Fashion advisor Susannah Constantine spoke of her relationship with Princess Margaret in the 1980s, saying The Queen’s sister was someone she ‘could turn to’ as her mother battled manic depression.
During the relationship, her mother’s illness got in the way and ‘at her worst’, Margaret became ‘almost like a mother figure’.
Susannah, now 55, dated Princess Margaret’s son, David Linley, also 55, for six years, she explained to Woman’s Hour radio show today.
“I am not being tactful or diplomatic,” she said. “I remember Princess Margaret as being incredibly warm and welcoming. My mother was at her worst at the time I was going out with David and Princess Margaret was someone I could turn to.”
The Princess had something of a reputation for being ‘waspish’, but the style guru commented: “She was a very kind woman after you got past the protective front.”
Princess Margaret was very kind to Susannah Constantine when she was dating her son David (Victoria Howard/photo at Shugborough Hall)
David – now Earl of Snowdon after his father’s death in January – married Serena Stanhope in 1993, and the couple have two children, Charles and Margarita.
Princess Margaret died in 2002, when she was just 71; six weeks later, The Queen Mother passed away, aged 101.
The story came as Constantine has released her first novel, about a lonely 11-year-old with an erratic mother.
