How heartbroken Princess Margaret broke off her secret engagement with Group Captain Peter Townsend on this day. She chose duty – and her privileges as a Royal – over love…

• Princess Margaret’s dramatic broadcast was on Oct 31, 1955
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Forced to choose between duty to her country and the man she loved, it was a titanic collision of loyalties. And in the end, duty won out. 

Princess Margaret had become secretly engaged with a royal equerry, Group Captain Peter Townsend, who was not only 16 years older than Margaret, but a divorcee.

But on October 31, 1955, came the dramatic news that it was all over.

In a statement read on BBC radio, the princess said: ‘I would like it to be known that I have decided not to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend.

How the Daily Mail reported Princess Margaret’s announcement that she would not be marrying Group Captain Peter Townsend 

Princess Margaret and Group Captain Peter Townsend, sitting directly behind, at the Farnborough Air Show

‘I have been aware that, subject to my renouncing my rights of succession, it might have been possible for me to contract a civil marriage. 

‘But, mindful of the Church’s teaching that Christian marriage is indissoluble and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have decided to put these considerations before any others.’

It had long been assumed that her elder sister, The Queen, had refused Margaret permission to marry.

There would have been good reason. Elizabeth was head of The Church of England, which took a dim view of divorce and remarriage.

Divorce itself was an explosive subject for the Windsors, who had been badly shaken when the Queen’s uncle, King Edward VIII, abdicated the throne to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson in 1936.

In more recent times, however, it has been accepted that the decision to break off the relationship with Group Captain Townsend was principally Margaret’s.

No doubt the princess was more than mindful of the difficulties her romance had caused her sister, The Queen. 

But there was more to it than that: marrying Townsend would have destroyed Margaret’s world, obliging her to live a life much closer to that of a commoner. 

On every count, it was just too big a leap. 

Townsend and Margaret first laid eyes on each other when he became equerry to her father King George VI. The Princess was 14 years old . 

They met again when Townsend accompanied the Royal Family on a three-month tour to South Africa. 

READ MORE: The unbearably cruel fights that destroyed the most glamorous Royal marriage of them all 

 

In August 1950 Townsend was made Master of the Household and after the death of George VI, he moved to become Comptroller of the Queen Mother’s household. 

Recalling his first impressions, Townsend later wrote:  ‘She was a girl of unusual, intense beauty, confined as it was in her short, slender figure and centred about large purple-blue eyes, generous, sensitive lips, and a complexion as smooth as a peach.

‘She could make you bend double with laughing and also touch you deeply in your heart’.

While Peter had been married to Rosemary Pawle since 1941, with whom he had two sons, he eventually filed for a divorce in November 1952 after she had an affair.

Less than a year later in April 1953, Townsend proposed to Margaret and they entered into a secret engagement, but his status as a divorced man left the couple in a precarious situation.

As Princess Margaret was under the age of 25, her only sister, the Queen had to consent to her marriage to a divorced man under the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, but her status as Head of the Church of England complicated things.

Recalling his first impressions, it was reported that Peter said: ‘She was a girl of unusual, intense beauty’. Pictured: Princess Margaret returning to Clarence House in October 1955 after a weekend in the country where Group Captain Peter Townsend was also a guest. This was shortly before the official announcement that they would not marry

Townsend is best remembered for the relationship with Margaret, but he had a commendable war record, serving as a Squadron Leader in the Battle of Britain

The pair met for a second time when Townsend accompanied the royal family on a three-month tour to South Africa (pictured) in 1947

All this was very much behind closed doors. 

But speculation about a possible affair came to the surface at the Queen’s  Coronation in June 1953 when Margaret was seen picking a piece of fluff from his uniform while waiting outside Westminster Abbey.

It was subsequently decided that Townsend would be sent away to work as an air attaché for the British Embassy in Brussels for a year, after which, the couple was asked to wait another year.

The government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Eden, stated that if she married her love then she would be stripped of her royal privileges as well as her income.

The Princess told Eden in a letter: ‘It is only by seeing him in this way that I feel I can properly decide whether I can marry him or not’.

Margaret and Townsend remained apart for two years until the couple were reunited for the first time on October 12, 1955.

However, three weeks later, a statement drafted in Princess Margaret’s name announced the tragic news that the pair would go their separate ways.

Having returned to Belgium heartbroken after Margaret’s decision, he later married a 20-year-old heiress named Marie-Luce Jamagne in 1959 and the couple went on to have two daughters and one son.

The Group Captain drives through the gates of Clarence House to see Princess Margaret in October 1955. An overseas posting had kept the two apart

Pictured: Margaret with Peter Townsend in South Africa during the royal tour in 1947

A year later in May 1960, Margaret married a magazine photographer, the late Antony Armstrong-Jones, at Westminster Abbey.

Armstrong-Jones was the first commoner to marry into the royal family in more than 400 years. He was created Earl of Snowdon.

The pair eventually divorced in 1978.

Twenty-three years after his separation from Margaret, Townsend released his autobiography, Time and Chance, wherein he expressed his peace with her choice.

He wrote: ‘She could have married me only if she had been prepared to give up everything—her position, her prestige, her privy purse.

‘I simply hadn’t the weight, I knew it, to counterbalance all she would have lost.’

Margaret was not without compensations. A recent memoir has suggested that, despite her secret romance with Townsend, she was able to enjoy a torrid – and even more secret – liaison  with American film star Eddie Fisher.

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