Royals

Princess Margaret’s everyday life: Hour-long baths and vodka at lunch

The Countess of Snowden, sister of the Queen certainly lead a fabulously opulent life!
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In the Now To Love offices, our morning routines are a source of constant interest (one of us gets up super early to make brekkie in bed and read for a while, another gets up with 20 minutes to have a shower and get on the train to work), but we are unanimous in our agreement that the late Princess Margaret’s morning routine was on point.

According to a new royal biography by Craig Brown, the princess had breakfast in bed at 9am every day before reading the newspapers and listening to the radio for two hours. She then would have an hour-long bath at 11am, before being dressed and made-up by her personal maid in clean clothes – never wearing the same garment more than once.

At 12.30pm, she would have her first drink of the day – a vodka pick-me-up – before lunching with her mother, the Queen Mum. The duo would dine on a four-course meal in an ‘informal’ manner from silver dishes, while enjoying half a bottle of wine each.

Princess Margaret with big sister Queen Elizabeth 11.

The late princess, who was the second daughter of George VI and his wife Elizabeth, died in 2002, shortly before her mother.

As detailed on Netflix series The Crown, she was the party princess, leading a very colourful lifestyle and socialising with people from all walks of life, famously including The Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and was considered a fashion icon in her day, being a champion of Christian Dior’s designs.

She was married to photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, who became Lord Snowdon, in 1960, and the couple went on to have two children, Lady Sarah Chatto and David Armstrong-Jones.

The marriage was not a happy one however, and they divorced in 1978. She caused a nationwide scandal in the late 1950s when she became engaged to her father’s former equerry Peter Townsend, who was a divorcee, with the couple ultimately not being able to wed.

This story originally appeared on Grazia UK.

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