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’d had a brief romance a quarter of a century earlier.

The letters had been doing the rounds of publishers and news agencies ever since the death of Douglas-Home in 1968. When they finally appeared in print, Buckingham Palace was dismissive: 'It’s an old story and we are not going to discuss it.'

 Princess Margaret was well within her rights to have sued and won damages but opted not to.

So who was Robin Douglas-Home? He was a minor aristocrat, a nephew 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 very much part of the Mayfair nightclub scene and had known the princess for many years. 

An accomplished jazz pianist, he played at the several West End venues 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 escorted her to see West Side Story.

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

When her mother, the widowed Princess Sibylla, found out, she furiously ordered her daughter to return to the court and both she and the king refused the couple’s entreaties to be allowed to marry.

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

By the mid-1960s strains were beginning to show 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, no-name alliances’ with a series of women, beguiled by his good looks and royal status.

As a professional photographer, he was frequently absent on assignments, making such flings easy to disguise. Partly to assuage his guilt, he helped set up Margaret with her own paramours, including Anthony Barton, a wine producer who was godfather to the couple’s daughter Sarah Armstrong-Jones.

Early in 1967, Tony set off on an assignment to Tokyo. Margaret sought solace with Douglas-Home, telling him 'I don’t know what I’d do without you', which, for the amorous pianist, was all the encouragement he needed. 

They began a month-long affair spent either at Margaret’s Kensington Palace apartment or Robin’s house in Cromwell Road. At weekends they travelled down 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 one peace of mind. Thank you for the care and trouble you took to make everything delicious, which restored one’s heart.’

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

This one proved a strain on the princess and her doctor suggested she should have a consultation at the King Edward VII Hospital in Marylebone, West London.

 Rumours of the princess’s romance and 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 make a go of things. 

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

At some point before or after the trip across the Atlantic, Margaret phoned Douglas-Home to tell him they couldn’t meet again 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 – effectively a goodbye note. ‘Our love,’ she wrote ‘has the passionate scent of new-mown grass and lilies about it.’

‘Not many people are lucky enough to have known any love like this. I feel so happy that it has happened to me. Can I make you happy from a distance? I think we can just by being there for the other.’

‘Promise you will never give up, that you will go on encouraging me to make the marriage a success, and that given a good and safe chance, I will try and come back to you one day.’

‘I daren’t at the moment. You are good and loyal, think that I am too, whatever I may seem to do or say.’

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

The princess never did go back to her lover, and Robin’s life spiralled out of control because of depression, alcoholism and gambling debts. On October 15, 1968, he committed suicide at Meadowbrook, where they had enjoyed their secret trysts.

Margaret was dining at Kensington Palace with a family friend, James Cousins, when news of the suicide was mentioned on a TV bulletin. He recalled that Margaret never batted an eye, though the next day she unusually fell sound asleep during a meeting. Cousins thought she’d been weeping all night.

Margaret always maintained her relationship with Robin Douglas-Home was purely platonic. Their affair would have remained a secret but, following the publication of her letters 30 years ago, there was no doubting the intensity of her feelings for the man who helped restore her confidence and self-belief when she needed it most.