Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, (7 March 1930 - 13 January 2017), commonly known as Lord Snowdon, was a British photographer and film maker. He was married to Princess Margaret, younger daughter of King George VI and the sister of Queen Elizabeth II.
Video Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon
Early life
Armstrong-Jones was the only son from the marriage of the barrister Ronald Armstrong-Jones (1899-1966) and his first wife Anne Messel (later Countess of Rosse). He was born at Eaton Terrace, Belgravia, in London.
Armstrong-Jones's paternal grandfather was Sir Robert Armstrong-Jones, the British psychiatrist and physician. His paternal grandmother was the daughter of Sir Owen Roberts, the Welsh educationalist. A maternal uncle was Oliver Messel (1904-1978) and a maternal great-grandfather was the Punch cartoonist Linley Sambourne (1844-1910), and his great-great-uncle Alfred Messel was a well-known Berlin architect. Additionally, his great-great-grandmother, Frances Linley, was a first cousin of Elizabeth Linley, wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.
Armstrong-Jones's parents divorced in 1935 when he was five years old. As a schoolboy he contracted polio while on holiday at their country home in Wales. During the six months that he was in Liverpool Royal Infirmary recuperating, his only family visits were from his sister Susan.
Maps Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon
Education
Armstrong-Jones was educated at two independent boarding schools: firstly at Sandroyd School in Wiltshire from the autumn term of 1938 to 1943. Prince Tomislav of Yugoslavia was his classmate and Prince Andrew of Yugoslavia was a year behind. These were the younger brothers of another Old Sandroydian, King Peter of Yugoslavia, who revisited the school to visit them.
Armstrong-Jones attended Eton College, beginning in the Michaelmas term of 1943. In March 1945, he qualified in the "extra special weight" class of the School Boxing Finals. He continued to box in 1946, gaining at least two flattering mentions in the Eton College Chronicle. While on holiday at his father's family estate in North Wales (Plas Dinas), he was stricken with poliomyelitis. In 1947, he was a coxswain in Eton's traditional "Fourth of June" Daylight Procession of Boats.
He then matriculated at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he studied architecture but failed his second-year exams. He coxed the winning Cambridge boat in the 1950 Boat Race.
Life and career
After university, Armstrong-Jones began a career as a photographer in fashion, design and theatre. His stepmother had a friend who knew Baron the photographer; Baron visited Armstrong-Jones in his London flat, which doubled as his work studio. Baron, impressed, agreed to bring on Armstrong-Jones as an apprentice, first on a fee-paying basis but eventually, as his talent and skills became apparent to Baron, as a salaried associate.
Much of his early commissions were theatrical portraits, often with recommendations from his uncle Oliver Messel, and "society" portraits highly favoured in Tatler, which, in addition to buying a lot of his photographs, gave him byline credit for the captions. He later became known for his royal studies, among which were the official portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh for their 1957 tour of Canada. He was also an early contributor to Queen magazine, the magazine founded by his friend Jocelyn Stevens..
In the early 1960s, Armstrong-Jones became the artistic adviser of The Sunday Times Magazine, and by the 1970s had established himself as one of Britain's most respected photographers. Though his work included everything from fashion photography to documentary images of inner city life and the mentally ill, he is best known for his portraits of world notables (the National Portrait Gallery has more than 100 Snowdon portraits in its collection), many of them published in Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The Daily Telegraph magazine. His subjects include Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Leslie Caron, Lynn Fontanne, David Bowie, Elizabeth Taylor, Rupert Everett, Anthony Blunt, David Hockney, Princess Grace of Monaco, Diana, Princess of Wales, Barbara Cartland, Raine Spencer (when she was Lady Lewisham), Desmond Guinness, British prime minister Harold Macmillan, Iris Murdoch, Tom Stoppard, Vladimir Nabokov and J. R. R. Tolkien.
In 1968 he made his first documentary film Don't Count the Candles, for the US television station CBS, on the subject of aging. It won seven awards including two Emmys. This was followed by Love of a kind (1969), about the British and animals, Born to be small (1971) about people of restricted growth and Happy being happy (1973).
In October 1981 a group portrait by Snowdon of the British rock band Queen was used on the cover of their Greatest Hits album. In 2000 A Snowdon portrait of Freddie Mercury was used on the cover of his The Solo Collection box set.
In 2000, Armstrong-Jones was given a retrospective exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Photographs by Snowdon: A Retrospective, which travelled to the Yale Center for British Art the following year. More than 180 of his photographs were displayed in an exhibition that honoured what the museums called "a rounded career with sharp edges".
Snowdon was an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society - he was awarded the Hood Medal of the Society in 1978 and the Progress Medal in 1985.
In 2006, Tomas Maier, creative director of the Italian fashion brand Bottega Veneta, sought Snowdon to photograph his Fall/Winter 2006 campaign.
Designs and inventions
Armstrong-Jones co-designed (in 1963, with Frank Newby and Cedric Price) the "Snowdon Aviary" of the London Zoo; he later said it was one of his proudest creations, affectionately calling it the "birdcage". He also had a major role in designing the physical arrangements for the 1969 investiture of his nephew Prince Charles as Prince of Wales.
He was granted a patent for a type of electric wheelchair in 1971.
Philanthropy and charity
One of his earliest charitable acts, in the 1960s, was in the capacity of a council member of the Polio Research Fund.
In June 1980 Lord Snowdon started an award scheme for disabled students. This scheme, administered by the Snowdon Trust, provides grants and scholarships for students with disabilities.
Lord Snowdon served as a trustee of the National Fund for Research into Crippling Diseases, with the Polio Research Fund. He was president for England of the International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981. He was provost of the Royal College of Art from 1995 to 2003.
Personal life
Snowdon was married twice. He was married first to Princess Margaret (1960 to 1978), and second to Lucy Mary Lindsay-Hogg (1978 to 2000).
First marriage
In February 1960, Snowdon, then known as Antony Armstrong-Jones, became engaged to the Queen's sister, Princess Margaret, and they married on 6 May 1960 at Westminster Abbey. The couple made their home in apartments at Kensington Palace. He was created Earl of Snowdon and Viscount Linley, of Nymans in the County of Sussex on 6 October 1961. The couple had two children: David, 2nd Earl of Snowdon, born 3 November 1961, and Lady Sarah, born 1 May 1964.
The marriage began to collapse early and publicly. Various causes may have been behind the failure. On her side there was a penchant for late-night partying, on Snowdon's, an undisguised sexual profligacy. ("If it moves, he'll have it", was the comment of one close friend.) To most of the women who worked in his Pimlico Road studio, there seemed little doubt that Snowdon was gay or bisexual; he said about such rumours, "I didn't fall in love with boys -- but a few men have been in love with me". In his 2009 memoir, Redeeming Features, British interior designer Nicholas Haslam claimed that he had an affair with Snowdon before the latter's marriage to Princess Margaret and that Snowdon had also been the lover of Tom Parr, another leading interior designer.
The break-up of Margaret and Snowdon lasted sixteen years, accompanied by drugs, alcohol and bizarre behaviour by both parties, such as Snowdon's leaving lists between the pages of books the princess read for her to find, of "things I hate about you". According to biographers Sarah Bradford and Anne de Courcy, one note read: "You look like a Jewish manicurist and I hate you". When high society palled, Snowdon would escape to a hideaway cottage with his lovers or on overseas photographic assignments; most people, including the Royal Family, took his side. Among Snowdon's lovers in the late 1960s was Lady Jacqueline Rufus-Isaacs, daughter of the 3rd Marquess of Reading. The marriage ended in divorce in 1978.
In 2004, The Telegraph reported that Snowdon had fathered an illegitimate daughter shortly before marrying Princess Margaret. Anne de Courcy reports the claim by Polly Fry, born on 28 May 1960, in the third week of Lord Snowdon's marriage to Princess Margaret, and brought up as a daughter of Jeremy Fry, inventor and member of the Fry's chocolate family, and his first wife, Camilla, that she was in fact Snowdon's daughter. Polly Fry asserted that a DNA test in 2004 proved Snowdon's paternity. Jeremy Fry rejected her claim, and Snowdon denied having taken a DNA test. However, four years later, he admitted that this account was true.
Second marriage
After his divorce from Princess Margaret, Lord Snowdon married Lucy Mary Lindsay-Hogg (née Davies), the former wife of film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, on 15 December 1978. The couple had one daughter: Lady Frances Armstrong-Jones, born 17 July 1979. She married Rodolphe von Hofmannsthal in 2006. Lady Frances works as a designer. She is a board member of the Snowdon Trust. From 1976 until 1996, Snowdon also had a mistress, journalist Ann Hills. She died by suicide on 31 December 1996.
The Earl and Countess of Snowdon separated in 2000 after the revelation that Snowdon, then aged 67, had fathered a son, Jasper William Oliver Cable-Alexander (born 30 April 1998), with Melanie Cable-Alexander, an editor at Country Life magazine.
Death
Lord Snowdon died peacefully at his home in Kensington on 13 January 2017, aged 86.
His funeral took place on 20 January at St Baglan's Church in the remote village of Llanfaglan near Caernarfon. He was buried in the family plot in the churchyard.
Titles, styles, honours and arms
Titles
- 7 March 1930 - 6 October 1961: Mr Antony Armstrong-Jones
- 6 October 1961 - 13 January 2017: The Right Honourable The Earl of Snowdon
- 16 November 1999 - 13 January 2017: The Right Honourable The Lord Armstrong-Jones
Earldom and life peerage
Following his wedding, Armstrong-Jones was granted an earldom and introduced to the House of Lords as the Earl of Snowdon on 28 February 1962. The awarding of the earldom was in line with the practice of granting titles upon marriage into the Royal Family.
He made his maiden speech in the House of Lords in April 1972 on the problems that the disabled suffered in everyday life. One of his last contributions to the Lords was in response to the Queen's Speech of 1992.
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 to 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 (those for whom a peerage was originally created, as opposed to those who inherited a peerage from an ancestor) at that time.
The government of the day had expected Lord Snowdon to follow the example of members of the royal family and turn down his right to a life peerage. At the time, Labour MP Fraser Kemp said he was "shocked and surprised that someone who achieved their position in the House of Lords by virtue of marriage should accept a seat in the reformed Lords".
Snowdon retired from the House of Lords on 31 March 2016 having seldom attended nor claimed any expenses for many years.
Awards and honours
- GCVO: Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order, 7 July 1969
- He was awarded the Royal Photographic Society's Progress Medal and an Honorary Fellowship in 1985.
- In 1989, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) from the University of Bath.
Arms
Issue
Ancestry
See also
- List of Cambridge University Boat Race crews
- List of Old Etonians born in the 20th century
- List of photographers
- List of University of Cambridge members
References
Publications
External links
- Hansard 1803-2005: contributions in Parliament by the Earl of Snowdon
- Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon on IMDb
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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