Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret by Craig Brown

Author:Craig Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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The most sixties of the Snowdon inner circle was Peter Sellers, the comic actor whose extraordinary talent for mimicry seemed to have invaded his body, depriving him of a fixed accent, or even a fixed character. This allowed him to be whoever he wished to be, but with no way home. Himself something of a chameleon, Snowdon was mesmerised by Sellers, and in turn Sellers was, in the words of the screenwriter Wolf Mankowitz, ‘completely obsessed with royalty. He was always going on about Princess Margaret. His biggest thrill was to present people to her.’

In February 1964 Sellers brought his young fiancée, the blonde Swedish actress Britt Ekland, to meet Tony and Margaret. On their way to Kensington Palace he drilled her in the correct way to address the Queen’s younger sister: ‘Your Royal Highness’ on first being presented, and ‘Ma’am’ thereafter. A preliminary curtsey was mandatory.

As things turned out, Her Royal Highness was as relaxed as could be. The four sat down to what Ekland described as a ‘quite informal’ lunch: consommé, roast beef, red wine. Over the brandy, Snowdon put it to Ekland that she might just possibly like to pose for what he described as ‘glamour pictures’.

‘What a good idea!’ exclaimed Princess Margaret, at her most easy-going. ‘He’s actually quite good, Britt, if he remembers to put film in the camera!’ Ekland took this remark as an affectionate tease. But did it also hint at Snowdon’s lasciviousness?

If so, Margaret was happy to aid and abet him. ‘The Princess showed me to her first-floor bedroom to change,’ recalled Ekland. ‘They each had their own separate bedrooms and bathrooms, and Tony came through and tossed me one of his shirts. I was in a tweed costume and once the royal couple had gone I slipped off my jacket and blouse and bra and exchanged it for the shirt.’

Meanwhile, Sellers and Snowdon were hunting out suitable places for their forthcoming shoot. They settled on the wide hallway, and opened the front door to let in a blaze of sunlight. This ensured that the silhouette of Ekland’s breasts would be clearly visible through the shirt.

The session went like a dream, and from that point on, according to Ekland, ‘we became close friends of the Royal couple’. Peter and Britt and Tony and Margaret: theirs was a very sixties friendship, a symbol of fame’s sudden new supremacy in the British class system. Of her two new friends, Britt found Tony the easier; he was always ‘well-meaning, friendly and considerate’, whereas Margaret ‘wasn’t any less friendly but I think we were always conscious of her position and sometimes she was to impose that if anyone upset her’.

It wasn’t long before Sellers was taken up as court jester to the wider royal court. Shortly after their marriage, he and Ekland were invited to Windsor Castle for a shooting party. On receiving the invitation, Sellers ordered himself a £1,200 shotgun from James Purdey & Sons, plus a shooting jacket, breeches and boots, with a deerstalker hat to complete the picture.

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