A ‘Tequila Sunrise’ for the Monaco royal wedding
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Princess Margaret’s True Love
The beautiful princess at Queen Juliana's coronation in 1947 Fotograaf Onbekend / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Princess Margaret once said that she would curse Tommy
Lascelles, the Queen’s Private Secretary, until the day she died. She largely
blamed the indefatigable courtier for preventing her marriage to the handsome
Group Captain Peter Townsend, arguably the love of her life. This doomed
romance she later said had ‘ruined her life’. Would she have been happy with
the tall, good-looking Group Captain? Her being prevented from
marrying him unless she gave up her royal rights and privileges certainly seems almost
unimaginable today (at least in the UK), and extremely unfair.
The romance began when Princess Margaret was very young. In
one account, a woman who worked at Queen Adelaide’s Cottage where Peter
Townsend and his family lived when he was equerry to King George VI used to
watch Princess Margaret visit the family. This woman thought that the Princess
had a ‘crush’ on Townsend, and that she wasn’t there to see his wife and two sons!
The very attractive Princess used to persuade Peter to go riding with her. Once she was 17, she used
to leave the top buttons of her blouse undone, and Townsend must have found
thoughts of a relationship hard to resist!
The Princess became even closer to him on the family’s South
African tour in 1947, walking and riding with him in the stunning countryside.
No wonder Townsend’s marriage began to show signs of strain when he came back! She also insisted that he accompany her to Queen Juliana’s coronation in
Holland in the same year, where people noticed the attraction between them.
After Townsend became Deputy Master of the Household, Princess Margaret was
only one floor above him, so they could easily meet and talk. (There is a
touching scene in “The Crown” in which she rushes down to kiss him, wearing the
most gorgeous dress). As the romance grew stronger, they even built cairns of
stones in the countryside near Balmoral to celebrate their rides together,
taking a leaf from Queen Victoria who did this to commemorate happy occasions).
Soon Townsend was granted a divorce from his wife, who
married John de Lazlo (the son of the famous artist) two months later. Princess
Margaret and Townsend discussed marriage as they rode together, or walked under
the oaks and beeches of the Great Park at Windsor Castle. When Lascelles heard
of this, he was furious, telling the Group Captain that: ‘You must be either
mad or bad’. However, he also told the couple that the marriage was possible,
but vowed secretly to do everything that he could to prevent it. He advised the
Queen that Townsend should be sent abroad immediately.
The affair remained secret until the Princess brushed fluff
off Townsend’s uniform at the Queen’s coronation in 1953. After this, gossip reached
breaking point. Tommy Lascelles and Winston Churchill were both strongly
against the match, and Winston Churchill told the Queen that Parliament would
probably not approve the match. (Princess Margaret needed the approval of
Parliament and the Dominions to marry the Group Captain because of his divorce,
and because she was under 25). The couple agreed to postpone the engagement,
and for Townsend to go away. The Princess thought that she would see him again
after her tour, however, but he was sent to the British Embassy in Brussels for
two years, while she was away! She must have been furious.
According to Noel Botham, however, Townsend saw her secretly
at romantic weekends at friend’s country houses on visits to England during
these years. Nobody told the Princess, however, that it was unlikely that
Parliament would approve the match even after she was 25 – she later said that
if she had known the position of the Church and that she would have to give up
her royal advantages if they married, they would have ended the romance near
the start.
When the Princess turned 25 in 1955, she and Townsend were
horrified to discover the attitude of the PM (Sir Anthony Eden, who was
divorced himself), Parliament and the Church. At a meeting with the Queen and
Prince Philip, Margaret was told by the PM that her only option if she wanted
to marry Townsend was to give up her right of succession and her Civil List
income. This would require Parliament to pass a special bill, and he thought
that it would cause ‘irreparable damage to the crown’. Also, any children the
couple had would be regarded as illegitimate by the Church of England. Margaret
did not realise this. As Princess Margaret was very religious, this may have
been the deciding factor against the marriage.
A leader in The Times, stated that the Royal family
should present a model of an ideal family life, and if the Princess married
Townsend, this would become ‘distorted’, and that many of the Queen’s subjects
would not ‘in conscience regard as a marriage’. Faced with such pressure,
Margaret and her tall, handsome Group Captain decided against the match. He
later wrote that they may not have enjoyed a happy marriage. She would have
‘had to give up everything –her position, her prestige, her privy purse.’ He
didn’t think that he had ‘the weight…to counter-balance all she would have lost’.
He also wouldn’t have wanted her ‘to become an ordinary housewife’.
However, if she had not had to give up everything, and if
she had been allowed to marry Townsend, perhaps they would have been happy. Unfortunately,
fate had other plans for the popular, attractive and lively Princess.
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Sources
Botham, Noel. Margaret, The Untold Story. Blake Hardbacks, England, 1994
Pimlott. Ben. The Queen. Elizabeth II and the Monarchy, Diamond Jubilee Edition, Harper Press, London, 2002.
Wednesday, September 21, 2022
The “High Life” in High Society: The Queen’s Iconic Dance in Ghana
Queen Elizabeth II’s iconic dance with the President of
Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, on her 1961 tour is one of my favourite scenes in the series“The
Crown”. The real Queen Elizabeth’s dance with a black African leader created
headlines around the world, and she received high praise for changing the
course of history by turning Nkrumah away from linking with the Soviet Union,
and sending a powerful anti-racist message. However, controversy remains,
especially amongst some Africans, about whether the dance really was such an
important event.
The Queen wanted to visit Ghana in 1959, seeing it as
her duty to the Commonwealth. However, her pregnancy with Prince Andrew put
paid to that visit. Nkrumah was very upset. He told Lord Charteris that: ‘I put
all my happiness into this tour. Had you told me my mother had just died you
could not have given me a greater shock’.1. It was a different story in 1961.
Macmillan, concerned about Nkrumah’s closeness to the Soviet Union and the
possibility that he might even use her not going to leave the Commonwealth,
advised her to visit Ghana. There were also concerns about anti-British feeling
growing stronger if President Kennedy withdrew financial support for the Volta
Dam, a huge hydro-electric project vital for Ghana’s economy, and the
likelihood of the Soviets funding it. There were even fears that she ‘might
throw in her hand’ if her activities were restricted.
President Kwame Nkrumah was the first black African leader
to lead his country to independence, but he also installed a dictatorship, and
single party rule. The Queen’s proposed trip to a dictatorship where there was
much anti-British feeling caused consternation in the government. The Left was
concerned about Nkrumah’s government’s lack of concern for human rights, and
the Right feared that the Queen would be attacked. Winston Churchill even
strongly suggested to Prime Minister Macmillan that he should advise her not to
go, for both these reasons. He wrote that he had ‘the impression that there is
widespread uneasiness both over the physical safety of the Queen and, perhaps
more, because her visit would seem to endorse a regime which has imprisoned hundreds
of opposition members without trial, and which is thoroughly authoritarian in
tendency.’ 2.
Five days before the visit, there were explosions in Ghana’s
capital, Accra, and a statue of Nkrumah was hit. However, even this didn’t put
the Queen off the trip, and doing her duty to the Commonwealth, and she was
growing impatient with the situation. According to some journalists, she had
told Cabinet ‘with some vehemence, that she ‘did not know how she could carry
on if they did not allow her to go’.3. She
also said: ‘How silly I should look if I was scared to visit Ghana, and Khrushchev
went and had a reception’.4.
In Akkra, the Queen told Nkrumah that nations of the
Commonwealth could disagree without having to leave. Looking regal and
beautiful in her white gown and tiara, the Queen danced the traditional Ghanian
dance, the ‘high life’ with the President, and pictures of the dance appeared
in newspapers across the world. Some South African journalists were especially
shocked.
Opinions differ about the effect of the dance. According to
architect and historian Nat Nuno Amertiefo the dance didn’t
really change history. People were tiring of Nkrumah’s socialist government
anyway because of the terrible economy, and corruption was so entrenched that
there was even a state-run company set up to collect bribes from foreign
businessmen. Also, the ties with the Soviet Union weren’t that close.5.
However, journalist Merriem Amellal Lalmas told France24
that ‘This image seems mundane today but, in this context, it was extremely
avant-garde. It was a white woman dancing with a black man, it was the ruler of
an empire dancing with a subject, as he was then considered, even if he is also
the father of Pan-Africanism and Ghanian independence’.
After the Queen returned to England, Prime Minister
Macmillan rang Kennedy about the Volta Dam. He said that: ‘I have risked my
Queen. You must risk your money’. Funding soon came through for the dam, stymieing
the Russians.6.
Arguably, the Queen’s visit did indeed play an important
role in the history of Ghana
1. Lord Charteris: Interview quoted in Pimlott, Ben. Queen Elizabeth II and the Monarchy. Harper Collins, 2002. p. 305
2. (2022). Retrieved 21 September 2022, from Ghana Stories
3. Fairlie, H. (1963). Sunday Telegraph, quoted in Pimlott, Ben. Queen Elizabeth II and the Monarchy. Harper Collins, 2002. p.308
4. 2022). Retrieved 21 September 2022, from Ghana Stories
5. McDonnell, T. (2022). 'The Crown' Says One Dance Changed History. The Truth Isn't So Simple. NPR.org. Retrieved 21 September 2022, from Vetting the Crown: Did Queen Elizabeth II's Dance With Ghana's President Really Change History?
Monday, September 19, 2022
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