ANTONY ARMSTRONG-JONES: BIOGRAPHY, WORK AND PERSONAL LIFE - ARTE - 2024

Antony Armstrong-Jones (1930-2017) was a British photographer and filmmaker famous for portraying such personalities as David Bowie, Elizabeth Taylor, and Princess Diana. He became known as Lord Snowdon after his marriage to Princess Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth II of England.

In 1968 he made a documentary, Don't count the candles, which won several awards, including the prestigious Emmy. In 1971 he was awarded a patent for inventing an electric wheelchair, as he was also attracted to the world of design and the creation of new objects.

Antony Armstrong-Jones. Koch, Eric / Anefo He was famous as “don Juan”, both among women and men. He was the protagonist of several scandals that affected the British Royal Family, as being married to Princess Margaret, he had other love relationships. He frequented the London underworlds and was a friend of wandering among bohemians, in those years of free love such as the sixties.

Childhood

Antony Armstrong-Jones was known among his closest relatives as "Tony." He was the only child of the marriage between lawyer Ronald Armstrong-Jones and Anne Messel. He was born in Eaton Terrace, Belgravia, London.

In his family there were prestigious educators, architects and cartoonists. At an early age he had to suffer the divorce of his parents, in 1935, when Tony was barely five years old.

He always said that in his childhood he had lacked affection. He contracted polio and his parents sent him to Liverpool Royal Infirmay, a medical center where he spent six months, almost in complete solitude, because his parents did not visit him and the only person who came to see him was his sister.

As a result of this illness Tony would be lame for the rest of his life. After the divorce, his mother left for Ireland, where he married an earl and had two children, Antony's half brothers. In this new home he did not have a good time, because it was evident that they treated his mother's children and the count better than him, who had taken a back seat.

Studies

As a child, Tony attended Sandroyd School boarding school from 1938 to 1943. He then entered Eton School, where he had some boxing triumphs. The first was in 1945, when he qualified for a school boxing finals.

The following year, 1946, he continued training and was able to earn several flattering mentions in the Eton College Chronicle. He later entered Jesus College, Cambridge, where he studied architecture, one of his passions those years of adolescence and career that he would finally abandon after failing his second year exams.

Already in the young man's mind there were other concerns, so it was not traumatic to abandon the race. Luckily, his mother, Anne Messel, had a contact in the world of photography, Baron Nahum, with whom he learned all the basics of photography.

His idea was finally to be a fashion, design and theater photographer and Nahum encouraged him with those first apprenticeships in his photographic studio.

Photographer

The Baron was impressed by Tony's talent, so initially as an apprentice he paid him a respectable sum of money but later the young man's abilities convinced him to have him as a salaried associate.

Antony Armstrong-Jones had an uncle, Oliver Messel, who recommended him in those early years for theatrical portraits. He also began to portray high society and received good money from the sale of the photographs.

In 1957 Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh toured Canada and the photographer was Antony, who met the queen for the first time, who would be his future sister-in-law and who would not look favorably on this womanizing man who had lovers permanently.

Magazines

During the 1960s Tony achieved his greatest success as one of the most reputable photographers in England. At first he was an artistic consultant for The Sunday Times Magazine, later his reputation grew as he took pictures of the street and portrayed the mentally ill.

But when he began working for magazines such as Vanity Fair, Vogue or The Daily Telegraph magazine, his name reached all corners of England and the world.

He had the opportunity to portray all kinds of talented artists and politicians such as David Bowie, Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Grace of Monaco, Lynn Fontanne, Princess Diana of Wales, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, and even the famous writers Vladimir. Nabokov and JR Tolkien.

Films

Within Antony Amrstrong-Jones' prolific career as a photographer there was also room for film. His first documentary was made in 1968, Don't count the candles, for the North American network CBS.

This work, which had aging as its central theme, won him two Emmy Awards. In 1969 he filmed Love of a Kind, which dealt with animals and the British, in 1971 he made Born to be small, about people with growth problems and, finally, Happy being happy in 1973.

Snowdon aviary

Apart from patenting an electric wheelchair in 1971, he was the co-creator of the “Snowdon Aviary” at London Zoo which opened in 1964. Years later he said that this creation had been one of his most important works, that named among friends as the "bird cage."

Princess Margaret

Tony's life would not have been the same without having been married for 18 years to Princess Margaret, the sister of Elizabeth II. Although he was known as "don Juan" and had no qualms about having lovers while he was married to Margarita and later to Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, he eventually became royalty.

Margarita's past did not have much to envy Antony's life either, because, until before the wedding in 1960, she had 27 boyfriends over the course of 12 years, a figure not low for the time when free love began to give what to talk about and to be practiced with a large number of couples.

Among her boyfriends were pilots, lawyers, farmers, and even an Anglican pastor. The wayward life of Tony, now called Lord Snowdon, came to upset the conventional and conservative life of the royal family.

Some said Margaret said yes to Lord Snowdon out of spite, as she had been left by Peter Townsed for a 19-year-old Belgian girl. The princess received a letter from Townsed where he explained everything about her and her new love; in a matter of days, she married Tony.

Things had not been easy, because her sister, Isabel II, forbade her to marry the photographer; but as in the past the same thing had happened with Townsed as well, this time she did not give in and said yes to Lord Snowdon.

She was 29 years old and was in danger of becoming a spinster if this opportunity was wasted. Among other things, the new boyfriend was not liked by Elizabeth II as he was not a wealthy man.

Wedding

The engagement was held at Westminster Abbey on May 6, 1960. The event was followed on television by more than 20 million people. The float that left Clarence House and arrived at Westminster was acclaimed by thousands of spectators, and many others were waiting for it inside the Abbey. She wore a beautiful white silk gown and a diamond tiara.

Although everything was not rosy in the celebration, because of all the guests only the king of Denmark attended and this was a consequence of the fact that Elizabeth II had previously rejected many invitations from other monarchs and they paid her with the same currency, although she was not the one directly involved in the wedding.

In addition, Parliament did not approve the budgets to pay for the food and everything that the event entailed, so her sister Isabel was the one who paid all the expenses of the couple.

The wedding was attended by renowned men such as Noel Coward, dancer Margot Fonteyn, and writer Jean Cocteau, among others. They then went on a honeymoon to the Caribbean and had two children, David, who was born in 1963, and Sarah, three years later.

Infidelities

Antony Armstrong-Jone or Lord Snowdon believed in free love, so common in hippie communes during the sixties. He always attracted women and men, he never hid it.

He did not believe in monogamy and that is why the two times he was married he had relationships with several lovers simultaneously. While married to Margarita, he had relationships with Camila, with whom he had a daughter, Polly, whom he would only recognize years later.

In his studio and before the divorce in 1978 he had two lovers, the actresses Jacqui Chan and Gina Ward. In addition, she used to run away from home to see Jeremy and Camille Fry, a couple who were friends with her and Margarita and with whom she had intimate encounters.

After divorcing, he had as a lover the journalist Ann Hills, who would commit suicide on New Year's Eve 1996 by throwing herself from a balcony and dressed in gala clothes. He married Lucy Lindsay-Hogg and had a daughter, Jasper, and in 1998 he had a son named Jasper, the result of a relationship with his lover Melanie Cable-Alexander, 35 years old.

One of the infidelities that had a great scandal was his relationship with Jacqueline Rufus, 21, daughter of the Reading couple. This relationship lasted from 1968 to 1971 and ended because they were photographed and featured in a publication, which came into the hands of Rufus' parents.

They were scandalized and asked their daughter for composure, because Tony was a married man with children. Antony Armstrong-Jones died in 2017, when he was 86 years old.

References

1. Anderson, P. (2018). Before They Were Royal: The Early Life of Antony Armstrong-Jones. Recovered from royalcentral.co.uk
2. Alderson, A. (2008). Lord Snowdon, His Women, and His Love Child. Recovered from telegraph.co.uk
3. Editors, TheFamousPeople.com (2018). Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon. Recovered from thefamouspeople.com
4. F. de Buján, R. (2018). The true story of Lord Snowdon, the man who endangered the righteousness of the British Crown. Recovered from abc.es
5. Hola.com (2011). The first royal wedding of the Windsors to end in divorce: Princess Margaret and Armstrong-Jones. Recovered from hola.com
6. Román, M. (2017). The hectic life of Lord Snowdon, Elizabeth II's wayward brother-in-law. Recovered from libertaddigital.com