For the older members of the monarchy, series five of The Crown seems to be a time of reflection, particularly on how decisions made decades ago can still impact their current lives. It’s certainly true of Princess Margaret (played by Leslie Manville) who is shown flitting around parties and palaces, but frequently on her own, lonely, mulling over days gone by.
Episode four features Margaret appearing on a fictionalised version of Desert Island Discs (which she actually did appear on in 1981, not 1992 like suggested in The Crown. You can listen to it here, and yes, Rule Britannia is on there) which has her thinking about her first loves. One track leads her to reveal: “When one reaches a certain age, one cannot help embarking on an audit of the heart… One considers all those loves, those dreams, those youthful passions…”. Cut to: an older gentleman, sitting at the desk, listening to this radio programme, and starting to write a letter.
Who is the mystery man?
The man, who we’re later introduced to, is Peter Townsend, Princess Margaret’s first love who was first played Ben Miles in season one of the show. We find out that their romance was thwarted by Queen Elizabeth (Imelda Staunton) who forbade Margaret from a relationship with the older man, and in the longest of all grudges, Margaret is still pissed off about it.
In reality, Group Captain Peter Wooldridge Townsend was a Royal Air Force officer, and was a courtier to Princess Margaret's father, King George VI, until the King's death in 1952. They met in 1944, when Margaret was 14 and he was a married 29-year-old. Three years later, he was her chaperone on a three-month tour in Southern Africa, and according to Vanity Fair, this is when she told friends the romance was cemented: “We rode together every morning in that wonderful country, in marvellous weather. That’s when I really fell in love with him.”
When the King died in 1952, their affair continued – and Townsend proposed a year later – but was outed when, as per Vanity Fair: “At Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, on June 2, 1953, the Princess lovingly picked a piece of fluff from the lapel of her lover’s tunic in plain view of all the television cameras in Westminster Abbey.”
Townsend was married, and at this point in time divorcees weren't allowed to remarry in the Church of England.
The magazine added: “It was decided that the best plan would be for Townsend to leave the country for a year—at the end of which they were asked to wait another year. Townsend and Margaret saw each other again for the first time on October 12, 1955.”
In Townsend’s two-year forced exile, the couple were barely out of the national newspapers for a day, as the country became obsessed with their relationship. A Gallup poll found that 59% of Britons approved of their marrying, with 17% opposed; the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to countenance her marriage to a divorced man and The Guardian reported that women in London’s East End were yelling: “Go on, Marg, do what you want!”.
However, as reported by Hello, there were still problems to overcome and The Firm still looked negatively at the relationship. One solution was: “a new plan was proposed to allow Peter to marry the Princess by removing her from the line of succession, but keeping her royal titles and public duties.”
Despite this, Margaret called off the engagement in 1955, and issued a formal public statement: “I would like it to be known that I have decided not to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend. I have been aware that, subject to my renouncing my rights of succession, it might have been possible for me to contract a civil marriage. But mindful of the Church's teachings that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before others.
“I have reached this decision entirely alone, and in doing so I have been strengthened by the unfailing support and devotion of Group Captain Townsend.”
The Crown suggests that the Queen forced Margaret to break off the engagement, and sees Margaret angrily confronting her sister: “Peter was my sun, my water and you denied me him".
The Daily Telegraph notes that, like the series, the older ex-lovers did meet for one last time in 1992: “They met, for the first and last time since that momentous decision to put duty above love, for lunch at her apartment in Kensington Palace. Then aged 77, he looked, to the Princess, ‘exactly the same, except he had grey hair’”. Interestingly, fans of this royal romance drama have just seven more years before the couple’s love letters can be released by the Royal Archives, 100 years on from Margaret’s birth.
Townsend got married to another woman – the 19 year old Marie-Luce Jamagne – in 1959, and revealed why the relationship with Margaret ultimately failed in his memoir Time and Chance: "I simply hadn't the weight, I knew it, to counterbalance all she would have lost."
Peter died from stomach cancer, aged 80, in 1995, while Margaret – who later married and divorced Antony Armstrong-Jones – died in 2002, aged 71. The episode is credited to the memory of Townsend in the closing shot.
