“Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret” features the royal as Grander than the Queen and ruder than Prince Philip

Princess Margaret Rose. Image: Wikimedia Commons

Princess Margaret Rose, The Queen’s younger sister, led a notorious life of scandal and intriguein her constant search for sought affection and attention.  In his new book, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret, satirist Craig Brown provides a detailed account of the life of one of Britain's most colorful, albeit controversial personality.

Craig writes that Princess Margaret loved to arrive late for an event, thus, catching everyone’s attention. And when she has already arrived, she would delay “dinner to catch up with her punishing schedule of drinking and smoking.” Craig also notes that not one guest would dare leave when she hasn’t  yet departed. “No one leaves my presence until I give them permission to do so,” she demanded. And when a pregnant guest, tired of standing, perhaps, scrabbled for a seat, she remarked: “One does not sit before Royalty sits.”

She also found even her own grandmother, the grand Queen Mary, less of a royal. Queen Mary’s father was the morganatic son of a German prince who married a British princess.   Even her own mother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, the daughter of an earl, despite claiming ancestry to Scottish kings, didn’t escape Margaret’s snobbery. “I’m quite used to it,” the Queen Mother groaned with patience.

Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess  Margaret
by Craig Brown. Image: Amazon

She only drinks Malvern and never tap water. For her whisky, she preferred Famous Grouse. No one dared serve her scrambled eggs. “We call them buttered eggs.” According to Brown “there was always an element of Hyacinth Bucket about her.” During ceremonies, she would always be found wearing ruffled feathers and saying the wrong thing.  Ambassadors detested the knowledge of her arrival. She never learned how to drive, not even to operate washing machine.

It is not difficult to assess why Margaret behaved so. She held herself as more important than anyone else simply because her sister is The Queen and she was not.  Brown's work was far from excoriating the Princess who died in 2002. It was rather an act that shows pity for one, pathologically sad creature who chased for happiness all her life but failed to find one.

Source: Mail Online