The secret love affair of Princess Margaret that ended in tragedy

In April 1994, the News of the World newspaper published two sensational love letters written by Princess Margaret to Robin Douglas-Home, with whom she had had a brief romance a quarter of a century earlier.

The letters have been circulating among publishers and news agencies since Douglas-Home’s death in 1968. When they finally appeared in print, Buckingham Palace responded negatively: “It’s an old story and we’re not going to talk about it.”

Princess Margaret was well within her rights to file a lawsuit and demand damages, but decided not to.

So who was Robin Douglas-Home? He was a minor aristocrat, a cousin of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Elizabeth II’s fourth Prime Minister.

His mother, born Margaret Spencer, was the great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales. He was a big part of the Mayfair nightclub scene and had known the Princess for years.

An accomplished jazz pianist, he has played at various venues in the West End, including the Society Restaurant in Jermyn Street. He and Margaret had a mutual love of American musicals and composers, including Jerome Kern, Cole Porter and George Gershwin, and he guided her to West Side Story.

In the late 1950s, Douglas-Home had a passionate romance with another princess, Margaretha, the granddaughter of Swedish King Gustaf VI Adolf.

When her mother, the widow Princess Sibylla, found out, she angrily ordered her daughter back to court, and both she and the king refused the couple’s pleas to be allowed to marry.

Instead, Robin married fashion model Sandra Paul in 1959, who gave birth to their son Sholto in 1962. Douglas-Home resumed his flirtatious ways and in 1965 Sandra was granted a divorce on the grounds of his adultery. (She would go on to marry future Conservative Party leader Michael Howard.)

In the mid-1960s, tensions began to arise in the marriage of Princess Margaret and her husband, the Earl of Snowdon, Tony Armstrong-Jones. He began to have what one biographer called “discreet alliances without names” with a series of women, seduced by his good looks and royal status.

As a professional photographer, he was often absent from assignments, making such affairs easy to conceal. Partly to assuage his guilt, he helped Margaret set up her own suitors, including Anthony Barton, a wine producer who was godfather to the couple’s daughter, Sarah Armstrong-Jones.

In early 1967, Tony left for Tokyo on an assignment. Margaret sought comfort from Douglas-Home, telling him, “I don’t know what I would do without you,” which was all the encouragement the amorous pianist needed.

They began a month-long affair, which they spent at Margaret’s Kensington Palace apartment or Robin’s home in Cromwell Road. At weekends they traveled to his cottage, Meadowbrook, in West Chiltington, West Sussex.

It was after one of these romantic weekends that the princess wrote: ‘Thank you for the comfort of your home, which gave you peace of mind. Thank you for the care and effort you took to make everything delicious, which restored your heart.”

Ironically, while encouraging his wife to find happiness with other men, Tony became jealous of all her affairs.

This proved to be a burden for the princess and her doctor suggested that she undergo a consultation at the King Edward VII Hospital in Marylebone, west London.

Rumors of the romance and the princess’ ill health circulated in the press, prompting speculation that the Snowdon marriage was on the rocks. A royal divorce was out of the question at the time and Margaret and Tony decided to do something about it.

There was a very public reunion for the benefit of the cameras in New York before the couple jetted off to the Bahamas for a second honeymoon.

At some point before or after the voyage across the Atlantic, Margaret called Douglas-Home to tell him that they could no longer meet alone and that she had decided to work on her marriage for the sake of her husband and children.

It was then that she wrote the other letter – essentially a suicide note. “Our love,” she wrote, “has the passionate scent of freshly cut grass and lilies.”

‘Not many people are lucky enough to have known such love. I’m so glad it happened to me. Can I make you happy from a distance? I think that can be done by just being there for the other person.’

“Promise that you will never give up, that you will continue to encourage me to make the marriage work, and that if I get a good and safe opportunity, I will try to come back to you one day.”

‘I don’t dare to do that at the moment. You are good and loyal, I think I am too, no matter what I seem to do or say.”

The letter is signed ‘All my love, my love. M’.

The princess never returned to her lover, and Robin’s life spiraled out of control due to depression, alcoholism and gambling debts. On October 15, 1968, he committed suicide in Meadowbrook, where they had enjoyed their secret rendezvous.

Margaret was dining at Kensington Palace with family friend James Cousins ​​when news of the suicide was reported in a TV bulletin. He remembered that Margaret never blinked, although she fell unusually deeply asleep at a meeting the next day. Cousins ​​thought she had been crying all night.

Margaret has always maintained that her relationship with Robin Douglas-Home was purely platonic. Their affair is said to have remained secret, but after the publication of her letters thirty years ago there was no doubt about the intensity of her feelings for the man who helped her restore her self-confidence and self-confidence when she needed it most.