Princess Margaret and Peter Townsend true story \u2013 did they really have an affair?<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The first the public knew of the duo\u2019s love affair was when a perceptive journalist spotted Princess Margaret picking a piece of fluff off the uniform of her late father George VI\u2019s equerry, RAF Group Captain Peter Townsend, at the Queen\u2019s Coronation in 1953. That gesture was enough to break the biggest royal scandal since the Abdication Crisis.<\/p>\n
By that point, the affair had been in full swing for quite some time, although various reports differ on the time frame.<\/p>\n
Peter had joined the royals on a three-month tour of South Africa in 1947 when Margaret was 17 and he was 37 \u2013 he was married at the time and had two children. In her 2008 book Snowdon<\/span>: The Biography, which unpacks the life of Margaret\u2019s ex-husband <\/span>Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowden, journalist <\/span>Anne de Courcy wrote that Margaret told a confidante: \u201c<\/span>We rode together every morning in that wonderful country, with marvellous weather. That\u2019s when I really fell in love with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1952, Margaret\u2019s father had died and her sister had become Queen, leaving the princess grief-stricken and lonely. Townsend was appointed Comptroller of her mother\u2019s household and the two became very\u2026 close.<\/p>\n
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