebellious streak that would characterize her as the black sheep of the royal family.
04:11.958 --> 04:17.185
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, I would like it to be known that I have decided not to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend.
04:17.745 --> 04:20.589
[SPEAKER_00]: Princess Margaret announced in a statement around that time.
04:20.629 --> 04:31.823
[SPEAKER_00]: Mindful of the churches teaching that Christian marriage is indesoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before any others.
04:31.803 --> 04:40.635
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps, if the couple had married, the princess would have settled down into a more conventional life, like her sister, and this episode wouldn't have been made at all.
04:41.256 --> 04:52.512
[SPEAKER_00]: But in his 1978 autobiography, Time and Chance, Townsend wrote, quote,
04:53.875 --> 04:59.869
[SPEAKER_00]: single for the first time as an adult woman, Margaret threw herself into full-scale socialite life.
05:00.791 --> 05:06.824
[SPEAKER_00]: Papers at the time described her as non-plused by her royal day-to-day, the culture that had blocked her potential marriage.
05:07.446 --> 05:12.357
[SPEAKER_00]: To Margaret, it all felt obsolete, old, irrelevant.
05:12.337 --> 05:18.948
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, she is restless, spasmotic, though often intense in her interests, easily bored wrote the new statesman.
05:19.629 --> 05:24.638
[SPEAKER_00]: She devours magazines, modest books, delights and fashionable West and musical comedies.
05:25.419 --> 05:29.907
[SPEAKER_00]: Good jazz and the latest semi-intellectual cultural interests from America.
05:30.292 --> 05:37.262
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a certain brittle superficiality about her mind, and inability to concentrate for long, which sometimes disturbs her elders.
05:38.123 --> 05:41.448
[SPEAKER_00]: At the most, complementary description of Margaret.
05:41.988 --> 05:52.603
[SPEAKER_00]: But the stay of cultural fascination, this wandering eye, this want to indulge, all began with Margaret's royal morning routine, one of my favorite details of Margaret's life.
05:52.583 --> 06:08.453
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Margaret's day began with breakfast in bed at 9 a.m. Quote, followed by two hours in bed listening to the radio, reading the newspapers, which she invariably left scattered all over the floor, and, chainsmoking, wrote Craig Brown in his book, Mam Darling.
06:09.294 --> 06:12.921
[SPEAKER_00]: Then, at 1230, it was time for a vodka pick-me-up.
06:12.901 --> 06:15.126
[SPEAKER_00]: After that, it was a four-course lunch.
06:15.767 --> 06:24.767
[SPEAKER_00]: And after that, the princesses night began, and she went out curousing around London with friends, including debutants, orals, ladies, and even princesses.
06:25.186 --> 06:26.067
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not all.
06:26.187 --> 06:42.063
[SPEAKER_00]: She had many famous people in and around orbiting her set, including Christian Dior, actor and comedian Danny K, Peter Sellers, Gore Vidal, John Fowls, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton, and Eddie Fisher, who had a brief affair with the princess in 1953.
06:42.263 --> 06:52.273
[SPEAKER_00]: The newspapers called them the Margaret Set, and they were the It Crowd, rumors swirled as vibrately as their RSVPs to parties and events.
06:52.253 --> 07:00.485
[SPEAKER_00]: The public hypothesized who was dating who, who Margaret was flirting with the night before, and who was getting closer and closer to the Busy Princess.
07:01.326 --> 07:05.152
[SPEAKER_00]: Margaret loved the hype, but more than that she loved her friends.
07:05.292 --> 07:06.574
[SPEAKER_00]: She loved the adoration.
07:06.614 --> 07:09.919
[SPEAKER_00]: She loved drinking, and she loved having fun.
07:10.640 --> 07:15.848
[SPEAKER_00]: It was all pretty easy in the cultural hotbed that was London at the dawn of the swinging 60s.
07:15.828 --> 07:25.166
[SPEAKER_00]: Louis Armstrong, whose music Margaret loved, preferred to her as quote, one hip chick, and John Lennon playfully nicknamed Margaret Princess Marjorie.
07:26.127 --> 07:32.980
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Ralph Ellison, another of the friends that Margaret collected, she was quote, a little hot-looking, pretty girl.
07:33.762 --> 07:39.152
[SPEAKER_00]: The more she was seen in photograph, the more powerful men seem to become infatuated with the 20-something.
07:39.132 --> 07:41.996
[SPEAKER_00]: Trying themselves to infiltrate the Margaret set.
07:42.777 --> 07:49.767
[SPEAKER_00]: It said Picasso desperately wanted to marry Margaret, but Margaret at the time was more into drinking, smoking and making conversation.
07:50.648 --> 08:03.486
[SPEAKER_00]: At least Taylor of Vogue reported that the princess loved to smoke and drink so much that she, quote, try to combine the smoking and drinking by gluing matchboxes onto tumblers, so she could strike matches while drinking.
08:04.090 --> 08:08.379
[SPEAKER_00]: Very notably, Margaret once said, quote, "'Disobedience is my joy."
08:09.502 --> 08:10.484
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was more than that.
08:11.165 --> 08:12.087
[SPEAKER_00]: It was who she was.
08:13.671 --> 08:19.043
[SPEAKER_00]: But as quickly as Princess Margaret would charm and collect those in her set, she'd turn on them, too.
08:19.864 --> 08:22.470
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll keep the party going after this break.
08:23.750 --> 08:33.114
[SPEAKER_00]: In May 1960, Margaret actually did get married, to a Bohemian anti-establishment and sexually fluid photographer named Anthony Armstrong Jones.
08:33.957 --> 08:40.594
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time of their wedding, Armstrong Jones had gotten a married friend pregnant, and the royal family was concerned.
08:41.367 --> 08:54.543
[SPEAKER_00]: They had right to be, Margaret and Armstrong Jones' marriage was chaotic from the start, known throughout London and among her set to be fraught with ego, petulants, mood swings, heavy spending, fighting, and, of course, falandering.
08:55.624 --> 09:08.860
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, the princess's party trick seems to have been to lull people into a false sense of security and camaraderie, rights-hamish bowls, and then demolish them with regal, rank-pulling putdowns
09:08.840 --> 09:28.840
[SPEAKER_00]: Charles Hussie, a British journalist, wrote in the New York Times magazine back in 1965 that Margaret's moods went from, quote, a gaity that was sometimes fee-brow to, quote, Hanavarian gloom, and Margaret knew it too, both loving and hating the destiny that was for royal existence and taking it out on the people around her.
09:28.820 --> 09:33.389
[SPEAKER_00]: Her quote, unique disobedience continued into her married life.
09:34.010 --> 09:49.039
[SPEAKER_00]: Her wedding was an extravagant affair that cost the British government over £25,000, around nearly $1 million today, and her six-week honeymoon on the rail yacht Britannia cost even more than the wedding around £40,000.
09:49.559 --> 09:51.283
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't just money.
09:51.664 --> 09:59.304
[SPEAKER_00]: Princess Margaret insisted that she be addressed as maim except for her closest friends, who were permitted to call her maim darling.
10:00.025 --> 10:01.830
[SPEAKER_00]: She signed her checks as Margaret.
10:02.371 --> 10:06.201
[SPEAKER_00]: No title, no last name, just Margaret.
10:06.181 --> 10:09.265
[SPEAKER_00]: As a house guest in front, she was notoriously demanding.
10:09.806 --> 10:16.915
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite being a rebellious black sheep, she wanted everyone around her to use the royal protocol, no exceptions.
10:17.596 --> 10:23.424
[SPEAKER_00]: And her wit, well, it was great and charming and engaging, but often it was cruel.
10:24.245 --> 10:30.653
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the more famous exchanges showcasing Princess Margaret's
10:30.633 --> 10:31.835
[SPEAKER_00]: Who are you she asked?
10:32.336 --> 10:36.382
[SPEAKER_00]: The supermodel responded, I'm Leslie Hornby-Mam, but people call me Twiggy.
10:37.163 --> 10:38.705
[SPEAKER_00]: Princess Margaret then responded.
10:39.547 --> 10:40.468
[SPEAKER_00]: How unfortunate.
10:41.330 --> 10:45.796
[SPEAKER_00]: By the mid 1960s Margaret and her husband had all out affairs with other people.
10:46.538 --> 10:52.026
[SPEAKER_00]: The set kept many of Margaret's trists under wraps, though rumors did come out that Margaret liked younger men.
10:52.607 --> 10:57.855
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of them quite famous,
10:57.835 --> 11:10.750
[SPEAKER_00]: A story about the two of them goes that Princess Margaret wearing a revealing gown, beckoned Jagger over at a party they were both at, leaving behind his indignate girlfriend Chrissy Shrimpton on the other side of the room.
11:11.911 --> 11:25.767
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, there was a flirtation going on there definitely, said, quote, there was a flirtation going on there definitely, said Lady Elsa Boker, whose husband
11:26.337 --> 11:32.545
[SPEAKER_00]: Princess Margaret was only in her thirties and quite attractive, and as everybody knows, she was attracted to younger men.
11:33.847 --> 11:41.197
[SPEAKER_00]: After that fateful dinner party, according to one courtier, quote, they spoke on the phone constantly and she invited him to social events.
11:41.958 --> 11:45.744
[SPEAKER_00]: The courtier then recalled, quote, she found him sexy and exciting.
11:46.284 --> 11:54.876
[SPEAKER_00]: If you saw them laughing together dancing the way she'd put her hand at his knee and
11:54.856 --> 11:59.965
[SPEAKER_00]: Margaret's sister, Queen Elizabeth, however, was not amused by this Dalians with the younger man.
12:00.707 --> 12:07.018
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, the Queen could tolerate the Beatles because they were clean cut and sort of sweet at least that was their reputation at the time.
12:07.539 --> 12:12.969
[SPEAKER_00]: Said Harold Brooks Baker, publisher of Berks Purage, the stones were an entirely different matter.
12:13.830 --> 12:14.532
[SPEAKER_00]: Were they lovers?
12:15.393 --> 12:17.978
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody in the set would say a word.
12:17.958 --> 12:23.685
[SPEAKER_00]: As the relationship became more and more strained, Margaret and Armstrong Jones spent less and less time together.
12:24.346 --> 12:40.646
[SPEAKER_00]: Princess Margaret was linked dramatically with other people, including Anthony Barton, a friend of her husband, and then she had a full-blown relationship with Robin Douglas home, an aristocrat and former army office who was the nephew of a former prime minister, and at night, played the piano in clubs.
12:41.588 --> 12:45.973
[SPEAKER_00]: And at night, and moonlit as a piano player in local night clubs.
12:45.953 --> 12:55.817
[SPEAKER_00]: In February 1967, when the British press began reporting that the royal couple were about to break up, Princess Margaret spent more and more time with her elite friend group.
12:56.679 --> 13:02.072
[SPEAKER_00]: Being photographed often with her close friend Peter Sellers, and spending more time out of Europe.
13:02.052 --> 13:04.356
[SPEAKER_00]: on the Caribbean island of Mastique.
13:05.137 --> 13:14.932
[SPEAKER_00]: In September 1973, at a luncheon in Edinburgh, she met the 25-year-old Roderick Luellen, who soon became a person of interest for Margaret.
13:15.573 --> 13:22.744
[SPEAKER_00]: The son of minor nobility, Mr. Luellen had worked briefly at a mine in Southern Africa and as an apprentice brewer in England.
13:22.724 --> 13:28.151
[SPEAKER_00]: Their relationships soon became an open secret in the Margaret set and other close circles.
13:29.332 --> 13:39.004
[SPEAKER_00]: Their relationship soon became an open secret in the Margaret set until February 1976 when the paparazzi snapped a picture of the couple in the Caribbean.
13:39.785 --> 13:47.635
[SPEAKER_00]: Scandal erupted and in June, the royal family announced that Princess Margaret and Armstrong Jones were separating.
13:47.615 --> 13:52.721
[SPEAKER_00]: It was an action that ended a 400-year-old taboo on divorce in the royal family.
13:53.783 --> 13:58.909
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, the relationship between the Princess and Luellen set off Parliament in a different way.
13:59.450 --> 14:11.985
[SPEAKER_00]: Critics demanded that her royal allowance, then more than $100,000 a year, that's nearly $600,000 in today's dollars, the cut, because the Princess didn't seem to be
14:11.965 --> 14:17.572
[SPEAKER_00]: Thankfully, for Margaret nothing became of that and she continued to live out her lavish royal life.
14:18.914 --> 14:26.824
[SPEAKER_00]: Armstrong Jones quickly remarried in 1977 while Princess Margaret opted for a more private life as her health was declining.
14:28.366 --> 14:35.475
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no intention of telling people what I had for breakfast, she once said, though of course we have an idea.
14:35.455 --> 14:38.401
[SPEAKER_00]: Princess Margaret lived the rest of her life out of the public eye.
14:38.461 --> 14:47.398
[SPEAKER_00]: Until on February 9th, 2002, she died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 71 from complications following several strokes.
14:48.100 --> 14:52.789
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, to many people, Princess Margaret was the black sheep of her generation of royals.
14:52.769 --> 14:58.616
[SPEAKER_00]: But that reputation did not necessarily trouble her, reads Princess Margaret's obituary in the New York Times.
14:59.518 --> 14:59.998
[SPEAKER_00]: It's true.
15:00.359 --> 15:14.657
[SPEAKER_00]: The Princess was a complicated person, full of dichotomies, a rebel but also intrinsically a product of her time, and the many people around her who supported her, fuded with her, protected her, and guarded her secrets.
15:15.378 --> 15:20.464
[SPEAKER_00]: From the public, the royal family, and maybe even Margaret herself.
00:00.031 --> 00:01.760
[SPEAKER_00]: Royal Teagan Wild.
00:02.203 --> 00:02.987
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jason Horton.
00:03.269 --> 00:04.013
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Rebecca Leib.
00:04.455 --> 00:05.923
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is Ghost Town.
00:21.344 --> 00:40.568
[SPEAKER_00]: Though most people know who Princess Margaret is, maybe through history, the Netflix show the Crown, or her very famous sister, the Queen of England, not many people know just how subversive, how outrageous, and how well-facinating Princess Margaret countess of Snowden actually was.
00:41.138 --> 00:45.265
[SPEAKER_00]: as some say you're only as interesting as the people you associate with.
00:46.066 --> 00:54.300
[SPEAKER_00]: Though she was third in line to the throne, Margaret's friends were what amplified the princess as a point of controversy and fascination.
00:54.340 --> 01:06.100
[SPEAKER_00]: They were the real British royalty, at least according to the English social scene in the 50s, 60s and 70s,
01:06.080 --> 01:16.376
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Vogue Grider, Hamish Bulls, Margaret was, quote, a chain smoking, chain drinking, man-eating monster with flashes of wit, and unsteady charm.
01:17.337 --> 01:17.938
[SPEAKER_00]: And her friends?
01:18.679 --> 01:23.667
[SPEAKER_00]: While they were socialites who took Margaret's reputation to a whole new level.
01:24.288 --> 01:30.399
[SPEAKER_00]: Commoners in the Rat Pack, Brat Pack, Pussy Pussy, and the Bundy Drive Boys take a seat.
01:31.020 --> 01:35.308
[SPEAKER_00]: Because today on Ghost Town, we're talking about the Margaret Set.
01:36.350 --> 01:48.692
[SPEAKER_00]: Margaret was born on August 21, 1930, the younger daughter of Prince Albert Duke of York, later known as King George VI, and Elizabeth Duchess of York, later Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.
01:48.672 --> 01:55.271
[SPEAKER_00]: She was affectionately known within the family as Margo, and developed her skills at singing and playing the piano as a girl.
01:56.013 --> 02:04.116
[SPEAKER_00]: Getting, along with her older sister Elizabeth, a limited education, only enough to make them into well-mannered young ladies.
02:04.096 --> 02:18.538
[SPEAKER_00]: In December 1936, Margaret's uncle and King at the time, Edward VIII, abdicated the throne to Mary Wallace Simpson, a twice-divorced American woman, whom neither the Church of England nor the government would accept as Queen.
02:18.578 --> 02:23.425
[SPEAKER_00]: It was then Elizabeth and Margaret's father George VI became King.
02:24.206 --> 02:28.753
[SPEAKER_00]: George loved his daughters, underlining the fact that they were intrinsically different.
02:28.733 --> 02:30.816
[SPEAKER_00]: he described Elizabeth as his pride.
02:30.877 --> 02:32.800
[SPEAKER_00]: Margaret as his joy.
02:32.840 --> 02:45.621
[SPEAKER_00]: As the two young women grew up, Elizabeth began her education as the heir apparent while Margaret, well, she didn't really know it was next for her incredibly privileged sheltered life.
02:46.383 --> 02:47.805
[SPEAKER_00]: But one thing she held
02:47.785 --> 02:55.319
[SPEAKER_00]: But one thing she held fasty was that she was, in fact, her father's joy, well liked, funny, and great in social settings.
02:56.241 --> 03:09.625
[SPEAKER_00]: The Princess could quote, charm the pearl out of an oyster, her father would say, After Elizabeth married, Princess Margaret became one of the most eligible single women in the world, and the tabloids of course, love it.
03:10.313 --> 03:22.375
[SPEAKER_00]: As her sister learned the royal ropes in 1947, the 17-year-old Margaret began a friendship with War Hero and her father's equity, Captain Peter Townsend, who was 12 years her senior.
03:23.216 --> 03:28.626
[SPEAKER_00]: In 1952, when George VI passed away, Elizabeth ascended to the throne.
03:28.606 --> 03:37.222
[SPEAKER_00]: It was at that point that Margaret, then 22, and Townsend, then 38, decided to ask for Elizabeth's permission for them to marry.
03:38.124 --> 03:52.470
[SPEAKER_00]: After a very long back and forth, which could be its own episode in and of itself, Elizabeth, in essence, said that unless Margaret wanted to be stripped of her titles and privileges, and royal stipend that the answer was no.
03:52.450 --> 03:53.311
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason?
03:54.092 --> 04:03.686
[SPEAKER_00]: Townsend was a commoner, divorced himself, and the scandal surrounding Edward the Eighth's abdication to Mary Simpson was in the public's not-so-distant memory.
04:04.688 --> 04:11.978
[SPEAKER_00]: This personal tragedy for Margaret might have been the start of the rebellious streak that would characterize her as the black sheep of the royal family.
04:11.958 --> 04:17.185
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, I would like it to be known that I have decided not to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend.
04:17.745 --> 04:20.589
[SPEAKER_00]: Princess Margaret announced in a statement around that time.
04:20.629 --> 04:31.823
[SPEAKER_00]: Mindful of the churches teaching that Christian marriage is indesoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before any others.
04:31.803 --> 04:40.635
[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps, if the couple had married, the princess would have settled down into a more conventional life, like her sister, and this episode wouldn't have been made at all.
04:41.256 --> 04:52.512
[SPEAKER_00]: But in his 1978 autobiography, Time and Chance, Townsend wrote, quote,
04:53.875 --> 04:59.869
[SPEAKER_00]: single for the first time as an adult woman, Margaret threw herself into full-scale socialite life.
05:00.791 --> 05:06.824
[SPEAKER_00]: Papers at the time described her as non-plused by her royal day-to-day, the culture that had blocked her potential marriage.
05:07.446 --> 05:12.357
[SPEAKER_00]: To Margaret, it all felt obsolete, old, irrelevant.
05:12.337 --> 05:18.948
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, she is restless, spasmotic, though often intense in her interests, easily bored wrote the new statesman.
05:19.629 --> 05:24.638
[SPEAKER_00]: She devours magazines, modest books, delights and fashionable West and musical comedies.
05:25.419 --> 05:29.907
[SPEAKER_00]: Good jazz and the latest semi-intellectual cultural interests from America.
05:30.292 --> 05:37.262
[SPEAKER_00]: There is a certain brittle superficiality about her mind, and inability to concentrate for long, which sometimes disturbs her elders.
05:38.123 --> 05:41.448
[SPEAKER_00]: At the most, complementary description of Margaret.
05:41.988 --> 05:52.603
[SPEAKER_00]: But the stay of cultural fascination, this wandering eye, this want to indulge, all began with Margaret's royal morning routine, one of my favorite details of Margaret's life.
05:52.583 --> 06:08.453
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Margaret's day began with breakfast in bed at 9 a.m. Quote, followed by two hours in bed listening to the radio, reading the newspapers, which she invariably left scattered all over the floor, and, chainsmoking, wrote Craig Brown in his book, Mam Darling.
06:09.294 --> 06:12.921
[SPEAKER_00]: Then, at 1230, it was time for a vodka pick-me-up.
06:12.901 --> 06:15.126
[SPEAKER_00]: After that, it was a four-course lunch.
06:15.767 --> 06:24.767
[SPEAKER_00]: And after that, the princesses night began, and she went out curousing around London with friends, including debutants, orals, ladies, and even princesses.
06:25.186 --> 06:26.067
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's not all.
06:26.187 --> 06:42.063
[SPEAKER_00]: She had many famous people in and around orbiting her set, including Christian Dior, actor and comedian Danny K, Peter Sellers, Gore Vidal, John Fowls, Elizabeth Taylor, and Richard Burton, and Eddie Fisher, who had a brief affair with the princess in 1953.
06:42.263 --> 06:52.273
[SPEAKER_00]: The newspapers called them the Margaret Set, and they were the It Crowd, rumors swirled as vibrately as their RSVPs to parties and events.
06:52.253 --> 07:00.485
[SPEAKER_00]: The public hypothesized who was dating who, who Margaret was flirting with the night before, and who was getting closer and closer to the Busy Princess.
07:01.326 --> 07:05.152
[SPEAKER_00]: Margaret loved the hype, but more than that she loved her friends.
07:05.292 --> 07:06.574
[SPEAKER_00]: She loved the adoration.
07:06.614 --> 07:09.919
[SPEAKER_00]: She loved drinking, and she loved having fun.
07:10.640 --> 07:15.848
[SPEAKER_00]: It was all pretty easy in the cultural hotbed that was London at the dawn of the swinging 60s.
07:15.828 --> 07:25.166
[SPEAKER_00]: Louis Armstrong, whose music Margaret loved, preferred to her as quote, one hip chick, and John Lennon playfully nicknamed Margaret Princess Marjorie.
07:26.127 --> 07:32.980
[SPEAKER_00]: According to Ralph Ellison, another of the friends that Margaret collected, she was quote, a little hot-looking, pretty girl.
07:33.762 --> 07:39.152
[SPEAKER_00]: The more she was seen in photograph, the more powerful men seem to become infatuated with the 20-something.
07:39.132 --> 07:41.996
[SPEAKER_00]: Trying themselves to infiltrate the Margaret set.
07:42.777 --> 07:49.767
[SPEAKER_00]: It said Picasso desperately wanted to marry Margaret, but Margaret at the time was more into drinking, smoking and making conversation.
07:50.648 --> 08:03.486
[SPEAKER_00]: At least Taylor of Vogue reported that the princess loved to smoke and drink so much that she, quote, try to combine the smoking and drinking by gluing matchboxes onto tumblers, so she could strike matches while drinking.
08:04.090 --> 08:08.379
[SPEAKER_00]: Very notably, Margaret once said, quote, "'Disobedience is my joy."
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[SPEAKER_00]: But it was more than that.
08:11.165 --> 08:12.087
[SPEAKER_00]: It was who she was.
08:13.671 --> 08:19.043
[SPEAKER_00]: But as quickly as Princess Margaret would charm and collect those in her set, she'd turn on them, too.
08:19.864 --> 08:22.470
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll keep the party going after this break.
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[SPEAKER_00]: In May 1960, Margaret actually did get married, to a Bohemian anti-establishment and sexually fluid photographer named Anthony Armstrong Jones.
08:33.957 --> 08:40.594
[SPEAKER_00]: At the time of their wedding, Armstrong Jones had gotten a married friend pregnant, and the royal family was concerned.
08:41.367 --> 08:54.543
[SPEAKER_00]: They had right to be, Margaret and Armstrong Jones' marriage was chaotic from the start, known throughout London and among her set to be fraught with ego, petulants, mood swings, heavy spending, fighting, and, of course, falandering.
08:55.624 --> 09:08.860
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, the princess's party trick seems to have been to lull people into a false sense of security and camaraderie, rights-hamish bowls, and then demolish them with regal, rank-pulling putdowns
09:08.840 --> 09:28.840
[SPEAKER_00]: Charles Hussie, a British journalist, wrote in the New York Times magazine back in 1965 that Margaret's moods went from, quote, a gaity that was sometimes fee-brow to, quote, Hanavarian gloom, and Margaret knew it too, both loving and hating the destiny that was for royal existence and taking it out on the people around her.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Her quote, unique disobedience continued into her married life.
09:34.010 --> 09:49.039
[SPEAKER_00]: Her wedding was an extravagant affair that cost the British government over £25,000, around nearly $1 million today, and her six-week honeymoon on the rail yacht Britannia cost even more than the wedding around £40,000.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't just money.
09:51.664 --> 09:59.304
[SPEAKER_00]: Princess Margaret insisted that she be addressed as maim except for her closest friends, who were permitted to call her maim darling.
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[SPEAKER_00]: She signed her checks as Margaret.
10:02.371 --> 10:06.201
[SPEAKER_00]: No title, no last name, just Margaret.
10:06.181 --> 10:09.265
[SPEAKER_00]: As a house guest in front, she was notoriously demanding.
10:09.806 --> 10:16.915
[SPEAKER_00]: Despite being a rebellious black sheep, she wanted everyone around her to use the royal protocol, no exceptions.
10:17.596 --> 10:23.424
[SPEAKER_00]: And her wit, well, it was great and charming and engaging, but often it was cruel.
10:24.245 --> 10:30.653
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the more famous exchanges showcasing Princess Margaret's
10:30.633 --> 10:31.835
[SPEAKER_00]: Who are you she asked?
10:32.336 --> 10:36.382
[SPEAKER_00]: The supermodel responded, I'm Leslie Hornby-Mam, but people call me Twiggy.
10:37.163 --> 10:38.705
[SPEAKER_00]: Princess Margaret then responded.
10:39.547 --> 10:40.468
[SPEAKER_00]: How unfortunate.
10:41.330 --> 10:45.796
[SPEAKER_00]: By the mid 1960s Margaret and her husband had all out affairs with other people.
10:46.538 --> 10:52.026
[SPEAKER_00]: The set kept many of Margaret's trists under wraps, though rumors did come out that Margaret liked younger men.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Some of them quite famous,
10:57.835 --> 11:10.750
[SPEAKER_00]: A story about the two of them goes that Princess Margaret wearing a revealing gown, beckoned Jagger over at a party they were both at, leaving behind his indignate girlfriend Chrissy Shrimpton on the other side of the room.
11:11.911 --> 11:25.767
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, there was a flirtation going on there definitely, said, quote, there was a flirtation going on there definitely, said Lady Elsa Boker, whose husband
11:26.337 --> 11:32.545
[SPEAKER_00]: Princess Margaret was only in her thirties and quite attractive, and as everybody knows, she was attracted to younger men.
11:33.847 --> 11:41.197
[SPEAKER_00]: After that fateful dinner party, according to one courtier, quote, they spoke on the phone constantly and she invited him to social events.
11:41.958 --> 11:45.744
[SPEAKER_00]: The courtier then recalled, quote, she found him sexy and exciting.
11:46.284 --> 11:54.876
[SPEAKER_00]: If you saw them laughing together dancing the way she'd put her hand at his knee and
11:54.856 --> 11:59.965
[SPEAKER_00]: Margaret's sister, Queen Elizabeth, however, was not amused by this Dalians with the younger man.
12:00.707 --> 12:07.018
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, the Queen could tolerate the Beatles because they were clean cut and sort of sweet at least that was their reputation at the time.
12:07.539 --> 12:12.969
[SPEAKER_00]: Said Harold Brooks Baker, publisher of Berks Purage, the stones were an entirely different matter.
12:13.830 --> 12:14.532
[SPEAKER_00]: Were they lovers?
12:15.393 --> 12:17.978
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody in the set would say a word.
12:17.958 --> 12:23.685
[SPEAKER_00]: As the relationship became more and more strained, Margaret and Armstrong Jones spent less and less time together.
12:24.346 --> 12:40.646
[SPEAKER_00]: Princess Margaret was linked dramatically with other people, including Anthony Barton, a friend of her husband, and then she had a full-blown relationship with Robin Douglas home, an aristocrat and former army office who was the nephew of a former prime minister, and at night, played the piano in clubs.
12:41.588 --> 12:45.973
[SPEAKER_00]: And at night, and moonlit as a piano player in local night clubs.
12:45.953 --> 12:55.817
[SPEAKER_00]: In February 1967, when the British press began reporting that the royal couple were about to break up, Princess Margaret spent more and more time with her elite friend group.
12:56.679 --> 13:02.072
[SPEAKER_00]: Being photographed often with her close friend Peter Sellers, and spending more time out of Europe.
13:02.052 --> 13:04.356
[SPEAKER_00]: on the Caribbean island of Mastique.
13:05.137 --> 13:14.932
[SPEAKER_00]: In September 1973, at a luncheon in Edinburgh, she met the 25-year-old Roderick Luellen, who soon became a person of interest for Margaret.
13:15.573 --> 13:22.744
[SPEAKER_00]: The son of minor nobility, Mr. Luellen had worked briefly at a mine in Southern Africa and as an apprentice brewer in England.
13:22.724 --> 13:28.151
[SPEAKER_00]: Their relationships soon became an open secret in the Margaret set and other close circles.
13:29.332 --> 13:39.004
[SPEAKER_00]: Their relationship soon became an open secret in the Margaret set until February 1976 when the paparazzi snapped a picture of the couple in the Caribbean.
13:39.785 --> 13:47.635
[SPEAKER_00]: Scandal erupted and in June, the royal family announced that Princess Margaret and Armstrong Jones were separating.
13:47.615 --> 13:52.721
[SPEAKER_00]: It was an action that ended a 400-year-old taboo on divorce in the royal family.
13:53.783 --> 13:58.909
[SPEAKER_00]: Meanwhile, the relationship between the Princess and Luellen set off Parliament in a different way.
13:59.450 --> 14:11.985
[SPEAKER_00]: Critics demanded that her royal allowance, then more than $100,000 a year, that's nearly $600,000 in today's dollars, the cut, because the Princess didn't seem to be
14:11.965 --> 14:17.572
[SPEAKER_00]: Thankfully, for Margaret nothing became of that and she continued to live out her lavish royal life.
14:18.914 --> 14:26.824
[SPEAKER_00]: Armstrong Jones quickly remarried in 1977 while Princess Margaret opted for a more private life as her health was declining.
14:28.366 --> 14:35.475
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no intention of telling people what I had for breakfast, she once said, though of course we have an idea.
14:35.455 --> 14:38.401
[SPEAKER_00]: Princess Margaret lived the rest of her life out of the public eye.
14:38.461 --> 14:47.398
[SPEAKER_00]: Until on February 9th, 2002, she died peacefully in her sleep at the age of 71 from complications following several strokes.
14:48.100 --> 14:52.789
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, to many people, Princess Margaret was the black sheep of her generation of royals.
14:52.769 --> 14:58.616
[SPEAKER_00]: But that reputation did not necessarily trouble her, reads Princess Margaret's obituary in the New York Times.
14:59.518 --> 14:59.998
[SPEAKER_00]: It's true.
15:00.359 --> 15:14.657
[SPEAKER_00]: The Princess was a complicated person, full of dichotomies, a rebel but also intrinsically a product of her time, and the many people around her who supported her, fuded with her, protected her, and guarded her secrets.
15:15.378 --> 15:20.464
[SPEAKER_00]: From the public, the royal family, and maybe even Margaret herself.
