“Then, walking back into the apartment, the Princess turned to her private secretary and said words to the effect that he was just as she remembered him except that his hair had turned grey.” “Afterwards, as Townsend drove away, she waved goodbye with a pocket handkerchief,” wrote Heald.
According to Tim Heald’s Princess Margaret: A Life Unraveled, Townsend was joined by two longtime friends-one of whom “recalled that it was a strange and mildly embarrassing meal as the Princess and Townsend talked quietly and intimately together while the other guests conversed among themselves and pretended that the effectively private conversation taking place in their midst was the most natural thing in the world.” Christopher Warwick’s biography Princess Margaret: A Life of Contrasts claims that Townsend and the princess followed lunch with a walk through the gardens. The real-life reunion between the princess and Townsend occurred at Kensington Palace over lunch in the summer of 1992. But the ball must come to a close-and after hours of singing, dancing, and luxuriating in familiar warm feelings-Townsend pierces their dreamy bubble by handing over the love letters she wrote him, a gesture of finality and closure.
During the scene, Margaret-who has been hardened by years of heartbreak-suddenly softens, genuine joy and delight filling her face in a way it hasn’t since season one. The former lovers reunite at a reception at London’s Caledonian Club, where Margaret smokes from her trademark long cigarette, steals looks at her former fiancé, and shares one final dance with him. Margaret, meanwhile, now played by the Oscar nominee Lesley Manville, hears from Townsend ( Timothy Dalton) for the first time since breaking off their engagement some 40 years before.
In season five’s “Annus Horribilis,” which is devoted to that famously bad year of 1992 for British royals, Queen Elizabeth ( Imelda Staunton) finds herself white-knuckling through three of her four children’s separations or divorces, each accompanied by its own tabloid scandal. Princess Margaret’s tragic romance with Peter Townsend may have been one of The Crown’s best early story lines-two young lovers prevented from living happily ever after because Townsend’s status as a divorcé clashed with the queen’s enforcement of the Church of England’s rules.
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