The Crown episode 10 accurate margaret roddy llewellyn fact fiction
On a bright May morning in the West Indies in 1976, British royalty as we knew it came to an end. That was the day a News of the World photographer, ducking low and squinting against the sunlight, snapped the Queen’s younger sister, Princess Margaret, frolicking on a beach with a bare-torsoed man 18 years her junior.
Margaret was married – but not to minor aristocrat and gardening enthusiast Roderic "Roddy" Llewellyn. And though the dire state of her marriage to society photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon was an open secret, pictures of her cavorting with another man caused a scandal. The age of deference to the Royals was over. Now they had become bait for the tabloids. What had begun with Margaret would continue with Charles, Diana, Harry and Meghan.
The sense of violation would surely have been exacerbated by the fact that the lovers had taken refuge in the one place in the world Margaret felt safe from the constant prying and chattering that was part of her station as a Royal. She had received a plot of land in Mustique in 1960 as a wedding gift from Colin Tennant, the third Baron Glenconner, who had transformed the island into a playground for the wealthy and footloose. The lesson was that there was no escaping the obligations of her rank – not even here.
Margaret and Llewellyn’s affair is one of the steamy high-points of season three of Netflix’s The Crown. But while the younger Windsor’s tragic life and fruitless search for happiness continues to provide one of the dramatic through lines of Peter Morgan’s series, Llewellyn, a mere baronet by comparison, is far well less known.
He and Margaret were introduced by Tennant and his wife Anne at a party in Scotland, to which Roddy had been invited to make up the numbers. It was a wild affair. Margaret, Llewellyn recalled, “donned a wig to sing a Sophie Tucker red hot momma number”. Both were fun-loving blue bloods overshadowed by an older sibling and a famous father (Harry Llewellyn had been an Olympic show jumper).
But where Margaret was always compared unfavourably to the steadfast Elizabeth, Roddy will have looked a picture of sense set against his gadabout brother Dai. He was capable of introspection, too. When he and Margaret met he was feeling adrift, unsure what to do with his life. The endless parties were not enough.
Dai was, by contrast, essentially a Carry On… character made flesh. A notorious dilettante, he boasted openly of his conquests and is said to have swigged champagne during his wedding ceremony. “Some people may call being a playboy a useless occupation, but I'm not so sure,” he once said. “I’ve not only had fun myself, but there has been fun for many other.”
Roddy, obsessed with gardening since childhood, was a shrinking violet next to Dai. Still, he would go on to live an outsized life, becoming one of the world’s most photographed men and, at the height of his fame/notoriety, releasing a pop album, Roddy.
The absence of flash or swagger was perhaps what attracted Margaret to him. He lacked the cruel narcissism of her husband too; Roddy and Margaret sensed immediately that they were kindred spirits. The fact he was still to turn 26 and she 43 struck neither as an impediment.
He was born in Breckonshire in Wales and grew up in Llanfair Grange, beneath the shadow of the Sugar Loaf Mountain in Carmarthenshire. It was his nanny, Rebecca Jenkins who introduced him the joys of mucking about with plants. “We had huge lawns and wonderful views. It was pretty country,” he would recall. “It had a big vegetable garden and fabulous trees.”
They got on so fabulously so the Princess invited him to stay with her at Les Jolies Eaux, her pad in Mustique. However the pressure of being with a member of the royal family was initially too much. He took time away to travel and “find himself”. Lord Snowdon was meanwhile openly parading around with his new paramour, Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, whom he would subsequently marry. Margaret asked him to move out. He demurred.
Roaming Roddy was soon back at her side, though. And then they were snapped in Mustique. "Give up Roddy or Quit!,” went the headlines. The Queen made no comment. Privately she despaired of her sister.
In The Crown we meet Roddy (played by Harry Treadaway) at the same time Margaret does: at that fateful first shindig. He comes across on screen as a bit of an aristocratic Austin Powers – nice but not nearly so sharp as his paramour. And his fashion sense is… interesting. We are introduced to his Union Jack patterned proto-speedos at one point - modelled on swimwear Roddy really wore in Mustique.
Llewellyn was a carefree sort – one of the things that had drawn Margaret to him – but even he felt the heat. And when Margaret and Snowdon announced their separation he felt obliged to publicly defend himself.
“I am not prepared to comment on the events of last week,” he said in statement after the couple announced their separation. “I much regret any embarrassment caused to her Majesty the Queen and the royal family, for whom I wish to express the greatest respect, admiration and loyalty.”
Still he wasn’t above cashing in on the infamy and released a collection of covers (When I Fall In Love, Crazy World, Something About You That’s Magic) in 1978. Roddy, the album, is today hard to find, though you can buy a “very good” condition copy online for £1 excluding postage. And you can sample snippets on YouTube – including, if you are brave enough, a duet between Llewellyn and Petula Clark on Clark’s variety show.
“It has always been an ambition of mine to make a record,” he said in a TV interview marking the album’s release. ‘I’m lucky to have a good team behind me. A very different story to the poor struggling artist. I’m very lucky. And there it is.”
“I can’t believe this –there are 892 million cameras around,” replied the interviewer from Thames At Six, as camera-flashes popped. “Are you used to this?”
“I’d rather be left to my own private life as much as be possible,” he said, turning the conversation back to his LP. “Everybody in their life has a list of what they want to do: I’m very lucky indeed to do one thing on that list.”
“You’re being magically elusive,” the journalist shot back, before giving him a kiss to mark his 31st birthday and showering him with champagne.
He must have at that moment felt he was living in a fairy tale, yet there was no happy ending. Not, at least, for him and Margaret. She and Snowdon divorced in 1978. But her love affair with Llewelyn petered out and they broke up in 1980. A year later he married Tatiana Soskin, whom he had known for over a decade. Margaret by that point appeared to have accepted she would never find love and went out of her way to congratulate the couple, even hosting a lunch in their honour.
Later in life Llewellyn parlayed his passion for gardening into a media career. He wrote columns for several newspapers, presented the Gardening Roadshow for Thames Television and appeared on Gardener’s World in 2007. Now aged 72 he will be braced for a fresh onslaught of media attention as The Crown rekindles interest in his early 20s and that now distant romance with Margaret.
“I didn't think about the consequences of such a high-profile affair," he once said. “If we all had crystal balls, we'd all know which horse to back, wouldn't we? I was just following my heart. I discovered a warm and witty woman, possessing a strong sense of duty and dedication to her country's interests, who has honoured me with her friendship since that first house party that was so filled with fun and laughter.”
