Groups and Single Decorations for Gallantry
Royal Romance
Initially given a three month appointment as Air Equerry to King George VI, Townsend’s charm and easy manner soon led to a permanent position being created and his duties as royal courtier extended to accompanying the Royal Family on trips, including many holidays. This inevitably also led him to become well acquainted with the princesses. He was a noticeable part of Princess Margaret’s entourage in Belfast in October 1947 when she launched the ocean liner Edinburgh Castle and he was again present beside the 18- year-old princess when she represented her father in September 1948 at the investiture of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands. ‘Without realising it, I was being carried a little further from home, a little nearer to the Princess,’ he later wrote in his memoir, Time and Chance.
In August 1950, Townsend was made assistant Master of the Household, a role that put him at the heart of the Royal Family’s administration and regularly at the King’s side. It also made him more aware than most of the seriousness of the King’s health problems. The King’s death at Sandringham on 6 February 1952, however, came as a huge shock to his daughters. Townsend, newly appointed Comptroller to the Queen Mother’s household and promoted to Group Captain on 1 January 1953, was on hand to console Margaret, observing ‘the King’s death had left a greater void than ever in Princess Margaret’s life’.
Townsend had his own void to fill also. Two years earlier his wife, most likely out of loneliness, had embarked on an affair and Townsend, the injured party, was granted a divorce. In these circumstances then, the equerry fell for the dazzling party girl princess, later describing her as ‘a girl of unusual, intense beauty … [with] large purple-blue eyes, generous, sensitive lips and a complexion as smooth as a peach.’
He was soon to discover that his feelings were not unrequited: ‘It was then [February 1953] that we made the mutual discovery [alone in a drawing room at Sandringham] of how much we meant to each other. She listened, without uttering a word, as I told her, very quietly, of my feelings. Then she simply said ‘That is how I feel, too.’ It was, to us, an immensely gladdening disclosure, but one which sorely troubled us…’
Effusing in a romantic vein he continues: ‘Our love, for such it was, took no heed of wealth and rank and all the other worldly conventional barriers which separated us. We hardly noticed them; all we saw was one another, man and woman, and what we saw pleased us.’
Whilst remaining acutely conscious of society’s constraints: ‘Marriage ... seemed the least likely solution; and anyway, at the prospect of my becoming a member of the Royal Family, the imagination boggled, most of all my own. Neither the Princess nor I had the faintest idea how it might be possible to share our lives.’ (Time and Chance: An Autobiography by Peter Townsend refers).
News of the romance spilled onto newspaper headlines following Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation in June 1953 when Margaret was witnessed removing a speck of lint from Townsend’s RAF uniform in an unmistakably affectionate and intimate gesture. Although Townsend was extremely popular within royal circles and Queen Elizabeth was said to be sympathetic to her sister’s wishes, the couple were not fated to marry. Townsend’s position as a commoner was unhelpful but it was his status as a divorcee that was the insurmountable obstacle in 1950s Britain - The People newspaper captiously insisting: ‘It is quite unthinkable that a Royal Princess, third in line of succession to the throne, should even contemplate a marriage with a man who has been through the divorce courts.’
On 31 October 1955, Princess Margaret issued a statement ending the relationship: ‘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 teachings that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before others.’
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