The Times Magazine 71n an era before influencers and
hashtags, there was Margaret
Duchess of Argyll, a woman
famous for being famous. Her
fame turned to infamy in 1963
when she was the victim of
revenge porn, distributed by her
husband, Ian Campbell, the 11th
Duke of Argyll. Ahead of her
time, she was vilified by the press,
silenced by the British legal system and
exiled from the establishment. It was a
spectacular fall from grace.
Margaret first met Ian in 1947, on the
Golden Arrow train between Paris and
London. A recent divorcee, she was 34
and flitting between the UK, America
and France. Ian was eight years her
senior, twice married, with a penchant
for rich women. His two wives were both
heiresses. The train had scarcely left the
station when he confided he had been a
prisoner of war, having been captured by
the Nazis while serving with the 51st
Highland Division and sent to Rommel
and a camp on the German-Polish border.
His intensity did not alarm her. She sensed
he was a damaged person and pitied him.
When they reached London, Margaret
invited Ian to her home and into her bed.
It was a brief encounter and she was
unaware that he had caught her, hook,
line and sinker.
Now the racy tale of wealth, status,
sex and public opprobrium is being
retold, more than 60 years on, in the
BBC miniseries airing next month,
A Very British Scandal. Claire Foy and
Paul Bettany star as the couple, whose
divorce was one of the bloodiest and most
notorious in 20th-century legal history.
Margaret, an It girl of her day, dominated the
front pages. She was accused of drug-taking,
forgery, theft and violence, betrayed by her
friends and shamed by the press in Britain’s
misogynistic mid-century society.
Many believed Margaret’s promiscuity was
the result of a head injury in 1941 when she
fell 40ft down a lift shaft. That is not true. She
had always been tempted by the opposite sex,
despite her mother’s puritanical warning: “Sex
is this awful thing we women have to put up
with. We close our eyes and bear it.”
At the age of 15, Margaret became pregnant
by the 18-year-old David Niven and was
forced to have a secret abortion. Less than
three years later, she was conducting a
clandestine affair with Prince Aly Khan, who
threatened suicide if she left him. There were
brief engagements to Max Aitken, the son of
Lord Beaverbrook; Glen Kidston, a married
man who died in a plane crash, and Charles
Fulke Greville, the Earl of Warwick. At the
age of 20, she married Charles Sweeny, anIrish-American golfer and stockbroker,
for whom she converted to Catholicism.
Some might view Margaret’s attitude
to sex as progressive, but it was evident
she was searching for love that was
lacking elsewhere.
Born Ethel Margaret Whigham in
1912, she was the only child of Helen
and George Whigham, nouveaux riches
Scots who lived on Park Avenue, New
York. Her mercurial mother wanted
Margaret to be perfect and was
disappointed by her lack of humour
and her stammer. “No matter how
many lovely clothes we give you,
Margaret, you will get nowhere in life
if you stammer,” Helen said.
The only thing Margaret could
control was her image and from a
young age her manicured beauty
set her apart from her upper-class
contemporaries. At the age of 14,
she moved to England and at 17 she
was presented at court and named
debutante of the year (1930). It
was rumoured her father hired a
press agent to keep her name in
the newspapers.
Such was Margaret’s fame, her
1933 wedding to Sweeny drew a guest
list of 2,000 and a further 2,000
onlookers, which brought traffic in
Knightsbridge to a standstill for
three hours. During their six-week
honeymoon, Margaret learnt of
Sweeny’s “pathological streak of
jealousy” and fits of rage. She
returned to London pregnant and miscarried
seven weeks later (she suffered eight
miscarriages during her marriage).
Her second pregnancy ended with a
stillborn daughter, delivered while she was
unconscious with double pneumonia and
kidney failure. When she came round, she
saw Sweeny dressed in a white tie and leaving
for the Embassy Club.
The Second World War emphasised the
cracks in their marriage. They moved into the
Dorchester hotel and their children, Frances
and Brian, were evacuated to North Wales. He
claimed she had an affair with General Frank
O’Driscoll Hunter, and she learnt he was
sleeping with her friend, Sylvia Ashley, the
widow of Douglas Fairbanks. They finalised
their divorce in 1947.
The new man in Margaret’s life was a
Texan named Joe Thomas, a senior partner
in Lehman Brothers, who was engaged to
the Swiss socialite Poppi de Salis. After a
whirlwind romance, he proposed to Margaret
and promised to end his engagement to de
Salis, but in the end chose the latter. Margaret
was heartbroken and humiliated.
The brief engagement to Thomas wouldI
Margaret in 1934PREVIOUS SPREAD: KOO STARK/CAMERA PRESS, NICK WALL/ BBC PICTURES. THIS PAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK, GETTY IMAGES
At her wedding to Charles Sweeny in 1933Many believed her
promiscuity was due to
a head injury when she
fell down a lift shaft