Born too soon

Princess Margaret was a generation too late or one too soon. Born in 1900, she would have been suitably married off to a continental princeling or a British duke, and led a conventional life of royal duties.

Born in the 1960s, she would, with her intelligence, talents and willpower, and a boarding-school education, have pursued her own career and chosen her husband without regard to the rules.

As it was, her pre-war childhood and the war itself - which changed everything and nothing - gave her whole life an air of uncertainty and conflict.

She was Janus-faced: one second a princess, the next a friend of party-people, showbiz, journalists, then switching back to her royal hauteur without warning and with chilling effect.

When I was a child, 18 months her senior, I saw her as a fairytale princess. She was allowed to play (I was told) with Queen Mary's dolls' house, the work of Britain's finest artists and craftsmen, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. Sir Edward Elgar, the great composer, wrote his Nursery Suite especially for her. Her dolls' pram was made by Hoopers, responsible for the bodywork of Rolls-Royces.

I was told: "Princess Margaret Rose always eats her food up." "Princess Margaret Rose never forgets to say 'Thank you.'" Princess Margaret Rose never cries." Relating this, many years later, I asked her if it was true she was always good. "Well, I was then," she said.

At Oxford, favoured, undergraduate "bloods" who had danced with her told intriguing tales. While the Queen was goodlooking (as always), Margaret - she had now dropped the "Rose" - had definite glamour.

Dior's New Look from Paris matched her perfectly. She could tango like an expert. She liked to stay up till 4am. She was a nightclub habituèe, not just at the "suitable" 400 or even the Milroy (soso), but even at the definitely unrespectable Bag O'Nails. She was "fun".

She was also highly talented. She had some of the best of the royal genes. She inherited a startling gift for mimicry which went back to the Prince Regent and even to his father King George III, who could "do" Fox and Pitt. Her Harold Wilson was a scream and even her John Major, a difficult subject, had an edge.

She had an insatiable talent for gossip, and an endless interest in newspapers, especially after she married Tony Armstrong-Jones, who came from that world. Who was up, who down? Who was heading for the sack, or an editorship? She loved the buzz-buzz-buzz of boozy Fleet Street, the high-pitched hum of the chattering classes.

She was London-centred, not really a country girl like her sister, and I can see her writing for the Evening Standard or running a glamour magazine like Vogue or Harper-Queen.

Her ears were attuned to the swish of a West End curtain going up, the woodwind tuning in the orchestra pit at Covent Garden, the opening patter of a great stand-up comic. As Prince Charles said, she "sang like an angel". Her piano-playing was short of professional but could easily have surpassed it, given incentive and training. I have no doubt at all she could have pursued a successful career in the theatre, especially in the witty revues which, in the Forties and Fifties, were such a feature of it.

As it was, only her friends enjoyed her performances, her take-offs and her wit. Did anyone ever record her singing, I wonder? She is in danger of being remembered for her failures - her failed romance with Peter Townsend, destroyed by her bitter enemy, Sir Alan Lascelles, "the man who ruined my life," and her failed marriage to Lord Snowdon.

She could be said to have failed as a royal too, for she could not bring to her duties the self-discipline and devotion which in the Queen is second nature. She performed them, but it was not the performance to which she aspired.

I believe that, if she had had her chance on the stage, with its footlights glitter and spangly costumes, its slap-on make-up and greenroom, mysteries - where traditions and superstitions are just as powerful as for royalty itself - she would have accepted the rules with passion and worked like a slave to succeed. It would have given her a purpose in life and a daily enjoyment which her supposedly exciting existence as a royal and a member of international cafè society could not supply. As it was, under-disciplined and without the professional spur to improve and succeed, she was bored: and boredom led to foolish behaviour at times, and pointless late nights habitually.

Princess Diana, her neighbour in Kensington Palace, and an early riser, once told me: "I never see her. She is a night bird." Sir Harold Acton, her host at his magnificent villa overlooking Florence, said to me: "Being an old crock, I got her permission to go to bed in good time. I left her dancing with one of the footmen, for want of a partner." There were indeed uneasy parallels with Gosford Park in her fight against what Dr Johnson called "the great vacancies of life".

Moreover, there were some less welcome royal genes she inherited. It is a melancholy fact that her great-grandfather, Edward VII, her grandfather George V, and her own beloved father George VI, whose early death from lung cancer was a destabilising factor in her twenties, were all heavy smokers.

Princess Margaret had these addictive genes and smoked with a destructive enthusiasm which reminded me of Charles Lamb's quip. When asked "how he had acquired the power of smoking at such a rate", he replied: "I toiled after it, Sir, as some men toil after virtue."

She had a companionable thirst for Scotch, too, which she drank in preference to wine, even at meals. Once, at a dinner given by the Papal Nuncio, of all people, I was mean enough to count the number of generous whiskies she disposed of during the evening. It was nine. She was erect and in command at the end, but such regular habits take their toll. I fear her last years were stricken and sad, a painful fate for a woman so anxious to grasp fleeting pleasure, and, be it said to her credit, so willing and capable of providing it for others.

When I think of the Princess, so delectable in youth, so tragic in age, I always think of the theatre, with its ups and downs, its abrupt transitions from laughter to tears. Our royal family has the strongest possible connections with the London theatre, whose very origins lay in the Twelve Nights of Christmas, when the court saw plays of medieval times.

In a sense, the majesty and ceremonial of royalty is a performance, and the same kind of talents apply to both throne and stage. Princess Margaret, I suspect, would have been happy behind the footlights, but she was born too soon. But in God's good time, I am sure, one of our royals - perhaps a descendant of her own - will take her place in the profession she loved and might have graced.

The Party Princess