Lord Snowdon Really Did Hide Cruel Notes for Princess Margaret to Find in Her Books
There is a particularly sad scene in The Crown's third season, when Princess Margaret climbs into bed on the train, and opens a book, only to find a note from her husband, Antony Armstrong Jones.
It reads: "You look like a cheap pantomime dame." (For those unfamiliar with a phrase, in British theater, a pantomime dame is often a female character played by a man in drag.)
But this wasn't an element of fiction written into Peter Morgan's story to illustrate the difficulty of Princess Margaret's marriage. According to Lady Glenconner, Princess Margaret's close confident and lady-in-waiting, Lord Snowdon often wrote harsh notes to his wife, and left them tucked away for her to find when she was alone.
"She told me, for instance, that she no longer opened her chest of drawers — she got her maid to do it instead — because Tony had developed a habit of leaving nasty little notes inside. One of them said: 'You look like a Jewish manicurist and I hate you,'" Glenconner writes in her new memoir, Lady in Waiting.
"Everybody she'd ever met had always treated her with the utmost respect. Except Tony, who was spiteful in creative ways and liked writing vile little one-liners which he hid in her glove drawer, or among her hankies or tucked into books."
Biographer Craig Brown also reflected on Snowdon's particularly cruel habit in his book Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret.
"He took to leaving nasty notes on her desk, including one headed 'Twenty Four Reasons Why I Hate You,' which particularly upset her. 'I can't think of twenty-four reasons to hate ANYBODY,' she said to a friend. On another occasion he left a note in her glovebox saying 'You look like a Jewish manicurist,' and on another, a note tucked into her bedside book, saying simply, 'I hate you.'
By 1976, Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon had separated after years of disagreements and infidelity on both sides. They eventually divorced in 1978, marking the first royal divorce since King Henry VIII's in 1540s.
The Crown's third season is available now to watch on Netflix.
Watch a clip of the new season below:
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