Their intense romance ended in heartbreak, but now Princess Margaret’s relationship with the love of her life, Group Captain Peter Townsend, is being cast in a slightly disturbing light by her maid of 30 years.
Lady Anne Glenconner’s verdict on Townsend was not flattering, even though he won three medals as a fighter pilot before becoming King George VI’s squire in 1944. Townsend, who died in 1995, recalled that Margaret was “the kind of person” she was at the time of his appointment. She is so inconspicuous that it is hard to believe that she is a 14-year-old girl. ”
But Lady Anne, 91, says she remembers Queen Elizabeth II’s sister differently.
“Actually, I asked her about it once. He was a war hero and was very attractive. She was very, very young. She was only 15. [sic] He was a married man when he first arrived. I think he encouraged her, which he shouldn’t have done. ”
Asked on today’s Rosebud podcast if she thought Townsend, who is 15 years Margaret’s senior, was taking advantage of their closeness, Lady Anne said she thought so. “It’s something that’s not really out there, but I couldn’t agree more,” she added.
Townsend’s first marriage to Rosie Paul, which produced two sons, began to fray. They divorced in 1952. He and Margaret then realized that their status as divorcees had eliminated any possibility of them getting married.
He wrote a memoir, but Rosie, who died in 2004, refrained from writing it. “As you can imagine, she was offered as much as £500,000 to come up with the whole story,” Pierre de Laszlo, her son from her second marriage, told me. “She had never done that before. It was really good for her.”
Lord Ivor Mountbatten, the first member of the royal family to have a same-sex marriage, has managed to balance work and pleasure.
The TV personality, 60, and her husband James Coyle are speaking on a two-week cruise around Polynesia run by the company ‘Reimagining LGBT+ Holidays’. Lord Ivar, cousin of Prince Philip and once removed, and third cousin of Queen Elizabeth, says: It’s a lot of fun – and they definitely know how to party. I feel like I might need another vacation to get over this situation. ”
Hollywood director Paul Feig, who has directed hit comedies such as “Bridesmaids” and the 2016 remake of “Ghostbusters,” says the actors’ strike is no laughing matter.
“It has to be solved. Everyone needs to come to the table and solve it. If we don’t, Hollywood will soon cease to exist,” he said at the Peacock Theater in London’s West End. he told me on the gala night of the House of Flamenca. US actors remain on picket lines due to disputes with film studios over pay and the use of AI. The 61-year-old manager added: “I’m worried about my staff, because they’re the people I rely on.”
“I’m counting on the actors and writers, but I’m most worried about the staff. What are they supposed to do during that time?”
Rishi Sunak is trying to quit smoking, but Dara Huang isn’t convinced by the habit.
The mother of Princess Beatrice’s son-in-law Christopher has shared a photo of her smoking a cigar at a private members’ club in Mayfair.
“This is my first and last cigar,” she says, wearing a gold metallic dress and white blazer. The 40-year-old architect was engaged to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi when the property developer met Beatrice, daughter of Prince Andrew and Sarah, Duchess of York.
Their 7-year-old son, known as Wolfie, served as a groomsman at Beatrice and Ed’s 2020 wedding.
I previously revealed that American Dara is so close to his ex-fiancée that in 2020 he moved his London office from Clerkenwell to the building in Kensington where his property development company is based.
Here is a prince charming who may have found Cinderella.
Staff were cleaning up after Denmark’s Prince Christian’s lavish 18th birthday celebrations last weekend when they discovered a golden stiletto that had apparently been thrown away by a party-goer.
The prince asked the palace to post photos of the shoes on social media rather than going door to door looking for their owners.
Now, a beautiful young woman has claimed the shoes as her own.
“Yes, those shoes are mine,” Anne-Sophie Trunso Olesen, 18, told me.
She was invited to a party at Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen on behalf of the region where she lives on the outskirts of the Danish capital. “I won an invitation at Tombola,” she tells me.
It remains to be seen whether Christian will return the shoes directly to Anne-Sophie, but Anne-Sophie does have something in common with our Queen – her father is a wine merchant like Camilla.
He is the perfect former Celebrity MasterChef finalist and was recently compared to a “computer-generated Tudor aristocrat” by artist Sir Grayson Perry.
So it’s no surprise to hear that BBC Radio 2 presenter Rylan Clarke likes to keep things clean, even in the bedroom. The 34-year-old broadcaster has revealed that he has a phobia of breadcrumbs, explaining that his biggest “dislike” is breadcrumbs.
He told me at the Pink News Awards, held at Lancaster Gate in central London. “If someone puts food on my bare legs, I feel sick.” He added: “Don’t eat in bed.”
I would never dream of such a thing.
Do you think Britain’s waterways are polluted? Comedian Al Murray takes a dip in India’s sacred Ganges River while filming Sky’s latest documentary ‘Why Does Everyone Hate the British Empire?’ They agreed, and before they knew it, they were sharing water with dead animals.
“It was horrible,” exclaimed Murray, 55, known for his comedic character as a pub landlord. “There was a dog that died because a crow ripped off pieces of it.”
Sir Don McCullin risked his life in a war zone and survived relatively unscathed.
But now the 88-year-old photojournalist has revealed that his long days in the tropical climate have nearly destroyed his eyesight. McCullin, who is set to be made into a movie starring Angelina Jolie and Tom Hardy, discovered that the itchy areas under her eyes were skin cancer.
“I had to have surgery or I would have gone blind,” he tells me. “They removed the growth and had 50 stitches under my left eye and a few more under my right eye.
“A doctor friend of mine noticed this problem and said, ‘You should do that.'”
