Princess Margaret Quotes

Remember,' she'd tell her staff, 'every customer wants to feel like a princess, and princesses are selfish and overbearing.

What about you? Full name?” I sighed. “There was some debate over middle names, so it’s Eadlyn Helena Margarete Schreave.” “That’s a mouthful,” he teased. “It’s pretentious, too. My name literally means ‘princess shining pearl.’” He tried to hide his smile. “Your parents named you Princess?” “Yes. Yes, I am Queen Princess Schreave, thank you.” “I shouldn’t laugh.” “And yet you do.

First maid: If I was a princess, with silver and gold, And loved by a hero, I'd never grow old: Oh, if a young hero came a-marrying me, I'd always be beautiful, happy, and free! Chorus: Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave - The water below is as dark as the grave, And maybe you'll sink in your little blue boat - It's hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat.

Behind the studied blankness of her gaze, revolt must have been simmering. I recognized that surliness, that stubbornness, that captive-princess indignation, which must be kept hidden until enough weapons have been collected.

I have as much privacy as a goldfish in a bowl.

According to Princess Margaret, "You can't possibly have a picnic without your butler.

The Queen was saying only the other day that London property prices are so high that she doesn’t know how she’d cope without Buckingham Palace,’ Princess Margaret explained to a sympathetic Peter Porlock.

Gilbert and George said: “But don’t you see? That’s how Bacon is. He is absolutely right to behave as he wants.” Not as he wants. As he has to behave. An artist must be open to the muse. The greater the artist, the more he is open to “cosmic currents.” He has to behave as he does. If he has “the courage to be an artist,” he is committed to behave as the mood possesses him. “That’s the man who booed Princess Margaret!” —the peasantry shrink back from his sulfurous glow.

It was all the answer Rook needed. He plunged his hand into the soil, long fingers grasping down. This was no offering to the earth, but a command to it, and the forest surged around us. Bramble roots as wide around as kitchen tables heaved up from the ground, bristling with thorns longer and more wicked than any sword. When they reached their full height they branched, heaving higher, knotting together, until they gathered us up in a fortress like something out of an old tale, a place where a cursed princess slept imprisoned. I was gladdened by the sight of those vicious thorns more than I could say, and wondered whether the stories would have gone any differently if the princesses had been the ones telling them.

King George V and Queen Mary had been inadequate parents. Both were shy, inhibited, inarticulate people, not given to displays of emotion or affection.

deep down, what Margaret really wanted from Elizabeth was approval.

love and duty speak two languages.

Lord Curzon who, accused of knowing nothing of the common man, jumped on a bus, then ordered it to take him to No. 1 Carlton House Terrace.

improbability is no barrier to gossip.

Wherever you live in the world so wide, we wish you a nook on the sunny side, with much love and little care, a little purse with money to spare, your own little hearth when day is spent, in a little house with the heart's content. To the happy couple!

Yet, miraculously, the Queen has managed to avoid saying anything striking or memorable to anyone. This is an achievement, not a failing: it was her duty and destiny to be dull, to be as useful and undemonstrative as a postage stamp, her life dedicated to the near-impossible task of saying nothing of interest. Once, when Gore Vidal was gossiping with Princess Margaret, he told her that Jackie Kennedy had found the Queen ‘pretty heavy going’. ‘But that’s what she’s there for,’ explained the Princess.

From her handbag she takes a round gilt compact with violets on the cover. She opens it, unclosing her other self, and runs her fingertip around the corners of her mouth, left one, right one; then she unswivels a pink stick and dots her cheeks and blends them, changing her shape, performing the only magic left to her. Rump on a packsack, harem cushion, pink on the cheeks and black discreetly around the eyes, as red as blood as black as ebony, a seamed and folded imitation of a magazine picture that is itself an imitation of a woman who is also an imitation, the original nowhere, hairless lobed angel in the same heaven where God is a circle, captive princess in someone's head. She is locked in, she isn't allowed to eat or shit or cry or give birth, nothing goes in, nothing comes out. She takes her clothes off or puts them on, paper doll wardrobe, she copulates under strobe lights with the man's torso while his brain watches from its glassed-in control cubicle at the other end of the room, her face twists into poses of exultation and total abandonment, that is all. She is not bored, she has no other interests.

Once there was nothing she wouldn’t do to render herself alluring. So many items attached to her head: ribbons and ships, all curling. Now her torso lies in the ditch like a lost glove, like a tossed book mostly unsaid. Unread. In the high palace of words, one princess the less.

Biography is at the mercy of information, and information about the Royal Family is seldom there when you want it. Or rather, there is a wealth of information, but most of it is window-dressing: the shop itself is shut, visible only through the front window, its private offices firmly under lock and key.

She has followed me into every single room in this palace, and then she followed Anne Neville when she was her lady-in-waiting, too. She walked behind Anne at her coronation, carrying the train. Perhaps Lady Margaret is feeling that it’s her turn to be the first lady now, and she wants someone trailing along behind her.

All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo Big Nate series by Lincoln Peirce The Black Cauldron (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Lloyd Alexander The Book Thief  by Markus Zusak Brian’s Hunt by Gary Paulsen Brian’s Winter by Gary Paulsen Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis The Call of the Wild by Jack London The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury The Giver by Lois Lowry Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling Hatchet by Gary Paulsen The High King (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Lloyd Alexander The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien Holes by Louis Sachar The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins I Am LeBron James by Grace Norwich I Am Stephen Curry by Jon Fishman Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson LeBron’s Dream Team: How Five Friends Made History by LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger The Lightning Thief  (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) by Rick Riordan A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle Number the Stars by Lois Lowry The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton The River by Gary Paulsen The Sailor Dog by Margaret Wise Brown Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury Star Wars Expanded Universe novels (written by many authors) Star Wars series (written by many authors) The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann D. Wyss Tales from a Not-So-Graceful Ice Princess (Dork Diaries) by Rachel Renée Russell Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Rump on a packsack, harem cushion, pink on the cheeks and black discreetly around the eyes, as red as blood as black as ebony, a seamed and folded imitation of a magazine picture that is itself an imitation of a woman who is also an imitation, the original nowhere, hairless lobed angel in the same heaven where God is a circle, captive princess in someone's head. She is locked in, she isn't allowed to eat or shit or cry or give birth, nothing goes in, nothing comes out. She takes her clothes off or puts them on, paperdoll wardrobe, she copulates under strobe lights with the man's torso while his brain watches from its glassed-in control cubicle at the other end of the room, her face twists into poses of exultation and total abandonment, that is all. She is not bored, she has no other interests.

The grasslands are endless, And summer sings on, And Goldmoon the princess Loves a poor man’s son. Her father the chieftain Makes long roads between them: The grasslands are endless, and summer sings on. The grasslands are waving, The sky’s rim is gray, The chieftain sends Riverwind East and away, To search for strong magic At the lip of the morning, The grasslands are waving, the sky’s rim is gray. O Riverwind, where have you gone? O Riverwind, autumn comes on. I sit by the river And look to the sunrise, But the sun rises over the mountains alone. The grasslands are fading, The summer wind dies, He comes back, the darkness Of stones in his eyes. He carries a blue staff As bright as a glacier: The grasslands are fading, the summer wind dies. The grasslands are fragile, As yellow as flame, The chieftain makes mockery Of Riverwind’s claim. He orders the people To stone the young warrior: The grasslands are fragile, as yellow as flame. The grassland has faded, And autumn is here. The girl joins her lover, The stones whistle near, The staff flares in blue light And both of them vanish: The grasslands are faded, and autumn is here.

It is Cinderella in reverse. It is hope dashed, happiness mislaid, life mishandled. Nothing is as thrilling as they said it would be: no one is amusing, as clever, as attractive or as interesting. The sun never shines as bright as it used to, and even the fiercest thunderstorm lacks any real sense of drama or pizzaz. As the curtain falls, Group Captain Charming has left her for someone more suitable and has gone to live in France, and Buttons, in his zip-up jumpsuit, has taken up with a wearying succession of younger lovers. When Cinderella dies, her little glass slipper is put up for auction, a memento of days of hope and innocence. The catalogue entry reads: 'Only worn once.

Finally, still kneeling, he looked up at the woman. Sturm caught his breath as the woman removed the hood of her cloak and drew the veil from her face. For the first time,human eyes looked upon the face of Alhana Starbreeze. Muralasa, the elves called her-Princess of the Night. Her hair, black and soft as the night wind, was held in place by a net as fine as cobweb, twinkling with tiny jewels like stars. Her skin was the pale hue of the silver moon, her eyes the deep, dark purple of the night sky and her lips the color of the red moon's shadows. The knight's first thought was to give thanks to Paladine that he was already on his knees. His second was that death would be a paltry price to pay to serve her, and his third that he musk say something, but he seemed to have forgotten the words of any known language.

They've never been able to ignore you, Ma'am." "I made damn sure they couldn't. I never let them or anyone tell me what to do, except where Peter was concerned." She sighed, her weak chest rising and falling beneath the teal hospital down. "I'd trade my diamonds for a cigarette." Vera reached into her purse and pulled out a package of Gigantes she'd purchased at a tobacconist shop on the way to the hospital. She removed the cellophane wrapper and handed it to the Princess, the ability to anticipate Her Royal Highness's needs never having left her, even after all these years. The Princess didn't thank her, but the delight in her blue eyes when she put one in the good side of her mouth and allowed Vera to light it was thanks enough. The Princess struggled to close her lips around the base, revealing the depths of her weakness but also her strength. She refused to be denied her pleasure, even if it took some time to bring her lips together enough to inhale. Pure bliss came over her when she did before she exhaled. "I don't suppose you brought anything to drink?" "As a matter of fact, I did." Vera took the small bottle of whiskey she'd been given on the plane and held it up. "It isn't Famous Grouse, I'm afraid." "I don't care what it is." She snatched the plastic cup off the bedside table and held it up. "Pour." Vera twisted off the cap and drained the small bottle into the cup. The Princess held it up, whiskey in one hand, the cigarette in the other, and nodded to Vera. "Cheers." She drank with a rapture equal to the one she'd shown with the cigarette, sinking back into the pillows to enjoy the forbidden luxuries. "It reminds me of when we used to get drinks at the 400 Club after a Royal Command Film Performance or some other dry event. Nothing ever tasted so good as that first whiskey after all the hot air of those stuffy officials." "We could work up quite a thirst, couldn't we, Ma'am?" "We sure could." She enjoyed the cigarette, letting out the smoke slowly to savour it before offering Vera a lopsided smile. "We had fun back then, didn't we, Mrs. Lavish?

With the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret in attendance, the Beatles headlined the Royal Variety Show, on which John, ever the silver-tongued mischief-maker, famously said, "Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry.

I’ve

Queen Mary, too, remained faithful to the pre-First World War opulence approved of by her husband. Whatever else might change, one could always be sure of Queen Mary’s toques, ankle-length skirts, lace parasols and long, pointed shoes.

The King’s private, and preferred, life was that of a country squire. In cultural or intellectual pursuits he had no interest whatsoever; he loathed travel. George V was never happier than when shooting at Balmoral or at Sandringham.

Although princes need not necessarily be intelligent, it is essential that they have some sort of public presence. The Duke of York had none. Fine-boned and slightly built, he looked frail, seemed lacking in physical stamina. His air was tense, hesitant, ill-at-ease. An observer had only to notice the incessant working of his jaw muscles to appreciate that he was under severe strain.

Although, by the time of his second daughter’s birth, the Duke had overcome the worst of his stammer, it tended to re-emerge under pressure; his public delivery remained slow and monotonous. All in all, he looked very largely what he was – a well-meaning man, but ill educated, self-doubting, unresolved.

Prince Albert, or Bertie, as he was known in the family (his full names were Albert Frederick Arthur George), had been raised by nurses and tutors. His mother had played so little part in his upbringing that only after his nurse had suffered a nervous breakdown did she discover that the woman had not had a day off in over three years.

Queen Mary remained as remote from her sons as adults as she had from them as children. ‘They were strangers to her emotionally,’ wrote her Lady-in-Waiting, Lady Airlie, ‘a nest of wild birds already spreading their wings and soaring beyond her horizon.

It is said that when the historian John Wheeler-Bennett came to write the official biography of King George VI, the Queen Mother asked him to tone down the many references to her influence on her husband.

their own and were obliged to live in various

of the palace to inform me that Lady Margaret

The speeches she is making with almost weekly regularity are a further satisfying feature of her royal life. Some she writes herself, others by a small coterie of advisers, including her private secretary Patrick Jephson, now a firm ally in the royal camp as she personally appointed him last November. It is a flexible informal group who discuss with the Princess the points she wants to make, research the statistics and then construct the speech. The contrast between her real interests and the role assigned for her by her palace “minders” was amply demonstrated in March this year where on the same day she was guest of honour at the Ideal Home Exhibition and in the evening made a passionate and revelatory speech about AIDS. There was an interesting symbolism to these engagements, separated only by a matter of hours but by a generation in personal philosophy. Her exhibition visit was organized by the palace bureaucracy. They arranged everything from photo opportunities to guests lists while the subsequent media coverage concentrated on an off-the-cuff remark the Princess made about how she couldn’t comment on her plans for National Bed Week because this was “a family show”. It was light, bright and trite, the usual offering which is served up by the palace to the media day in day out. The Princess performed her role impeccably, chatting to the various organizers and smiling for the cameras. However her performance was just that, a role which the palace, the media and public have come to expect. A glimpse of the real Diana was on show later that evening when in the company of Professor Michael Adler and Margaret Jay, both AIDS experts, she spoke to an audience of media executives at a dinner held at Claridges. Her speech clearly came from the heart and her own experience. Afterwards she answered several rather long-winded questions from the floor, the first occasion in her royal life where she had subjected herself to this particular ordeal. This episode passed without a murmur in the media even though it represented a significant milestone in her life. It illustrates the considerable difficulties she faces in shifting perceptions of her job as a Princess, both inside and outside the palace walls.

The bobby directed us to the “Private Road” we’d already passed, but added, “You won’t be able to drive up there. It’s restricted.” Pat nudged me, so I said, “Oh, it’s all right, Officer. We have an appointment with the Princess of Wales.” The policeman shook his head in disbelief and said, “Right-o. Sure you do. Good day.” We drove right back to where we had started and proceeded through an open gateway framed by two square brick columns, both marked “Private Road.” Just before we reached the gravel courtyard next to the palace, we came to a small guardhouse. I told the two guards who we were and explained, “We’ve been invited to lunch with Her Royal Highness.” They laughed, “Which one?” I blushed at my mistake. “The Princess of Wales,” I specified. I had forgotten that Their Royal Highnesses, Princess Margaret and Princess Michael of Kent, as well as the Duchess of Gloucester, also had apartments at Kensington Palace.

It was a memorable night of riotous jollity. Princess Margaret attached a balloon to her tiara, Prince Andrew tied another to the tails of his dinner jacket while royal bar staff dispensed a cocktail called “A Long Slow Comfortable Screw up against the Throne.” Rory Scott recalls dancing with Diana in front of the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and embarrassing himself by continually standing on Diana’s toes. The comedian Spike Milligan held forth about God, Diana gave a priceless diamond and pearl necklace to a friend to look after while she danced; while the Queen was observed looking through the programme and saying in bemused tones: “It says here they have live music”, as though it had just been invented. Diana’s brother, Charles, just down from Eton, vividly remembers bowing to one of the waiters. “He was absolutely weighed down with medals,” he recalls, “and by that stage, with so many royal people there, I was in automatic bowing mode. I bowed and he looked surprised. Then he asked me if I wanted a drink.” For most of the guests the evening passed in a haze of euphoria. “It was an intoxicatingly happy atmosphere,” recalls Adam Russell. “Everyone horribly drunk and then catching taxis in the early hours, it was a blur, a glorious, happy blur.

Thus, from the very outset, and in typically effusive fashion, did Marion Crawford set out the thesis that characterizes her celebrated, indeed notorious, book, The Little Princesses. By contrasting the sterling qualities of the future Queen with her younger sister’s more capricious personality, Crawfie gave authority to what – by the time of the book’s publication in 1950 – many people already believed.

Royal reaction to the British publication of the book was draconian. Crawfie had to leave her grace-and-favour cottage; her entry in Who’s Who was withdrawn; her name was not even mentioned in officially authorized biographies such as John Wheeler-Bennett’s King George VI or Dorothy Laird’s Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. She retired to Aberdeen from where, with extraordinary insensitivity, she pestered the family with frequent requests.

Thank you, God, for blessing me with my perfect Irisa, the most exquisite, potty-mouthed Princess that ever lived.

Princess Margaret was standing with my youngest sister Paula, who was in the process of handing the Queen’s sister a joint she had just lit. After everything we’d been through that evening, it was too much. I leaped at her and said, “Don’t!” When I told them what had happened, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon beat a hasty retreat.

Ned Sherrin Ned Sherrin is a satirist, novelist, anthologist, film producer, and celebrated theater director who has been at the heart of British broadcasting and the arts for more than fifty years. I had met Diana, Princess of Wales--perhaps “I had been presented to” is more accurate--in lineups after charity shows that I had been compering and at which she was the royal guest of honor. There were the usual polite exchanges. On royal visits backstage, Princess Alexandra was the most relaxed, on occasion wickedly suggesting that she caught a glimpse of romantic chemistry between two performers and setting off giggles. Princess Margaret was the most artistically acute, the Queen the most conscientious; although she did once sweep past me to get to Bill Haley, of whom she was a fan. Prince Edward could, at one time, be persuaded to do an irreverent impression of his older brother, Prince Charles. Princess Diana seemed to enjoy herself, but she was still new to the job and did not linger down the line. Around this time, a friend of mine opened a restaurant in London. From one conversation, I gathered that although it was packed in the evenings, business was slow at lunchtime. Soon afterward, I got a very “cloak-and-dagger” phone call from him. He spoke in hushed tones, muttering something like “Lunch next Wednesday, small party, royal person, hush-hush.” From this, I inferred that he wanted me and, I had no doubt, other friends to bring a small party to dress the restaurant, to which he was bringing the “royal person” in a bid to up its fashionable appeal during the day. When Wednesday dawned, the luncheon clashed with a couple of meetings, and although feeling disloyal, I did not see how I was going to be able to round up three or four people--even for a free lunch. Guiltily, I rang his office and apologized profusely to his secretary for not being able to make it. The next morning, he telephoned, puzzled and aggrieved. “There were only going to be the four of us,” he said. “Princess Diana had been looking forward to meeting you properly. She was very disappointed that you couldn’t make it.” I felt suitably stupid--but, as luck had it, a few weeks later I found myself sitting next to her at a charity dinner at the Garrick Club. I explained the whole disastrous misunderstanding, and we had a very jolly time laughing at the coincidence that she was dining at this exclusive club before her husband, who had just been elected a member with some publicity. Prince Charles was in the hospital at the time recuperating from a polo injury. Although hindsight tells us that the marriage was already in difficulties, that was not generally known, so in answer to my inquiries, she replied sympathetically that he was recovering well. We talked a lot about the theater and her faux pas some years before when she had been to Noel Coward’s Hay Fever and confessed to the star, Penelope Keith, that it was the first Coward play that she had seen. “The first,” said Penelope, shocked. “Well,” Diana said to me, “I was only eighteen!” Our meeting was at the height of the AIDS crisis, and as we were both working a lot for AIDS charities, we had many notes to compare and friends to mourn. The evening ended with a dance--but being no Travolta myself, I doubt that my partnering was the high point for her.

Ingrid Seward Ingrid Seward is editor in chief of Majesty magazine and has been writing about the Royal Family for more than twenty years. She is acknowledged as one of the leading experts in the field and has written ten books on the subject. Her latest book, Diana: The Last Word, with Simone Simmons, will be published in paperback in 2007 by St. Martin’s Press. A few weeks before Diana’s tragic death in the summer of 1997, I received a telephone call from her private secretary to say the Princess wanted to see me. She explained that the Princess was both amused and irritated by an article I had written in London’s Daily Mail and felt it was time we got together. I can’t remember exactly what I had written, but the gist of it was that guests were secretly coming into Diana’s Kensington Palace apartment hidden under a rug in the back of a car and entering through a door that could not be seen by security cameras. It could, however, be seen from Princess Margaret’s apartment opposite, which was how I came by the information. The invitation was typical of Diana, as she instinctively knew there was no better way of getting her message across than to confront her antagonists and make them her friends.

Well, perhaps I will go to my parents' house and see Margaret. I need to start shopping for a gown for our ball- I have many nice gowns, of course, but nothing anybody hasn't seen before, and I want to do you justice." She met his gaze then, and he took in the lovely, warm brown depths of her eyes, her full, intensely kissable mouth, that porcelain skin, and her figure, which he'd seen enough to know was spectacular. And seen enough to wish he could see all of it, preferably underneath his body. "You would do me justice wearing a sack, princess," he said, hearing his voice get just a bit husky.

William and Kate escaped to Villa Hibiscus on the exclusive island enclave of Mustique in the Grenadines. Mustique had royal connections going back to the 1950s, when the high-living Princess Margaret built a lavish villa there. Mick Jagger bought a place on Mustique in 1971 and was soon joined by the likes of David Bowie and Richard Branson. Two other island residents—fashion moguls John and Belle Robinson, founders of the Jigsaw clothing chain—graciously waved the customary $14,000 weekly rental fee and lent Villa Hibiscus, their estate overlooking Macaroni Beach, to the young cadet and his girlfriend. The

I have many weaknesses, and among them is a stubborn determination to keep all my children close to me. I think it stems from the years I had to spend in warfare, when I scarcely saw them at all.

For all the titles and wealth bestowed on the Princess, she was simply second best, and nothing but a tragedy of unprecedented proportions would ever change this. She was as aware of this fact as Vera, and the entire world. No wonder she behaved as she did sometimes. In such a family, she had to elbow her way to the front one way or another.

The hotel had been transformed into a whimsical version of an Elizabethan court, the walls hung with light gray fabric shot with stripes of pink and red and overlaid with numerous heralds of ancient families. Mirrors painted to look like a garden disappearing into the distance were arranged beyond the magnificent tent constructed to house this fantasy, and real boxwood hedges were arranged before them to continue the illusions.

Vera eyed the Queen Mother, who appeared as oblivious to the mournful melody as were the corgis lounging on the rug around her end of the table. The woman was a monument to never crumbling, and Vera wished she possessed a tenth of her fortitude. Perhaps she should start drinking gin and Dubonnet to build up her resolve.

Then let me give you a word of advice. Keep the success you've earned, and don't yearn for anything else. Then you won't have to look around someday and realize your entire life depends upon it, and it isn't even your own.

One evening, a male friend hosting a house party was interrupted by a frantic call from the princess, who was threatening to commit suicide by throwing herself from her bedroom window. Panicked, the gentleman rang up the queen, who remained unfazed by her sister's dramatics. With characteristic sangfroid Her Majesty informed the caller to "carry on with your house party. Her bedroom is on the ground floor.

It only increased Margaret's dislike of her name when young Elizabeth, whom the family called Lilibet, insisted on referring to her baby sister as "Bud". "She's not a real rose yet, is she? She's only a bud." Elizabeth, who was four years Margaret's senior, pertly told Lady Cynthia Asquith.

It was psychologically natural for the lively younger sister to become the royal equivalent of the enfant terrible.

It was inevitable; when there are two sisters and one is the Queen who must be the source of honour and all that is good while the other must be the focus of the most creative malice, the evil sister.

I have never known an unhappier woman

Later, in the 1930s when I was about thirteen, the formed a Girl Guide pack at Buckingham Palace, and a Brownie pack also. My sister Joanna and Princess Margaret were the only two Brownies. Patricia Mountbatten was the leader of one of the Girl Guides, and the Queen was her second-in-command. I was second in Winifred Hardinge's pack. WE used to go down in one of the royal vans to Windsor Park with the captain of the Guides, who was frightfully hearty. They lived at 145 Piccadilly when her parents were Duke and Duchess of York. We were about twelve when she moved into Buckingham Palace. We never came out [as debutantes] because of the war. - Lady Elizabeth Longman Bridesmaid to Queen Elizabeth II)

Princess Margaret felt most at home in the company of the camp: the cultured and the waspish. It was to be her misfortune that such a high proportion of them kept diaries and moreover, diaries written with a view to publication. To a man they were mesmerised less by her image than by the cracks to be found in it.

Margaret thought the world cruel for seeing her as the negative version of her sister, yet it was also how she came to define herself. (...) On one side she was given an inflated sense of her own value, while on the other her confidence was continually undermined by comparisons with her sister. She was very spoilt and indulged and made to feel a very special person indeed, while simultaneously being given clearly to understand that it was her sister who was important. She remained conscious of the image of the one who wasn’t and to some extent played on it: the one who wasn’t the queen, the one who wasn't taught constitutional history, because she wasn’t the one who’d be needing it; the one who wasn’t in the first coach and wouldn’t ever be the first onto Buckingham Palace balcony; the one who wasn’t given the important duties, but was obliged to make do with the also-rans.

The two of them, the group captain and the princess had called it a day.four years before when she was 25 years old. But when you are royal, nothing is allowed to be forgotten. That is the price to pay for being part of history.

[Margaret's] relationship with Diana couldn't have been warmer... When Diana had a new jacuzzi installed, 'Margot' was among the first to be invited to look and admire. Suitably impressed, Princess Margaret jettisoned her old bath to have one too.

So, our natures become our fates.” “I don’t believe in fate.” “Miss Lennox, you are fate. The sooner you come to terms with that, the easier your life will be, I am sure.

His favorites were the handful of adventure books, the ones that let him pretend he was a knight fighting a dragon to rescue a kidnapped princess, or an explorer sailing on the high seas, holding tight to a mast while a hurricane raged about him. He liked to forget he was Luke Garner, third child hidden in the attic.

Only danger is real, and difficulty. Yet we live to make our lives safe - and those of others. (..) I will fight my own people to keep them from fighting, for as long as can be. Never fight, until it is unsafe not to fight, unsafe for our souls as well as our bodies. Then fight for their safety, - but when it is won, remember that safety itself is unsafe. For what is safety? It is sleepy thing. It does not make one happy. It does not remind one that it is good to be alive. Life is taken for granted, so it is no longer surprise. It grows dull and monotonous, one lives as a tree or a cabbage or a cow in the straw of the byre. Our forefathers scorned "a straw death". A straw life is worse.

It is hard to tell the story of Elizabeth of York without her farbetter-known husband, Henry VII, as the hero. Henry himself, Jasper Tudor, and Thomas Stanley are all described as powerful coherent agents of their own lives, but the enemies that Henry feared—Margaret, Dowager Duchess of Burgundy, and Elizabeth Woodville—are written off as harpies filled with pointless malice, or as women crazed by grief. His greatest supporter, the leader of the anti-York rebellion to put Henry Tudor on his throne, was his mother, Margaret Beaufort—but the conventional histories follow her own declaration that she was wholly guided by God’s will, as if she did not live her life with absolute determination and successful strategy. The rebellion against Richard III that she led has gone down in history as “Buckingham’s Rebellion,” because Margaret Beaufort, as mother of the king of England, used the official court history to cover her tracks as a powerful politician, royal advisor, and treasonous rebel against the Plantagenet kings. For the benefit of her reputation she herself hid her determined and ruthless ambition. She

But the misogynistic view of history explains women’s motives as neurotic, even psychotic. It is the get-out clause for lazy historians who cannot account for active, powerful women. Margaret Beaufort; Margaret, Dowager Duchess of York; Elizabeth Woodville; and Jacquetta Rivers have all been labeled as religious fanatics, hysterics, or witches. But in fact they were formidable and persistent politicians, deploying the weapons they had available. It is such a mistake to try to write them out of history! We should try to understand and explain them—rather than explaining them away.

As soon as they are gone and the door closed behind them, we fall into a frenzy about my dress. “Dark green,” my mother says. “It has to be dark green.” It is our only safe color. Dark blue is the royal color of mourning, but I must not, for one moment, look as if I am grieving for my royal lover and the true king of England. Dark red is the color of martyrdom, but also sometimes, contradictorily, worn by whores to make their complexions appear flawlessly white. Neither association is one we want to inspire in the stern mind of the strict Lady Margaret. She must not think that marriage to her son is a torment for me, she must forget that everyone said that I was Richard’s lover. Dark yellow would be all right—but who looks good in yellow? I don’t like purple and anyway it is too imperial a color for a humbled girl whose only hope is to marry the king. Dark green it has to be and since it is the Tudor color, this can do nothing but good.

David Sassoon For several decades, British designer David Sassoon has provided the best in evening wear for fashionable and famous customers from his high-profile store in London. His work has been featured in many international fashion shows and museums throughout the world, and his garments are in high demand at such notable stores as Sak’s Fifth Avenue, Harrods, and Neiman Marcus. The Princess of Wales would often make surprise visits to my shop, as I had made her going-away dress and many other outfits for her trousseau. In August 1982, Diana came to my shop with Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, the daughter of Princess Margaret, who had been a bridesmaid at Diana’s wedding. The Princess was wearing a blue-and-white-striped sailor-style two-piece outfit; Sarah wore a white shirt and a cotton skirt, as it was a very hot day. Diana said that she would like to choose a long evening dress for Sarah as a present. The dress was to be worn at a ball at Balmoral Castle. This was Sarah’s first long dress, and Diana wanted her to have her dream dress. There were lots of giggles and excitement as Diana helped Sarah try on some of the dresses, and the dressing room was full of laughter. Finally, Sarah chose a bright red strapless taffeta ball dress, which made her feel very grown up. We brought them tea while the dress was being fitted, and Sarah, who obviously adored Diana, listened to her advice about what accessories would complement the dress. Sarah was so excited about her beautiful and glamorous present when they left the shop. Diana had made a young girl’s dream come true.

I went to this party for Francis Wheen’s book [on Marx]. I went and sat on a chair—at these places I can’t stand up and so I sat there and a woman came up to me—I gather from the Telegraph. It was just the day before Princess Margaret had died ... The woman said something like, “What do you think about [Princess Margaret’s death] and I said, “I don’t give a bugger about such things. I’m not giving any interview to you and she printed it. I should have been more careful. But there’s some truth in that. The bloody Sunday Times reprinted it. But Jill was very shocked by Princess Margaret—when we went down to Windsor for a weekend when they had a do [when Callaghan’s government fell]. Jack Jones was there and Princess Margaret came out and said, “Who is Jack Jones?” He was the most prominent labour union leader in the country. She didn’t say, “Can you tell me who is Jack Jones?” Dreadful, you see. But I shouldn’t have said that.

I can’t imagine anything more wonderful than being who I am” -Princess Margaret

The people who knew her best were devoted to her. It was the fringe friends who could be so unpleasant.

Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return:

she suffered from a perpetual identity crisis. She didn’t know who she was.

We are born in a clear field, and we die in a dark forest,’ goes the Russian proverb.

Great Privileges imply Great Responsibilities,

Giving money to the poor, she thought, somehow makes them less disciplined, and therefore less happy:

She looked at the world outside between the bars of her extremely comfortable cage.

Naylor puzzled for some time over how to incorporate 365 different forecasts into a single column, and eventually devised a more off-the-peg system by dividing the sun’s 360-degree transit into twelve zones, each of them spanning thirty degrees. He then named each of the twelve zones after a different celestial constellation, and offered blocks of predictions for each birth sign. This was how the modern horoscope came into being.

My dreams Watching me said One to the other: ‘This life has let us down.’ —Paul Potts Boredom: the desire for desires. —Leo Tolstoy The love of place, and precedency, it rocks us in our cradles, it lies down with us in our graves. —John Donne

constant bombardments, the destruction, the ever-presence of danger and death had now become a way of life. England carried on bravely, and in London “very few people bothered about going to shelters.... One could see more and more people around ... the streets.... At night everywhere was packed, and the town seemed overcrowded, gay and full of atmosphere and intense living,” wrote the former Hélène Foufounis, a good friend of Philip’s. “Nothing stopped. The traffic went on full swing.... Even five o’clock in the morning the tubes and shelters may have been full, but so were the streets and restaurants and the night spots.... It was as if everybody wanted to be with everybody else, as if every minute in the present was terribly important, and the future ... became very vague, hazy and unreal.” Hélène

Margaret’s unfocused striving and rankling frustration over family obligations found answering chords in Goethe’s Romanticism. She began, and hoped to publish, a translation of his play Torquato Tasso, based on the life of an Italian Renaissance poet whose close confidante, an unmarried, intellectually gifted princess, complains of feeling stifled in her gilded cage. Margaret was captivated as well by his novel Elective Affinities, which put into fictional play Goethe’s view, borrowed from new science, that romantic attractions resulted from unalterable chemical “affinities” and should be obeyed regardless of marital ties.

the story so he could tell it to those who appreciated his stories, especially the ones about the rich and famous, just like them. Cecil, perhaps—Cecil Beaton, to the masses; or Margaret—that is, Princess Margaret, to most people.