[ad_1]
The documentary – Princess Margaret: The Rebel Royal – is the second film in a series about the Queen’s younger sister and her husband, Anthony Armstrong-Jones, at the start of their married life in the early 1960s.
It was during this time they met celebrities and artists, amid the era of the cultural and sexual revolution.
Princess Margaret, known as the “Rebel Royal”, struck up a friendship with Kenneth Tynan, an English theatre critic and writer.
His daughter, Tracy Tynan, spoke on the documentary, saying: “My father’s friendship with Princess Margaret struck me as slightly peculiar.
“He was a republican and one of the proponents of the new kind of theatre – the kind of art form that was going to change the world.”
The documentary then reads excerpts from Kenneth Tynan’s diary which describes a dinner party with Peter Cook, Harold Pinter, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden attended at the critic’s house.
It was during this time that the rebel royal watched avant garde, experimental films which featured graphic sexual content and nudity.
They began to watch a French film by Jean Genet about two convicts in love which other – which showed graphic homosexual content.
But Peter Cook helped to ease the tense atmosphere by givng a running commentary as though the film was a long advert for Cadbury’s flake chocolate.
The guests are said to have all roared with laughter, including the princess.
The mystique of the monarchy began to be increasingly undermined in the 1960s.
It was in the years that followed that Anthony Armstrong-Jones began to withdraw from royal duties and the couple began to lead increasingly separate lives.
Press speculation of her marriage intensified and in the 1970s, the rebel Royal retreated to the Caribbean island of Mustique for a private life.
But her relationship with a younger man and beach parties with rock stars, such as Mick Jagger, led to more intense scrutiny of the Royal Family.
In 1978 Margaret got a divorce, which reflected the changing attitudes sweeping the country.
She was then increasingly eclipsed by a new generation of princesses.
But in many respects, the rebel royal was a trailblazer for the modern 21st-century monarchy.
[ad_2]
