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Toffs are different

James Delingpole

Wednesday, 25th June 2008

Snowdon and Margaret: Inside a Royal Marriage (Channel 4)

When I was up at Oxford, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, my deepest wish was to find a letter one day in my pigeonhole informing me that a distant relative had died and that henceforward I was entitled to style myself the Marquess of Wessex (or wherever), until eventually I inherited my dukedom.

That ambition has gone now. As you get older, you grow more accepting of your lot, don’t you? Also, what I’ve noticed is that almost all the people I know who are seriously upper-class are also very seriously f***ed-up. Even more so than I am, which is saying quite a lot.

Partly, I suppose, it’s all the inbreeding that has gone on over the centuries. And, partly, I’m sure it’s to do with the rapaciousness, ruthlessness and undying emnity that are all inevitably fomented when there’s so much money and land at stake. You do certainly get to realise, once you’ve got to know toffs a bit, that the middle classes are on the whole much nicer people. Unlike nobs, we’re not beset with this self-destructive notion that worrying what others might think of your behaviour is vulgar and tediously bourgeois.

I was thinking about this while watching Snowdon and Margaret: Inside a Royal Marriage (Channel 4, Wednesday) — not my usual telly fare, it must be said, but we’ve entered the summer dead season. Based on Anne de Courcy’s biography of Lord Snowdon, it explained in lurid detail why this particular royal marriage was doomed from the start.

Even though Tony Armstrong-Jones was a shameless serial philanderer — he actually managed to impregnate one of his best friend’s wives while he was courting Princess Margaret — you ended up almost as sorry for him as you did for his poor wife. His beautiful mother Anne had been so perfectly ghastly to him when he was growing up, you see, that his conquests were really a pathetic bid for the female attention he’d always lacked at home.

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Barbara M.G. Ilott

June 27th, 2008 5:47pm

What 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!

Food for thought

Simon Hoggart

My favourite programme last week was France on a Plate (BBC4, Sunday) in which Dr Andrew Hussey investigated the link between gastronomy and la gloire; French glory and destiny.