Born on this day

Release time：2024-05-21 07:31:09 Source：World Watchers news portal

He is known as the dashing society photographer who became Princess Margaret’s husband. 

Born on this day in March 1930, Lord Snowdon rose to the very highest levels of the establishment. 

Yet Antony Armstrong-Jones was an intriguing figure in his own right, one of the most glamorous men in post-war London even before he married the princess in 1960.

Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones was born on 7 March 1930, at his family home in Eaton Terrace, Belgravia

He was the only son of the marriage of Welsh barrister Ronald Armstrong-Jones and Anne Messel. Anne and Antony are pictured in 1933

At 16, he had contracted polio while on holiday in Wales and spent the next six months recuperating in Liverpool Royal Infirmary 

 He also had a taste for scandal, conducting numerous affairs and fathering an illegitimate child before the breakdown, amid much acrimony, of the marriage to Princess Margaret.

Armstrong-Jones was born, in 1930, at the grand family home in Eaton Terrace in London’s Belgravia, the son of Welsh barrister Ronald Armstrong-Jones and his wife, Anne Messel. 

But just before his fifth birthday, his parents divorced and both Tony, ­as he was known by those close to him, and his sister, Susan, went to live with their mother.

Anne married Lawrence Parsons, 6th Earl of Rosse, later that year. The following year, his father remarried too, before marrying a third time and having a child, Antony's half-brother Peregrine Armstrong-Jones.

In Armstrong-Jones’s obituary in The Guardian, his childhood was described as 'loveless and emotionally starved', and that he was 'treated as distinctly inferior' to his mother's two sons with Lord Rosse.

At 16, he contracted polio while on holiday in Wales and spent the next six months recuperating in Liverpool Royal Infirmary. The only visitor from his family during this period was his sister, Susan.

He survived the illness, but it took a toll on one of his legs, leaving him with a limp for the rest of his life.

His childhood illness meant that, as an adult, the future Lord Snowdon would be a tireless campaigner for disabled people.

As a boy, after attending Sandroyd preparatory school in Wiltshire, he went to Eton and then Cambridge, but dropped out after failing his second-year exams and decided to devote himself to photography.

His career took after society photographer Stirling Henry Nahum – known professionally as Baron - visited Armstrong-Jones in his London flat, which doubled as his work studio.

Baron agreed to take him on as an apprentice, and in 1956 he had produced enough notable work to be able to put on a one-man exhibition.

This would be Armstrong-Jones’s entry into royal circles, securing him the commissions for the Royal Family, and thus his meeting with Princess Margaret, at a dinner party in 1958.

He was commissioned to take portraits of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and their children at Buckingham Palace, and took official portraits of the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh during their 1957 tour of Canada. 

Antony studied at at the University of Cambridge, but he dropped out after failing his second-year exams and pursued a career in photography

His career first took off after the photographer Baron paid a visit to his London flat, which doubled as his work studio, having known his stepmother

Other subjects of his included Dame Maggie Smith, David Bowie, Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Grace of Monaco, and Diana, Princess of Wales. 

Margaret and Tony married in 1960 and he would become the 1st Earl of Snowdon. 

But behind the public persona – and the glamour of his role and the circles in which he mixed - was a man with an intriguing and complicated private life.

A mere three weeks after the wedding,  a child was born that he had conceived with a married lover, Camilla Fry.

His illegitimate daughter, Polly Fry, was raised to believe that Camilla’s husband Jeremy was her father, and the truth was kept secret for 45 years, until 2004, when Polly decided to take a DNA test.

The result confirmed that Armstrong-Jones was her biological father. Yet the scandal involving him and the Frys did not stop there.

And he was much gossiped about with regards to possible relationships with men. 

Writer Anne de Courcy quoted a close friend of his as saying about his various sexual preferences, 'If it moves, he'll have it.'

When asked about his sexuality by de Courcy, Armstrong-Jones, who died in 2017, responded: 'I didn't fall in love with boys – but a few men have been in love with me.' 

Society interior designer Nicky Haslam, now 83, claimed to have had an affair with him. In his memoir, Redeeming Features, he said he had 'a very brief romance' with Armstrong-Jones a year before his wedding to Princess Margaret. 

Appearing on 2023 ITV documentary series The Real Crown: Inside the House of Windsor, he said: 'Tony was a terrific seducer, he could seduce that table leg. He was terrific fun, Tony, a devil incarnate, but a charmer at everything.’

His entry in the Dictionary of National Biography identifies him as bisexual, a label he never overtly denied.

Unhappily, the marriage to Margaret was not to last. The couple divorced in 1978, with allegations of infidelity on both sides. 

Margaret never married again but Armstrong-Jones did, later that year, to Lucy Lindsay-Hogg.

When asked about his sexuality by de Courcy, Tony famously responded with: 'I didn't fall in love with boys – but a few men have been in love with me.'

In 1956, he put on a one-man exhibition of his work and the year after that, was commissioned to take portraits of Queen Elizabeth II. He is pictured at an exhibition of his photographs in 1975 in New York

Rumours about his extramarital affairs and his sexuality circulated throughout his lifetime. He is pictured in Sloane Street, 1959, after photographing a fire

In her biography, Anne de Courcy quoted a close friend of Armstrong-Jones's who claimed, 'If it moves, he'll have it'

In the 1960s, shortly after his marriage to Margaret, Snowdon became the artistic adviser of The Sunday Times Magazine

Additionally, his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography identifies him as bisexual, a label which he never overtly denied during his life.

In the 1960s, shortly after his marriage to Margaret, Snowdon became the artistic adviser of The Sunday Times Magazine and established himself as one of Britain's most respected photographers of his time.

His subjects included Dame Maggie Smith, Lynn Fontanne, David Bowie, Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Grace of Monaco, and Diana, Princess of Wales.

Related articles