Some people say you can never forget where your virginity was lost. As the Inveraray Castle’s romantic, blue-grey, chlorite walls and conical Turrets appeared on my television this week, my thoughts jumped back to 1958, when I was 17 years old and had my shocking first encounter with opposite sex.
The castle, ancestral Scottish stronghold of the Dukes of Argyll, is the setting for the BBC’s A Very British Scandal, purporting to be a factual account of the marathon Argyll divorce battle of the 1960s, in which the 11th Duke of Argyll divorced his devastatingly beautiful third wife, Margaret.
It was that day when, as a student at Brighton School, I arrived in Scotland for a long summer vacation. I stood in Oban’s street, and met this legendary beauty.
Michael Thornton, Margaret Duchess Argyll 1968
My companion, the society photographer Brodrick Haldane, suddenly called out ‘Margaret!’ to an elegantly dressed woman walking just ahead of us.
The Duchess turned, and I recognized the stunningly beautiful face that was long known to glossy magazine readers.
Margaret Whigham was her most famous debutante.
Her first husband, the American golfer and stockbroker Charles Sweeny, said of her: ‘Of all the attractive girls in England in the early 30s, one was the undisputed belle of the ball.
‘Margaret Whigham was the most beautiful, the most vivacious, the most witty, the most desirable and the most popular of all that glittering galaxy… it wasn’t just looks or a bright personality; she had something else. Perhaps it was what these days is called “charisma”.’
Cole Porter agreed and included the electrifying Mrs Sweeny in the lyrics of his hit song, ‘You’re the Top: You’re the nimble tread of the feet of Fred Astaire/You’re Mussolini/You’re Mrs. Sweeny/ You’re Camembert.’
When I stood beside her on Oban Street in 1958, admiring her flawless magnolia skin, immaculate chestnut locks, and captivating green eyes, I understood why all the fuss.
Claire Foy portrays the Duchess Argyl on the BBC’s new series A Very British Scandal
‘You look terribly hot,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you both come back to Inveraray — she pronounced it “Inverarer” — for tea or some cold drinks?’ We piled into a car and drove to the Argyll ducal stronghold, arriving hot and sweaty from the sweltering sun.
‘Go up and have a shower if you like,’ invited Her Grace. ‘You can use my bathroom.’
The 11th Duke was absent and I got dressed in a pink room that resembled a seashell. I stepped into it naked.
Just as I was going to switch on the water, the door opened. The duchess walked in. It was obvious that she wasn’t wearing clothes. ‘I thought I would come and join you,’ she said in a normal and charming manner, as if sharing her bath with a naked stranger were an everyday occurrence.
What happened next caused the duke, who later learned of it, to write bitterly to his father-in-law, George Hay Whigham: ‘Like many middle-aged women, she has developed a taste for the attentions of young men of her children’s age.’ (I was eight months younger than Margaret’s son, Brian Sweeny). Just three months following the shocking episode at the pink seashell bath was Margaret would be charged with seducing another young male onboard the S.S. Homeric, which was sailing from Canada. Anthony Wallace-Turner was his name.
Paul Bettany plays Ian Campbell. Claire Foy portrays Margaret Campbell, Duchess, of Argyll in A Very British Scandal, a new BBC series
After their marriage at Caxton Hall, London, the Duke and Duchess Of Argyll were married.
Like me, he was blond and blue-eyed, the 25-year-old son of friends of the duke, who complained to his father-in-law that Margaret ‘was sufficiently blatant about it to tell me how much she had enjoyed “breaking in a virgin”.’ Within months of my visit to Inveraray Castle, the Argyll marriage was in terminal meltdown — and this collapse is the subject of the BBC mini-series.
A producer approached me to provide advice on how the series would be produced. I am an intimate friend of the Duchess of Cambridge for 35+ years. I also had my own involvement in the divorce proceedings at an early stage of my life.
Although I carefully considered it, I declined the offer.
A stench of purience had already been endeared to the project, so when I saw it this week, I was certain that my choice was correct. This is full of inaccuracies.
What precipitated the divorce was the day the duke, suspecting infidelity on the part of his wife who was away in New York, had employed a locksmith to break open a cupboard — not her desk drawer, as shown in the mini-series — at the duchess’s Mayfair house, 48 Upper Grosvenor Street. The duke found passionate love notes from other men, as well 13 Polaroid snapshots.
The duchess was shown naked except for her three-strand pearl necklace. She engaged in sexual acts and also wore a three-strand pearl choke.
Margaret Campbell Duchess of Argyll, (1912-1993, centre), outside Royal Courts of Justice London, UK. 9th Nov 1971
Margaret Campbell Duchess of Argyll
The duke denounced Margaret to her father as ‘a Messalina in the family’. Messalina, a Roman Empress who was well-known for her proclivities, conspired against her husband Claudius and was executed after the plot was revealed.
In September 1959, Inveraray Castle was thrown by the duke, who publicly called her an adulteress.
It always infuriated him that Margaret’s aristocratic ancestry in Scotland could be traced even further back than that of the Campbells. (One of the many absurdities in the script was that Margaret’s father, George, was portrayed with a proletarian Scottish accent which he never possessed.)
Margaret was 100 percent Scottish-ancestry when she was born in Scotland. Lowlander she was. Her reply to one of the duke’s many threatening and blackmailing letters, demanding money, was: ‘That does not frighten a Lowland Scot.’
In that sentence lies the clue to her real character and the reason for the failure of actress Claire Foy’s gallant attempt to recreate her.
Margaret’s hair was never longer than her shoulder length, unlike Foy. Margaret never wore her hair down or was overly lipsticked. Her beauty was reinforced by a sort of pugnacity, which was entirely absent from Foy’s performance.
Ian Argyll was an alcoholic and sadistic duke. He had to wait 46 years to be Clan Chieftain for the Campbells. He was a follower of the practice, which his wife-beaters ancestors had been known to make, of marrying heiresses. However, the war that the duke waged against his lovely third wife was just as vicious as any in the lengthy and bloody history Clan Campbell.
In his belief that he could name 88 of the men, he created a list listing her possible lovers. Both my name and Anthony Wallace Turner’s were left out of the list. A note in the duke’s handwriting, found among the Argyll divorce papers, records: ‘MT and AW-T are both innocent victims of M’s nymphomania.’
Some of the names on this original list were well-known. There were also Hollywood actors Ray Milland, Bob Hope, and Maurice Chevalier. So too was David Niven, who took Margaret’s virginity when she was 15.
One of the 13 Polaroid pictures appeared to have two naked men. One of the photos of naked men was shown with pornographic remarks. They were written by Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Duncan Sandys — known derisively to the duke as ‘Shrunken glands’, the Minister of Defence in Harold Macmillan’s Conservative cabinet, and the son-in-law of Sir Winston Churchill — undoubtedly had an affair with Margaret, who used the name ‘Court’ to contact him in secret messages.
A Very British Scandal would have us believe that the Argyll divorce battle destroyed Margaret’s dazzling social position MICHAEL THORNTON writes.
The duke, discovering these, sent a telegram to Sandys asking: ‘Are you Court or caught?’ Sandys paid the duke £20,000 not to be cited in the divorce. Argyll, who had taken the cash, responded to this by holding up an envelope with the words SANDYS in capital letters and presenting it to The Press during The Headless Man’s divorce evidence.
The duke was wrong. Sandys was no headless hero.
Is it you? This week’s TV series failed to identify him. Margaret at one stage claimed it to be her husband, the Duke. But that claim foundered after a comparison of the duke’s genitals with those of the man in the photograph.
Lord Denning, Margaret, and I have both confirmed that The Headless Man in fact Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Yvonne MacPherson, their social secretary brought a libel-slander suit against the duke against his wife over the three-and-a half years the Argyll divorce matter dragged on. The duke, under oath admitted that the letter S, which he used to refer to his wife was Satan. The duchess, described as ‘a poisonous liar’, lost the case and had to pay £7,000 in damages.
The duke won the divorce case in May 1963. The Catholic Scottish judge, Lord Wheatley, in a devastating four-hour judgment, denounced her as ‘a completely promiscuous woman whose sexual appetite could only be satisfied by a number of men’.
Margaret Campbell Duchess Of Argyll, with her poodle
A Very British Scandal would have us believe that the Argyll divorce battle destroyed Margaret’s dazzling social position.
But it’s not so. Ironically, it was the victorious Duke who suffered the most from all the fallout of the scandal. His attempts to publish Margaret’s private medical history in a series of sleazy Sunday newspaper articles outraged leading members of his club, White’s, who ostracised him for conduct unbecoming of a gentleman. In 1965, he had to resign to prevent a vote on his expulsion. After becoming a single, unhappy tax exile in 1965, and marrying his wealth fourth wife of 43 years, he was forced to leave Britain for the NHS to end his life.
Within a year or two of the divorce, Margaret’s name was restored to the invitation lists of all major London embassies. To the duke’s fury, she had made a spectacular success of organising the London end of the campaign to save his old regiment, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, from disbandment.
Lord Mountbatten was willing to go out of his way for a photo with her. Prince Michael, the Duke of Kent, attended one of her parties.
And at the 80th birthday ball she threw for oil billionaire J. Paul Getty, the guests included ex-King Umberto of Italy and President Nixon’s daughter, Tricia Cox.
Margaret was a remarkable woman that I met in the pink seashell bath. This encounter opened up the doors to new possibilities and it led to a 35-year friendship. Using her influence with Lord Beaverbrook — whose son, Max Aitken, she almost married — she helped to launch my career in journalism.
When the Duke of Argyll resigned from White’s, she gave me the news exclusively, even though I later learned that she herself had heard it from her clairvoyant.
At the age 80, she had lost her substantial inheritance left by her father, a billionaire, and her fortune was gone.
Of the romantic Scottish castle where we met, she once wrote: ‘I fell in love with Inveraray at first sight.’
Her last wish, recorded in her will, was to be buried in a churchyard ‘close to Inveraray Castle’, but that was disregarded. Charles Sweeny was her first husband. She was buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Woking. This grave is in an unconsecrated area.
Margaret wasn’t the selfish, vapid, cold-hearted character depicted in the television series. Actually, quite the opposite. In front of me, as I write this, lies a bundle of yellowing letters beginning ‘Darling Michael’, and signed ‘love Margaret’.
The lid of the green leather box has an embossed ducal coronet and the letter M (in gold) on it. These are the last things I have to remember one of my most beloved, courageous and beautiful women.
These things will remain in my heart until the end.