The secret love affair of Princess Margaret that ended in tragedy By IAN LLOYD Published: 02:21 EST, 25 November 2024 | Updated: 02:21 EST, 25 November 2024 e-mail View comments In April 1994 the News of the World newspaper published two sensational love letters written by Princess Margaret to Robin Douglas-Home, with whom she’d had a brief romance a quarter of a century earlier. The letters had been doing the rounds of publishers and news agencies ever since the death of Douglas-Home in 1968. When they finally appeared in print, Buckingham Palace was dismissive: 'It’s an old story and we are not going to discuss it.
' Princess Margaret was well within her rights to have sued and won damages but opted not to. So who was Robin Douglas-Home? He was a minor aristocrat, a nephew of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Elizabeth II’s fourth prime minister. His mother, born Margaret Spencer, was the great aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales .
He was very much part of the Mayfair nightclub scene and had known the princess for many years. An accomplished jazz pianist, he played at the several West End venues including the Society Restaurant in Jermyn Street. He and Margaret had a mutual love of American musicals and composers including Jerome Kern, Cole Porter and George Gershwin, and he escorted her to see West Side Story .
In the late 1950s Douglas-Home had a passionate romance with another princess, Margaretha, the granddaughter of Sweden ’s King Gustaf VI Adolf. When her mother, the widowe.
