The Times Magazine 75The most damning piece of evidence was
the explicit Polaroids that Ian found hidden
behind a bookcase. Inside the manilla envelope
addressed to Margaret were two images: the
first was what Michael Thomas described as
“full frontal” and the other was of her engaged
in a sex act with a man who appeared from
the neck down. He became known as “the
headless man” and was rumoured to be
Duncan Sandys, the minister of defence, or
Douglas Fairbanks Jr, the Hollywood actor.
Both had had affairs with Margaret, but
denied their involvement in the photographs.
Nobody knew of the explicit images she
had taken with Joe Thomas. In one image, she
was identified by the back of her head (her
hairstyle had not changed since the Thirties)
and her three-strand pearl necklace, bought
from Asprey. To her credit, Margaret did not
reveal his identity and took the secret to her
grave. Perhaps it gave her a sense of control
after her privacy had been violated.
The divorce petition was sent to the
Edinburgh Court of Session and Margaret was
served with an injunction, which prevented
her from entering Inveraray. “That dreary hole
in Scotland”, she began to call it. She broke
into the castle and smashed up Ian’s records
and stole a boomerang. At dinner parties in
the south of France, Ian passed around the
injunction, turning her into a joke.
Margaret failed to grasp the severity of the
situation and worried only about her public
image. The newspapers called her “the Dirty
Duchess”. She turned to psychics for guidance
and was a client of Eva Petulengro. In her
memoirs, Petulengro wrote, “She was like a
cross between a high-class whore and the
wicked witch who gave Snow White the apple.”
In 1963, the divorce case was heard at
the Edinburgh Court of Session before Lord
Wheatley, a judge known for his harsh
sentences for crimes involving sex. The small
courtroom was packed to capacity with
members of the British and foreign press
sitting in the area normally reserved for
the jury, and only 23 members of the public
were admitted to the gallery.
The first piece of evidence to be examined
was Margaret’s diaries. For the period covering
1954 to ’59, the letter “B” appeared throughout
and Ian believed it stood for her old lover,
Sigismund von Braun. Ian explained that
Margaret used the symbol “V” to record
when she had sex. It was a small victory for
Margaret when Lord Wheatley ruled that her
diaries lacked evidence of her infidelities.
However, her letters from John Cohane, an
American businessman, spoke of an affair.
Lord Wheatley read from Cohane’s letters
to Margaret: “I have thought of a number of
highly intriguing things we might do, or that
I might do to you.” “I would like to be with
you in Paris – what a titillating idea.” “I neverknew that such a short acquaintance could
keep a hot flame burning so high for so long.”
The third and most recent allegation of
adultery was directed at Peter Combe, a
former press officer for the Savoy hotel and
a man 12 years her junior and rumoured to be
gay. On the evening of July 13, 1960, private
detectives noted Combe’s arrival at Margaret’s
house with three dogs and his departure at
3.25am. The reason for his staying so long,
Margaret explained, was due to the dogs
having made a mess of the house, which she
and Combe tidied, and then had a nightcap.
Dismissing her statement, Lord Wheatley
found it difficult to believe that Margaret
herself would clean up the dogs’ mess when
she had servants.
Furthermore, on September 23 to 25, 1960,
Ian accused Margaret and Combe of going
to Spain, which they both denied and then
admitted to being true, because she wished to
buy land, although when questioned she could
not remember the exact location. She said
they had met in her hotel room for a glass of
champagne, but Lord Wheatley was convinced
they had shared a bed. Based on the scant
evidence, Lord Wheatley ruled that Margaret
and Combe did have an affair.
The final proof of Margaret’s adultery, as
Lord Wheatley reminded the jury, was the
pornographic images in which she appeared. It
was rumoured there were 13 Polaroids in total,
involving Margaret and two men, although on
separate occasions. She always denied this and
claimed Ian had tampered with the evidence,
having submitted images from his pornographic
collection, one of the largest in Britain.
Dismissing the allegations, Lord Wheatley
concluded that such photographs would
belong to a woman with a sex perversion
rather than a man with a similar interest.At the time, nobody challenged the double
standards or misogyny at play. The law was
against her. She was damaged goods.
Eventually, Margaret admitted appearing in
two of the images and accused Ian of being
her accomplice, explaining he had borrowed
the Polaroid camera to take the photos. As the
man was captured from the neck down, the
only way Ian could prove it was not him was
to have a medical examination and “publicly
declare his lesser dimensions”.
Ian was granted a divorce on the grounds
of Margaret’s adultery with Combe. She
continued to deny having an affair and Combe
echoed her sentiments. “I have absolutely
nothing to say,” he said. “If I had anything to
say at all, it would be full of four-letter words.”
Lord Wheatley’s 50,000-word judgment
took 3 hours 10 minutes to deliver. It was a
treatise of a warring couple, a he-said-she-said
account of an embittered marriage, which
recalled Ian’s drinking, Margaret’s socialising
and their joint accusations of adultery. It was
believed she had slept with 88 men, although
many of these liaisons were dates with
her coterie of gay admirers. Given that
homosexuality was a crime in Britain,
Margaret remained silent on the matter.
In the final damning verdict, Lord Wheatley
called her “a highly sexed woman who had
ceased to be satisfied with normal relations
and had started to indulge in what I can
only describe as disgusting sexual activities
to gratify a basic sexual appetite”. She was
ordered to pay seven eighths of the £50,000
bill, then the highest in Scottish legal history.
“God knows he was an old bastard,” she
said of Lord Wheatley.
Today, Ian would face up to two years’
imprisonment for stealing Margaret’s images
and distributing them without her consent.
Injunctions also prevented her from telling
her side of the story. She was famous but
powerless, a familiar theme in women’s lives.
Claire Foy, who portrays Margaret in A
Very British Scandal, was drawn to the “shame,
judgment and controversy” that surrounded
her sexuality. Undoubtedly, Foy will introduce
Margaret to an audience who are viewing
women’s stories through the lenses of the
#FreeBritney and #MeToo movements as
well as the Weinstein and Epstein scandals.
It’s the posthumous justice Margaret deserves.
Margaret’s reputation never recovered
during her lifetime, nor did her finances. Was
she a vixen or victim, or both? “My husband
was terribly persuasive,” she said of Ian’s smear
campaign. “All crooks are.”
She died in penury in 1993. nLyndsy Spence is the author of The Grit in the
Pearl: The Scandalous Life of Margaret, Duchess
of Argyll (The History Press, £9.99). A Very
British Scandal will be on BBC1 in DecemberThe ‘headless man’
in the photos was
rumoured to be actor
Douglas Fairbanks Jr
Margaret leaving court during the divorce caseALAMY