Snowdon: The Biography by Anne de Courcy

For the abiding impression of Anne de Courcy's fine biography, based on hours of interviews with Lord Snowdon and his intimates, is less that of a charmed life than of a life blighted by drink, infidelities, quarrels, lies and betrayals, some, but not all of them, Snowdon's. If nothing else, this book will surely banish the image of Lord Snowdon as the golden boy of post-war high society, the celebrity photographer who struck it luckier than he could ever have expected when he married a princess.

And while Snowdon's abilities are indisputable, and while his work on behalf of the disabled is hugely admirable, Anne de Courcy makes no effort to hide the selfish and childish way in which he treated not merely his wife, but legions of lovers, mistresses and mothers of his children.

Sex plays a dominant role in this book, not because of some prurient sensationalism on the part of the author, but because Snowdon clearly never learned or wanted to control himself. That might sound censorious, but a man in his seventies who cheats on someone with whom he is already cheating on someone else is surely asking for trouble.

De Courcy traces all this, in classic biographer's cod-psychological fashion, to his childhood. His parents split up in the mid-1930s, when he was just five, and as a boy he was shuttled from parent to parent and house to house, learning how to divide his affections, but also yearning for affection from his self-absorbed mother. He was a naughty, mischievous boy, clearly desperate for attention, and de Courcy implies that here were the roots of his future misfortunes, which seems convincing enough.

Of Snowdon's talent and appetite for hard work, however, there is no doubt at all. Thanks to his uncle Oliver Messel, a stage designer, he was introduced to the artistic, camp world of the theatre, which fired his creative engines and got him interested in photography. In the early 1950s this was not exactly a respectable occupation, and he had to put up with a great deal of mockery and snobbery as he tried to set himself up as a society snapper, a particular low point being when he was humiliatingly debagged while taking photos at a party.

But in the long run it was a brilliant career move. Photojournalism was a booming trade in the Fifties, not merely because of the explosion of high-street fashion, but also because newspapers and magazines were furiously competing for the best shots. And while Snowdon's approach may seem a bit dated now, at the time it was daringly informal, vigorous and realistic, breaking with the stagey romanticism of the older generation and marking him as a coming man. By the end of the 1950s he was taking pictures not just of the prime minister, Harold Macmillan, but of the royal family — and that naturally led him into the orbit of Princess Margaret.

Their glamorous, tempestuous marriage naturally provides the meat of this book, and de Courcy never quite resolves the question of whether it was doomed from the start, although it is probably an impossible one to answer.

Clearly they were possessed by a passionate mutual desire, but since Margaret was on the rebound from Group Captain Peter Townsend, there was always a strong suspicion that she was rushing into marriage. And while Snowdon naturally chafed against the bars of his gilded cage, it also seems likely that he was simply the wrong man for her.

Both were mocking, impatient, solipsistic people, easily bored, always keen to be the centre of attention; what she probably needed was a sturdy, slightly dull Gabriel Oak figure, and nobody could ever accuse Snowdon of being that.

By the mid-Sixties both were engaged in vigorous affairs and, through no fault of the author's, the book's second half inevitably becomes a slightly wearisome saga of society parties, catty remarks and mutual betrayals. For all his talent, and for all his efforts to improve the lot of the disabled, Snowdon treated women incredibly badly from start to finish. De Courcy gives the details of two love children; the wonder is that there were not more.

And by the end of the book, with his marriage to Margaret over, another one heading for the rocks and mistresses coming and going like trains at Clapham Junction, I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep track.

Goodness knows how he managed. His "emotional map", remarks one of his oldest friends at one point, "is that of a 10-year-old coupled with a vast appetite for work and a huge sex drive." Somehow I was not surprised to read that his favourite book is still Peter Pan..

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk
The parents of Anthony Armstrong-Jones (he was given the title Earl of Snowdon in 1961) were very different. He was Welsh to his fingertips, she an exotic mixture of English and Jewish. They divorced when he was five and Tony's relationship with his aloof glittering mother never recovered. His inventiveness was soon apparent, at Eton and then Cambridge, where as cox in 1950 he designed a new rudder for his (winning) Boat Race crew. The engagement of this motorbike-riding freelance photographer in 1960 to Princess Margaret was a bombshell. Friends privately predicted disaster. And so it proved. But meanwhile in the 1960s, mixing with actors, artists and pop stars, they were the epitome of stylish and unstuffy arts-loving Royals. Along with John and Jackie Kennedy or Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, they were one of the iconic glamorous couples of that era. Tony continued to work and both began to have affairs. They divorced in 1978, the first royal divorce since Henry VIII divorced Anne of Cleves in 1540. Snowdon married again but this marriage collapsed after the birth of a secret love-child in 1998 and the suicide in 1996 of his mistress of twenty years, Anne Hill. His low boredom threshold and waspish cruelty are balanced by his fabled charm and genuine concern for the disabled and underpriviledged. One of the great British photographers, up there with Beaton, Bailey and Parkinson, at 76 he now suffers from a recurrence of childhood polio and needs sticks or wheelchair to get around. But by any standards he has had an extraordinary life.