The Crown, season 2, episode 4 review: a tragic snapshot of Margaret's loneliness
At a society wedding, deep in the heart of the English countryside, solemn and stuffy vows are being exchanged. Then, a motorbike roars into view, ridden by hip young photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones (Matthew Goode). It’s a sign of the new permissiveness just around the corner, and a sign that, after three rather flat and uninvolving episodes, The Crown is about to step up a gear.
Much of the verve and emotional power of this terrific episode, written by Amy Jenkins and Peter Morgan, comes from Vanessa Kirby’s performance as Margaret who, for the first time this series, takes centre stage. From the outset, Kirby plays Margaret like an outsider, rendered untouchable by her privileged position.
“I’m too much of a daunting prospect,” she says crisply, fag in one hand and champagne glass in the other, as she ponders the prospect of marriage.
Nevertheless, Billy Wallace (Tom Durant-Pritchard) is up for the challenge and their engagement is duly mooted and then swiftly withdrawn as the silly ass proves himself to be a liability with wandering hands. “Had a bit of a fumble,” he tells Margaret with a shocking lack of sensitivity. “She was rather a beauty.”
Margaret’s unhappy love life is juxtaposed (perhaps rather too frequently) with the stable (perhaps staid) relationship of the Queen (Claire Foy) and Prince Philip (Matt Smith), who are seen in bed together, jim jams on and copies of Horse and Hound on the counterpane. The first 10 years of their marriage, the Queen observes, is like an overture. Now they can "really get into [their] stride.”
A third relationship, less well known but here rendered just as intriguingly, is that of Harold Macmillan (Anton Lesser) and his faithless wife Dorothy (Sylvestra le Touzel) who, it emerges, has been having a thing with Lord Boothby for nigh on 30 years. As Macmillan becomes Prime Minister, so Dorothy realises she must put away childish things. But she does so with a heavy heart and her husband overhears her speaking, devastatingly, on the phone about her moribund marriage. “I can’t have him touch me,” she tells her paramour. “His weakness repels me. His love disgusts me.”
Both Lesser and le Touzel are fine actors, long overdue recognition outside the industry, and here Lesser in particular brings a sense of overarching sadness to Macmillan, a dry old stick, hidebound by duty and haunted by personal inadequacies.
There is also the question of photography and how it reflects a shift in society. Cecil Beaton (Mark Tandy) is the Windsors’ favourite. Naturally, the rebellious Margaret considers him a bore.
“Everyone said how pretty you looked,” says her mother (Victoria Hamilton) about her last birthday portrait.
“No, they said I looked like you,” retorts Margaret.
Indeed, 20 minutes of this episode is set inside Armstrong-Jones’s studio as he and Margaret grow closer. “When I first met you, I was convinced you were queer,” Margaret purrs. Or “quare” as articulated by Kirby’s cut-glass vowels.
The scene is sexy and very Sixties, but I couldn’t help feeling that Goode’s Armstrong-Jones is actually a pretentious twerp, pouring scorn on convention like a self-important sixth former. But his disdain and undertow of emotional cruelty also help to make Margaret all the more sympathetic, like a gazelle who has suddenly found itself alone in the wilderness.
When she is introduced to his set at a Belgravia house party, Margaret falters, aware that for the first time she is surrounded by people who are unimpressed by her status. Kirby is magnificent here, giving the sense of a woman who craves so much more than duty and heritage, but also rather enjoys the accoutrements of her position.
“I don’t think I shall ever get married,” she tells Armstrong-Jones, but the crack in her voice suggests that she desperately wants to. Despite a strong sense of curiosity, Kirby’s Margaret knows that, at heart, she is deeply conventional. This princess's tragedy is that she is all too aware of her limitations.
