INTRODUCTION

HER STORY

QUOTES

"Darling," her mother asked Margaret one evening after she had rescued the child from a paternal scolding, "what would you do without Mummy?"  The reply came without hesitation: "I'd do what I like, Mummy."

She was the first member of the immediate Royal Family to be divorced since Henry VIII discarded Anne of Cleves.

"You look after your Empire and I'll look after my life," she once said when the Queen reprimanded her for flirting with some navy cadets."

When Richard Burton referred to her once in public as Maggie Jones, her withering glance revealed she was clearly not amused.

Photographer Norman Parkinson once decided to photograph the Queen, the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret dressed in identical blue satin capes. The session brought unexpected problems. His instructions of "Chin up a little, Ma'am" and "Could you just turn to the right, Ma'am?" caused endless confusion. "It's absolutely no use you Ma'aming us like this," exclaimed Princess Margaret. "We haven't the slightest idea who you are referring to. We are ALL Ma'am."

Once, when after a party at Kensington Palace for Marlene Dietrich, four bottles of very rare vodka had disappeared, she was furious.  She telephoned every guest until she had tracked down the culprit.  The bottles were returned.

Her drinking, first of gin and later of whisky, was legendary. Guests at Kensington Palace were amazed at the number of drinks she could down during the course of a meal, let alone a party.

In 1981 she appeared on BBC Radio Four programme Desert Island Discs. The luxury item she would have wanted on a desert island was a piano; her choice of book would have been War and Peace.

On once being asked how new ladies-in-waiting knew what to do, the Princess answered, in her languid fashion, "They learn, they learn."

When Richard Burton gave his wife Elizabeth Taylor a ring in which sparkled the famous Krupp diamond-- a 33.19 carat jewel then worth over $300,000-- Princess Margaret pronounced it to be "the most vulgar thing she had ever seen."  Inevitably, the remark was repeated to the actress.  Some time later, on meeting the Princess at a party, Elizabeth Taylor asked her if she would like to try on the famous ring.  Princess Margaret slipped it on to her finger.  "Doesn't look so vulgar now, does it?" asked the actress, smiling her cat-like smile.

Nothing could disguise her natural hauteur.  She had a way of ignoring any remark that displeased her, and of cutting short any unwelcome conversation.  Her glare of disapproval was legendary.  If ever she felt that she was being treated with too much familiarity by her fellow guests, she would simply walk on.  She would answer anyone who dared to refer to "your sister" with a withering "Do you mean Her Majesty the Queen?"

She often visited the club of celebrated drag artist, Danny La Rue.  Once, when the drag artist was changing, someone hammered on his dressing-room door, shouting, "Danny, it's Princess Margaret.  Quick!"  "Piss off!" shouted the star, opening the door.  But it was indeed the Princess, and La Rue, who was stark naked at the time, found that he didn't know "whether to bow, curtsy or cover myself up."

She was always loath to end a party and go to bed, particularly if she had been drinking too much.  It was a rule that no one left a party until the Princess was ready for it to break up, and she was seldom ready for that.

Her wedding presents for her sister Princess Elizabeth were a set of twelve engraved champagne glasses and a fitted picnic basket.

The London Museum of Natural History described her collection of shells as the most comprehensive shell collection in individual ownership. The shells were collected in the course of her travels all over the world and are displayed in large, specially built cabinets in the pink and green Garden Room at Kensington Palace.

She was the first member of the royal family to act, rather than just to appear, in a broadcast production when in 1984 she played herself in an episode of the long-running BBC radio soap opera The Archers.

When she was 18 years old, she moved into her own apartment inside Buckingham Palace and painted it pink.

A favourite pastime of hers was doing The Times crossword puzzle whilst drinking a cup of tea.

Her circle of friends, known as the Margaret Set, included famous people like Mary Quant, Vidal Sassoon, Marlene Dietrich, Dame Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev.

Her first solo trip abroad was a private visit to Italy for a month in 1949. Was criticized because she had an audience with the Pope and was photographed in a swimming costume.

The three most important men in her life were Group Captain Peter Townsend, Anthony Armstrong-Jones and Roddy Llewellyn.

The public first suspected Margaret and Townsend were in love when on Coronation morning cameras caught her picking fluff off his jacket.

Townsend and Margaret first admitted to being in love in Windsor Castle's red drawing room in the New Year of 1953.

On hearing of his love affair with Margaret the Queen's private secretary said to Townsend: "You must be either mad or bad."

When she told the Archbishop of Canterbury she wouldn't be marrying Townsend he replied: "What a wonderful person the Holy Spirit is."

Her intended marriage to Townsend was abandoned in 1955 when it was made known that Townsend had been divorced. Sharing her sister's devotion to duty, she put public life before private.

If she had married Townsend she would have forfeited her royal rights, her duties, her income from the royal list, her right to live in Britain.

26-year-old Margaret was placed second on the list of best dressed women. She tied with the Duchess of Windsor below Grace Kelly.

Broke off her unofficial engagement to Billy Wallace because he had an affair with another woman.

Margaret and Tony conducted their blossoming love affair in a ground-floor warehouse in Rotherhithe.

Private Eye called Margaret and Snowdon "the two highest-paid performing dwarves in Europe."

The engagement ring Tony designed for her was a ruby set like a rosebud with a diamond marguerite, a play on her name Margaret Rose.

Colin Tennant gave Margaret a ten-acre plot on the island of Mustique as a wedding present.

Her Mustique home is called Les Jolies Eaux. It serves as a retreat from the pressures of royal life. It was on such a relaxing holiday to the Caribbean in the latter half of the 1990s that Princess Margaret suffered a mild heart attack.

Complained her first ten-room married home in Kensington Palace was like a doll's house.

The most publicized of Lord Snowdon's extramarital affairs was his affair with Lady Jacqueline Rufus-Isaacs.

When Snowdon was away on a long assignment she became emotionally involved with Anthony Burton, Lady Sarah's godfather.

Lord Snowdon had been having an affair with Lucy Lindsay-Hogy for 14 months before his official separation from Margaret.

In 1980, in West Germany, Margaret, feeling cold, refused to review a regiment and got back into her car.

Was told to give up alcohol for a year when she was being treated for alcoholic hepatitis.