'''Lord Snowdon' redirects here. For the title see
Earl of Snowdon. For the former
Chancellor of the Exchequer see
Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden.''
'Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, Baron Armstrong-Jones',
GCVO,
RDI (born
7 March 1930) is a
British photographer and
Emmy award-winning documentary filmmaker who sits in the
House of Lords by a life
peerage granted him in
1999. He was married to
The Princess Margaret from
1960 to
1978.
Early life
The only son of barrister
Ronald Armstrong-Jones (1899–1966) and his first wife, the society beauty
Anne Messel (1902–1992, later
Countess of Rosse), Snowdon, who is of Welsh and German Jewish ancestry, is a member of a notably artistic family. His maternal great-grandfather was the
Punch cartoonist
Linley Sambourne (1844–1910), his great-great-uncle
Alfred Messel was a well-known Berlin architect, and his mother's brother was
Oliver Messel, a noted British set and costume designer and architect.
Career
After being educated at
Eton and
Cambridge, where he studied architecture, Armstrong-Jones took up a career as a photographer in the fields of fashion, design and theatre. As his career as a portraitist began to flourish, he became known for his royal studies, among which were the official portraits of his future sister-in-law,
Queen Elizabeth II, and the
Duke of Edinburgh for their 1957 tour of
Canada.
In the early 1960s, he became the picture editor of
The Sunday Times Magazine, and by the 1970s, Snowdon had gained a reputation as one of Britain's most prominent and respected photographers. Though his subject matter includes everything from fashion models to documentary-style images of inner city life and people who are mentally ill, he is praised for his portraits of world notables (the
National Gallery has more than 100 in its collection), many of which have been published in ''
Vogue'', ''
Vanity Fair'', and the ''
Daily Telegraph'' magazine. His subjects have included
Barbara Cartland,
Laurence Olivier,
Anthony Blunt,
J.R.R. Tolkien, and others.
In 2001, Snowdon was the subject of a career retrospective at the
National Portrait Gallery, "Photographs by Snowdon: A Retrospective", which travelled to the
Yale Center for British Art. More than 180 of his photographs were displayed in an exhibition that honored what the museums called "a rounded career with sharp edges".
He also co-designed, in 1960-1963, with
Frank Newby and
Cedric Price, the aviary of the
London Zoo.
First marriage
On
26 February 1960 he became engaged to the Queen's sister,
Princess Margaret, and they married on
6 May 1960 at
Westminster Abbey. On
6 October 1961, when his wife was expecting their first child and there was concern over a British princess giving birth to a child without a title, Armstrong-Jones was created 'Earl of Snowdon' and 'Viscount Linley', of Nymans in the County of Sussex. The Snowdon title has centuries-old royal associations, since the name Snowdon was borne by the Welsh Princes and the House of Gwynedd prior to 1282, though in this instance it was granted as a nod to Armstrong-Jones's Welsh ancestry. The subsidiary Linley title honored Lord Snowdon's great-grandfather Linley Sambourne as well as Nymans, the Messel family estate in West Sussex.
With Princess Margaret, Lord Snowdon had two children:
David, Viscount Linley (born
3 November 1961) and
Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones (born
1 May 1964).
The couple's marriage was a combustible union of personalities and began to fail early on, owing to the Princess's penchant for late-night partying, her husband's working schedule, and their equally combative natures. The failing marriage was reportedly accompanied by bizarre behaviour by both parties. According to biographer Sarah Bradford, Snowdon once left a note for Princess Margaret that read "You look like a Jewish manicurist and I hate you".
[1] ''
Private Eye'' claimed that during Christmas dinner at
Sandringham in 1969, Snowdon leapt on to the table and performed a striptease in front of the whole Royal Family, as a result of which the Queen refused to speak to him for 18 months.
Princess Margaret engaged in her own extramarital peccadillos. Insecure in the shadow of her sister the Queen, she was also fond of pulling rank and pointing out her husband's less-than-royal origins, once correcting publicly his use of the
non-U word "material" (i.e. cloth) for what U-speakers offhandedly called "stuff".
The marriage finally ended in divorce in 1978.
Second marriage
After his divorce from Princess Margaret, Lord Snowdon married
Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, daughter of
Donald Brook Davies and former wife of film director
Michael Lindsay-Hogg, on
15 December 1978. Their only child,
Lady Frances Armstrong-Jones, was born seven months later, on
17 July 1979. They divorced in 1999 upon the revelation that Lord Snowdon had fathered a son out of wedlock,
Jasper William Oliver Cable-Alexander (born
30 April 1998), with
Melanie Cable-Alexander, an editor at ''
Country Life'' magazine.
Life peerage
On
16 November 1999 Lord Snowdon was created 'Baron Armstrong-Jones', of Nymans in the County of West Sussex. This was a
life peerage given him so that he could keep his seat in the
House of Lords after the hereditary peers had been
excluded. An offer of a life peerage was made to all hereditary peers of the first creation (i.e. those for whom a peerage was originally created, as opposed to those who inherited a peerage from an ancestor) at that time.
Titles and honours
Titles
★ '
7 March 1930 –
7 March 1951': Antony Armstrong-Jones
★ '
7 March 1951 –
6 October 1961': Antony Armstrong-Jones, Esq
★ '
6 October 1961 –': ''The Rt Hon'' The Earl of Snowdon
★
★ '
16 November 1999 –': ''also'' The Lord Armstrong-Jones ''for life''
Honours
★ 'GCVO':
Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, ''
7 July 1969''
References
1. Bradford, Sarah: Elizabeth. William Heinemann, London, 1996
External links
★
Earl of Snowdon at the Internet Movie Database
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