Toffs are different
Snowdon and Margaret: Inside a Royal Marriage (Channel 4)
For Snowdon all this formality became rather too much in the end. He started torturing his wife with cruel messages left strategically in places like her favourite books. One read: ‘You look like a Jewish manicurist and I hate you.’ When Margaret was photographed on Mustique with her younger lover Roddy Llewellyn, it gave Tony just the escape route he needed. At an impromptu press conference in Australia — he was always away working, never at home, which was another reason the marriage was doomed — he declared how terribly cut-up he was, winning not-altogether-deserved sympathy from a public which had made up its mind that Lord Snowdon was the wronged party.
This is why we shouldn’t be horrid to toffs and royals. We should cherish them, not just for their delightful invitations to their country seats, but because they remind us how much worse things could have been had it not been for our fortunate accident of birth.
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Barbara M.G. Ilott
June 27th, 2008 5:47pmWhat really annoys me about Anthony Armstrong-Jones is that he is still "Lord Snowdon". He was created the Earl of Snowdon at the time of his marriage to Princess Margaret; he should have been compelled to relinquish the title when he was divorced, and his second wife should most certainly not have been permitted to style herself "Countess". I am not being class-conscious here: I also believe that any person who is accorded a rank, title or name as a legal consquence of marriage should be obliged to lose that rank &c between nisi and absolute. It is hypocritical for a woman (for instance) to continue to use her ex-husband's surname and the style "Mrs" once the marriage has been legally terminated. S/he should revert to the legal name s/he had before the marriage which has been ended, was contracted. In any of these cases it makes a mockery of the reality and finality of divorce. Those who claim that it is not "appropriate" for children to have a different surname from their mother do not seem to suffer from qualms when a widow remarries!