Product Description

The almost universal conception is that the life of Princess Margaret (1930-2002) was a tragic failure, a history of unfulfilment. Tim Heald's vivid and elegant biography portrays a woman who was beautiful and sexually alluring - even more so than Princess Diana, years later - and whose reputation for naughtiness co-existed with the glamour. The mythology is that Margaret's life was 'ruined' by her not being allowed to marry the one true love of her life - Group Captain Peter Townsend - and that therefore her marriage to Lord Snowdon and her well-attested relationships with Roddy Llewellyn and others were mere consolation prizes. Margaret's often exotic personal life in places like Mustique is a key part of her story. The author has had extraordinary help from those closest to Princess Margaret, including her family (Lord Snowdon and her son, Lord Linley), as well as three of her private secretaries and many of her ladies in waiting. These individuals have not talked to any previous biographer. He has also had the Queen's permission to use the royal archives. Heald asks why one of the most famous and loved little girls in the world, who became a juvenile wartime sweetheart, ended her life a sad wheelchair-bound figure, publicly reviled and ignored. This is a story of a life in which the private and the public seemed permanently in conflict. The biography is packed with good stories. Princess Margaret was never ignored; what she said and did has been remembered and recounted to Tim Heald.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #233779 in Books
• Published on: 2008-07-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

Eagerly awaited, but shockingly disappointing
Five years after her death Princess Margaret's name is still good for
headlines: in these days the papers are full with reports that in 1953 The Queen opposed her sister becoming regent for Prince Charles in a case of her premature death and that his honour would go to Prince Philip.

Official royal biographer Tim Heald's biography, Princess Margaret: A Life Unravelled, was eagerly awaited after being delayed several times.
However, I was mildly shocked about the content and in the end quite disappointed.

Mr. Head had access to the royal archives and report in extenso about the engagements of the Princess, the preparations for it and how these engagements went. He seems to be astonished about the detailed preparations and the fixations with seemingly minor aspects. These information are quite interesting to read about, but they remain annedotical, are not put into perspective and are not evaluated at all. No word that The Princess Margaret was not known for being a pretty hard working member of the Royal Family.

The Townsend episode is not fully examined, but more or left to what one knows anyway. The new documents showing doubts whether she would have had to renounce her royal status, the question whether she was fully informed (or what she did to inform herself?) etc. are left untouched.
The reader only finds contradicting views of Lord Snowdon (Townsend affair overrated) and others (most important issue in her life). But the author does not investigate or even comes up with his own views. The marriage with Lord Snowdon and the breakdown of the marriage are not fully explored either.

There is nothing whatsoever on the position of Princess Margaret on the ups and downs of the Royal Family during her life time, like on the Charles-Diana saga.

There is nothing really on the relationship with her The Queen, The Queen Mother or any other members of her family.

Extremely astonishing is that there is hardly anything on her relationship with her son and daughter and their families.

This is definitely not the last word on the Princess, a woman who seems to have it all and created nothing out of it.

Maybe it is still to early to write about her as too many people closely involved with her ware alive.

I am sorry but I expected more from Tim Heald. Nice try, but I hope he will try harder in the future.

Virtually unreadable
This is the worst biography I have ever read. Written in dreadful, clunking English for the most part, the book bristles with inaccuracies and nonsense. To take one example, the author states that Princess Margaret met "the equally diminutive John Wayne." It took me a second on Google to establish Wayne's height, six foot four, well over a foot taller than Margaret. My logic was offended several times by similar rubbish.
At times, Heald just copies out reams from the archives, with no commentary or insight. We could all be biographers at that rate!
One last niggle. He says Margaret wished to be known as HRH The Princess Margaret. She insisted , he says, on the PRONOUN 'the.' A man who does not know the definite article from a pronoun is no writer!

A dissapointing tribute
I also waiting months to get my hands on this book.I expected it would be the center piece of holiday reading. It was a huge dissapointment.As royal biographies go, it didn't live up to my expectations & at times I felt myself plodding through it. I felt it didn't give the true essence of Margaret and one certainly couldn't really get to know her.Although her life wasn't easy, I was sorry to feel after finishing this book, that it had also been a failure......how sad, and I think not necessarily true.