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Friday 5 December 2008

Snowdon

Work and sex

Philip Ziegler reviews Anne de Courcy's biography of Lord Snowdon

So we are left with the sex. Snowdon, de Courcy tells us with that gift for finding the predictable phrase which marks her writing, ‘was irresistible to women. From his earliest days they had buzzed around him like bees round a honeypot’. The word ‘fidelity’ or, for that matter, ‘consideration’ did not figure in his vocabulary. His appetite was insatiable; as one of his friends remarked, ‘the emotional map is that of a ten-year-old, coupled with a vast appetite for work and a huge sex drive’. Though his extraordinary charm and vivacity meant that many women stayed loyal to him long after they had been betrayed and passed over, the catalogue of these squalid liaisons makes dismal reading.

His marriage to Princess Margaret is, of course, at the heart of this book. Though they enjoyed some years of genuine happiness, the relationship was doomed from the start. They were both used to the limelight and to having their own way and were too selfish and self-obsessed to be able to adapt so as to accommodate the other. Princess Margaret, it comes as a slight surprise to discover, seems to have been more sinned against than sinning. Snowdon savagely repelled any attempts by his wife to invade what he saw as his private or professional life. He mocked and insulted her, making lists of ‘things I hate about you’ and leaving them lying around for her to discover. The most famous, de Courcy tells us, was: ‘You look like a Jewish manicurist!’, a message found in her glove drawer. The comment is the more remarkable, coming from a man who was himself partly Jewish. One way of easing the tension between them was to lead a relentlessly active social life, so that they were rarely alone together. They made outrageous demands on their hard-pressed staff. ‘Would it be possible for there to be one day in the week (say Wednesdays) when you do not entertain?’ pleaded the equally hard-pressed Private Secretary.

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