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• Her old friend Lord St John of Fawsley went much further. ‘I have got wonderful memories of her,’ he said. ‘She was the most beautiful debutante of her generation and she kept that beauty right through her life. She was highly intelligent. In many ways, she was one of the most intelligent women, one of the cleverest women, I have ever met, and she ...
• ‘She was often less than gracious when faced with the drudgery of public appearances – the ribbon-cuttings, diplomatic functions and endless other official occasions by which Britain’s royals justify their position and the public money that finances it.
• ‘A complex figure, Princess Margaret seemed, despite her exalted position, more often than not to have been dealt a peculiarly bad hand for the game of life … It was Princess Margaret’s misfortune to have narrowly missed being a Queen – a job at which she might have been rather good – while being saddled with the secondary task of being a Princess,...
• kind of steely resolve that was more involved with her own attendance at the ceremony than any sympathy she might feel for her dead daughter. It was a mixture between her wonderful resolve and perhaps a tiny hint of triumphalism.’
• After it is over, Princess Margaret is asked if she found the play depressing. ‘It was a bit like one’s own life,’ she replies.