Snowdon: the Biography

Anthony Armstrong-Jones was born to a Welsh father and English-Jewish mother. Creative and inventive, he attended Eton and then Cambridge. The engagement of this motorbike-riding freelance photographer in 1960 to Princess Margaret was a bombshell. Friends privately predicted disaster. And so it proved. But meanwhile in the 1960s, mixing with actors, artists and pop stars, they were the epitome of stylish and unstuffy arts-loving Royals - and one of the iconic glamorous couples of that era. Tony continued to work and both began to have affairs. They divorced in 1978. Snowdon married again but this marriage collapsed after the birth of a secret love-child and the suicide of his mistress of twenty years. His low boredom threshold and waspish cruelty are balanced by his fabled charm and genuine concern for the disabled and underpriviledged. One of the great British photographers, at 76 he now suffers from a recurrence of childhood polio. But by any standards he has had an extraordinary life.