Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret Rose was the daughter of a king and the sister of a queen. She never forgot this and she never let anyone else forget it. Being royal, at a time when being royal mattered more than it later did, defined her in ways beyond anyone’s control. She was the last of a breed but also, in a sense and up to a point, the first of a new breed, too.
She was a household name in England from well before the Second World War until the rule of New Labour. She could be chillingly regal, putting people down with an icy hauteur; but she might also traipse down to Bermondsey Market looking for bargains or play the piano and sing huskily with a cigarette in a holder, a large Scotch at her elbow and a bevy of adoring friends gathered round. She was a friend of poets and playwrights and prima ballerinas but often went out of her way to be nice to quite ordinary people. You might even say, in a perverse way that some refused to accept, she walked with kings yet kept the common touch. » | Tim Heald | Wednesday, February 9, 2022
