LORD SNOWDON
The decade known as the Swinging Sixties was dawning when Princess Margaret introduced her soon-to-be fiancé Tony Armstrong-Jones to the Queen Mother. His arrival was right on cue, when the Royal Family was being criticised for being too tweedy, and out of touch. A young and sexy photographer who had been cutting a swathe through London society, he was anything but dull. By the end of a convivial lunch the Queen Mother was captivated by his easy charm and thereafter encouraged her daughter to pursue the relationship. Tony liked the Queen Mother too, and enjoyed her coquettish familiarity touched with formality. Their friendship became close and was to survive until the end of her life.
For Margaret, whose love affair with the divorced Group Captain Peter Townsend had been thwarted three years earlier, he was a revelation – a touch flamboyant in manner and dress he was so different from the hand-picked polite young arm’ s-length aristocrats who escorted her to Mayfair nightclubs and to the theatre. Above all he had a hint of danger about him which matched Margaret ' s rebellious streak.
Tony ' s friendship with the Princess began to develop in 1958 after they were introduced by Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, a sister of the Duke of Devonshire. He was an English rebel without a cause, with a wicked twinkle in his eye, and the suggestion of a pout. Margaret, unwillingly enduring the tedium of life at Court( although she never objected to the privileges of royalty), was intrigued by his lack of deference, and the seductive manner in which he whisked her anonymously down to his hideaway in Rotherhithe, south east London, for clandestine evenings away from Clarence House. Sometimes Margaret ' s fun loving mother came in tow, going to pubs, checking out the shops. The Queen ' s sister relished the naughtiness of it all, and told the French artistic giant Jean Cocteau:“ Disobedience is my joy.” Meanwhile, the Queen Mother, adopting the spirit of the age, remarked:“ I don ' t see anything wrong in swinging a little.”
Margaret and Tony became engaged on February 27, 1960. Tony was to become the first non-aristocrat to marry into R
I want to hold your hand: Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret meet the Beatles in 1965
28 SAVILE ROW STYLE MAGAZINE