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Townsend came closer to the heart of the royal family than any other member of the
royal household has ever done. What happened to him and his marriage and, indeed, to
Margaret is an object lesson in the dangers of flying too close to the sun. Wiser insiders
like Jock Colville, who knew what court life could do to you, refused to be drawn into it
on more than a temporary basis. People from high aristocratic circles like the King’s
Master of the Household, Joey Legh, knew how to treat royalty and where to draw the
line. Joking, laughing, even daring to tell the King what to do when he accidentally
peppered a beater with shot, Legh always knew it was thus far and no further; doing his
duty but writing loving letters to his wife whenever they were separated. Courtiers of
the old school knew the strain court life imposed on wives and families and ensured as
far as they could that it was never a question of divided loyalties.
Peter Townsend did not belong to the same social stratum as the other members of the
household. His was a middle-class, backbone of the Empire, background. His father had
been a colonial administrator in Burma and he had attended a middle-class public
school, Haileybury, where once, as a fifteen-year-old schoolboy, he had seen a
stammering Duke of York open a new dining-hall. He was naïve and vulnerable,
sensitive, deeply religious, an idealist and a dreamer. He was extremely handsome with
brown wavy hair, bright blue eyes, finely drawn features and a lean, slim figure.
Opinions of him among courtiers and the royal family’s friends were divided. The King’s
Assistant Private Secretary, Sir Edward Ford, has gone on record as saying that he
regarded Townsend as a close friend. Margaret’s aristocratic friends found him boring:
‘Solemnity. Talk about mystical nonsense. Oh, boring fellow.’ ‘He was very holy, always
quoting the Bible,’ said another. There was jealousy and disapproval of his closeness to
the royal family. ‘He fell in love with the royal family, which is always a mistake,’ said
one courtier. ‘The King and Queen made him into a sort of household pet… he was
always around.’
Rosemary Townsend was beautiful, socially ambitious and attractive to men
(‘tiresomely flirtatious,’ one lady-in-waiting said of her). Townsend rather unkindly
recorded her first reaction to the news of his royal job: ‘We’re made.’ As with many
wartime marriages, time had proved that the couple had very little in common beyond a
passing attraction. After two children and Townsend’s breakdowns caused by battle
trauma, the physical spark was no longer there. Left at home for hours at Adelaide
Cottage, Windsor, a grace-and-favour house granted them by the King when it became
obvious that Townsend’s appointment had turned out to be long-term, Rosemary can
hardly be blamed if her eyes wandered elsewhere for amusement. Townsend’s threemonth
absence as equerry on the South African tour in 1947 did not help matters. While
on tour he wearied members of the royal entourage with his dreams of emigrating and
‘getting away from all this’ to farm in the Transvaal. His wife greeted his plans with
absolute horror. She had no wish whatsoever to drag herself and her children away from
Windsor into the isolation of colonial life. She had a romance with a dashing Guards
officer, who walked out on her when he found things getting too serious; by that time
the Townsend marriage was in deep trouble. Courtiers noticed that he was spending