Ma’am Darling Quotes

“It is Cinderella in reverse. It is hope dashed, happiness mislaid, life mishandled. Nothing is as thrilling as they said it would be: no one is amusing, as clever, as attractive or as interesting. The sun never shines as bright as it used to, and even the fiercest thunderstorm lacks any real sense of drama or pizzaz. As the curtain falls, Group Captain Charming has left her for someone more suitable and has gone to live in France, and Buttons, in his zip-up jumpsuit, has taken up with a wearying succession of younger lovers. When Cinderella dies, her little glass slipper is put up for auction, a memento of days of hope and innocence. The catalogue entry reads: 'Only worn once.”
― Craig Brown, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“love and duty speak two languages.”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“improbability is no barrier to gossip.”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“Lord Curzon who, accused of knowing nothing of the common man, jumped on a bus, then ordered it to take him to No. 1 Carlton House Terrace.”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“deep down, what Margaret really wanted from Elizabeth was approval.”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“Biography is at the mercy of information, and information about the Royal Family is seldom there when you want it. Or rather, there is a wealth of information, but most of it is window-dressing: the shop itself is shut, visible only through the front window, its private offices firmly under lock and key.”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“Yet, miraculously, the Queen has managed to avoid saying anything striking or memorable to anyone. This is an achievement, not a failing: it was her duty and destiny to be dull, to be as useful and undemonstrative as a postage stamp, her life dedicated to the near-impossible task of saying nothing of interest. Once, when Gore Vidal was gossiping with Princess Margaret, he told her that Jackie Kennedy had found the Queen ‘pretty heavy going’. ‘But that’s what she’s there for,’ explained the Princess.”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“The two of them, the group captain and the princess had called it a day.four years before when she was 25 years old. But when you are royal, nothing is allowed to be forgotten. That is the price to pay for being part of history.”
― Craig Brown, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“Margaret thought the world cruel for seeing her as the negative version of her sister, yet it was also how she came to define herself. (...) On one side she was given an inflated sense of her own value, while on the other her confidence was continually undermined by comparisons with her sister. She was very spoilt and indulged and made to feel a very special person indeed, while simultaneously being given clearly to understand that it was her sister who was important.

She remained conscious of the image of the one who wasn’t and to some extent played on it: the one who wasn’t the queen, the one who wasn't taught constitutional history, because she wasn’t the one who’d be needing it; the one who wasn’t in the first coach and wouldn’t ever be the first onto Buckingham Palace balcony; the one who wasn’t given the important duties, but was obliged to make do with the also-rans.”
― Craig Brown, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“Princess Margaret felt most at home in the company of the camp: the cultured and the waspish. It was to be her misfortune that such a high proportion of them kept diaries and moreover, diaries written with a view to publication. To a man they were mesmerised less by her image than by the cracks to be found in it.”
― Craig Brown, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“I have never known an unhappier woman”
― Craig Brown, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“It was inevitable; when there are two sisters and one is the Queen who must be the source of honour and all that is good while the other must be the focus of the most creative malice, the evil sister.”
― Craig Brown, Ma’am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return:”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“The people who knew her best were devoted to her. It was the fringe friends who could be so unpleasant.”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“She looked at the world outside between the bars of her extremely comfortable cage.”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“Giving money to the poor, she thought, somehow makes them less disciplined, and therefore less happy:”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“Great Privileges imply Great Responsibilities,”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“We are born in a clear field, and we die in a dark forest,’ goes the Russian proverb.”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“she suffered from a perpetual identity crisis. She didn’t know who she was.”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret

“Naylor puzzled for some time over how to incorporate 365 different forecasts into a single column, and eventually devised a more off-the-peg system by dividing the sun’s 360-degree transit into twelve zones, each of them spanning thirty degrees. He then named each of the twelve zones after a different celestial constellation, and offered blocks of predictions for each birth sign. This was how the modern horoscope came into being.”
― Craig Brown, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret