The historical documentary series continues with this look at the tabloid pursuit of Princess Margaret. In the 1950s, the Queen’s sister became the glamorous face of royalty, hounded for her controversial affairs and notorious lifestyle. The press fascination with Margaret led to the birth of paparazzi photography and marked the end of deference to the Royal Family.

In February 1976, Princess Margaret was snapped while on holiday in the Caribbean with a male companion some 17 years her junior. The revelation of her affair with Roddy Llewellyn destroyed her marriage and marked the first time a royal scandal became front-page news. It began a new era of royal reportage, in which no story was out-of-bounds.

From the very beginning, Margaret had lived her life in the public eye. Born in 1930, she was the favourite daughter of King George VI, despite being overshadowed by her more serious elder sister. While Elizabeth received the best education for her future role as monarch, Margaret was pushed to one side. “She was very bright and she hated not being educated,” recalls her former lady-in-waiting, Anne de Courcy. “If she had had a good education, she would have learned much more self-discipline.”

As a royal without responsibility in the 1950s, Margaret soon found herself at the centre of attention for her exceptional good looks. Her great allure propelled her to the level of a film star, in the process blurring the line between royalty and celebrity. “The Royal Family survives on having a glamorous figure, and at the same time suffers for having a glamorous figure,” explains former newspaper editor Roy Greenslade. Margaret transformed the image of the Royal Family – but at the same time she had to bear immense scrutiny.

In the early 1950s, the princess began seeing Peter Townsend, an older, divorced man. The affair was common knowledge but the press refused to reveal it out of deference to the Royal Family. Then The People newspaper broke ranks and printed the story. “It was as if somebody had chucked a bomb into Buckingham Palace,” says author Christopher Wilson. “Suddenly, the whole attitude of Fleet Street changed. There was a breach in the dam.”

Newspapers had always believed that reporting royal scandals might offend their readers, but the Townsend story captivated the public. The affair was a watershed moment, and soon serious reporters began chasing the princess for the latest developments – leading to the birth of the royal press pack. Eventually, under pressure to declare her intentions, Princess Margaret announced that she would not marry Townsend. Whilst this averted a clash with the political establishment, it did nothing to stymie press interest.

For the rest of the 1950s, Margaret attracted reams of print devoted to her party lifestyle. Then, in 1960, she married Antony Armstrong-Jones, later Lord Snowdon, a dashing photographer with a colourful private life. Throughout the 1960s, the Snowdons were stalked by Ray Bellisario, a pioneer of paparazzi photography and the first to use a long lens to capture his subject. Bellisario’s snaps of Margaret in her swimming costume marked another milestone in the decline of deference.

By the 1970s, the press was circling as rumours of infidelity on both sides beset the Snowdons’ marriage. “They knew that sooner or later this marriage was going to break, and they wanted to be the first people to be able to write about it,” says Wilson. The exposure of Margaret’s relationship with Llewellyn marked the end of her time in the spotlight.

Princess Margaret’s withdrawal from the public eye coincided with the emergence of a new tabloid princess – Diana. The door had opened on a world of royal soap opera, and neither the Royal Family nor British attitudes would ever be the same again.