Roddy Llewellyn (Baronet) - Pics, Videos, Dating, & News Roddy Llewellyn Male Born Oct 9, 1947 Sir Roderic Victor Llewellyn, 5th Baronet is a British baronet, landscape gardener, gardening journalist, author and television presenter.

He gained much notice for his eight year relationship with HRH Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, younger sister of HM Queen Elizabeth II.… Read More related links Patisso The Patio King Blackpool Gazette Google News - Aug 20, 2011 'His Southport garden is just the showcase his career needs, propelling him to the attention of Diarmuid Gavin, Stefan Buczacki, David Bellamy and <mark>Roddy Llewellyn</mark>, along with 75000 visitors, amateur and professional gardeners, who flock to the four-day' 70000 Expected To Flock To Southport Flower Show Chester Chronicle.Co.Uk Google News - Aug 19, 2011 'Famous botanist David Bellamy will join well-known horticulturalists such as Sir <mark>Roddy Llewellyn</mark>, and Stefan Buczacki and the team from BBC Radio 4&#39;s Gardeners&#39; Question Time will be on hand to give gardeners&#39; advice.

Former Atomic Kitten star Liz' David Bellamy And Liz Mc Larnon Among The Guests For Southport Flower Show Southport Visiter Google News - Aug 16, 2011 'And patrons Professor David Bellamy OBE, Professor Stefan Buczacki and Sir <mark>Roddy Llewellyn</mark> will be on hand with a warm welcome and advice on making the most of your garden. On the show&#39;s opening day on Thursday the focus is on horticulture,' Glasto For Grannies! The Annual Event For Seniors Hoping To Get The Most Out ... Daily Mail Google News - Jul 23, 2011 'Valerie Singleton is flogging computers on stand D14, while former royal favourite Sir <mark>Roddy Llewellyn</mark> is dispensing advice about petunias and weeds in the gardening area. Green Goddess Diana Moran, the former breakfast telly keep-fit guru,' Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of Roddy Llewellyn. CHILDHOOD 1947 Birth Born in 1947.

TWENTIES 1973 26 Years Old Starting in 1973, Llewellyn, then 25, began an affair with Princess Margaret, then 43. … Read More The highly publicized eight-year relationship was a factor in the dissolution of the Princess's marriage to Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon. Read Less THIRTIES Show Less On 11 July 1981, Llewellyn married Tatiana Soskin, a daughter of the film producer Paul Soskin, The couple have three daughters, Alexandra, Natasha, and Rosie. … Read More Alexandra, the eldest, is a designer and artist.<br /><br /> In his twenties, Llewellyn studied horticulture at Merrist Wood Agricultural College in Surrey.

Today, Llewellyn runs his own garden design company, Roddy Llewellyn's Garden Design.<br /><br /> He regularly lectures, appearing at venues including the Retirement Show at Olympia, Glasgow and Manchester (chairing question and answer sessions), Dobbies Garden Centre ("Inspirational Ideas for the Garden"), Hereford Cathedral ("Interesting Ideas for the Garden"), Malvern Spring Gardening Show ("Who are better Gardeners - Men or Women?"), Cotswold Wildlife Park (series, "An Evening with the Gardening Experts 2005-2006"), Cholmondeley Castle ("Amusing Ideas for the Garden"), and the ship the Crystal Symphony (on a Garden Design Theme Cruise giving "themed lectures").<br /><br /> Llewellyn was a patron at the Southport Flower Show in 2006.<br /><br /> Llewellyn has written various books, magazine articles, and newspaper columns on the subject of gardening.

The magazines he has written for have included Heritage Homes in 2006, Country Life in 2005 and 2006, Country Illustrated in 2004 and 2006, Oxfordshire Limited Edition in 2006, The Lady in 2005, Eden Project Friends in 2004, and the Sunday Times in 2004. Read Less He wrote columns for the Daily Star from 1981 to 1985, and The Mail on Sunday from 1987 to 1999. FORTIES 1990 43 Years Old He presented The Home Show in 1990 and The Gardening Roadshow in 1992-1993 for Thames Television, amongst several other programmes. LATE ADULTHOOD 2007 60 Years Old He appeared on Gardeners' World in 2007. … Read More In the late 1970s, Llewellyn recorded an LP called Roddy. This was an album of standards.

Read Less 2009 62 Years Old … Sir Roderic Victor "Roddy" Llewellyn, 5th Baronet (born 9 October 1947) is a British baronet and gardening expert. Despite his lengthy career as a landscape gardener, gardening journalist, author, and television presenter, he is probably best known for his eight-year relationship with HRH Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, the younger sister of HM Queen Elizabeth II. <br /><br />Llewellyn was born in Crickhowell, Brecknockshire, the younger son of Sir Harry Llewellyn, 3rd Bt. (d.1999), an Olympic gold-medalist in show jumping, and his wife, the Hon. Christine Saumarez (d.1998). Read Less He succeeded his elder brother, Dai, to the Llewellyn baronetcy in January 2009. … Read More He was educated at Hawtreys School and Shrewsbury School. Read Less Original Authors of this text are noted on . The Heartbreak Princess The Heartbreak Princess Email Visiting Princess Margaret on Feb.

6, her close friend Lady Glenconner became worried. “She was particularly frail that day,” says Glenconner, 69. Although it was the 50th anniversary of her father’s death, Margaret remained at London’s Kensington Palace while her sister, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, and the 101-year-old Queen Mum attended church services at the family’s Sandringham estate. Rendered partially blind and immobile by a series of strokes, Margaret “was very sad that she couldn’t be at the service for her father,” says Glenconner. Still, the princess brightened when asked about a blue balloon—left over from her grandson Arthur’s third-birthday party the day before—tied to her wheelchair. “I said, ‘Ma’am, are you giving a party?’ ” recalls Glenconner. “And she said, ‘No, no, I’ve just been to one!’ It was rather sweet.” And rather fitting too. Margaret, who died on Feb. 9 following a stroke, had always loved a party; indeed, she seemed to have spent vast stretches of her 71 years with a tortoiseshell cigarette holder in one hand and a tumbler of Famous Grouse whisky in the other.

Let Queen Elizabeth, 75, be stoic; Margaret chose a counterpoint life filled with tortuous romances and unabashed indulgence. “Disobedience,” she once told director Jean Cocteau, “is my joy!” A certain aimlessness, however, seemed to be her fate, as was heartache: In 1955, the 25-year-old princess was forced, under intense religious and political pressure, to end a romance with Group Capt. Peter Townsend, a divorced man. Later, her own divorce from Lord Snowdon heralded a cavalcade of failed royal marriages. In the 1970s her affair with a handsome young gardener brought her public ridicule and anger. By the time she died, quietly, at King Edward VII hospital with her children Viscount Linley and Lady Sarah Chatto by her side, that all seemed very long ago. “She had everything one could wish for: beauty, vivacity, status and intelligence,” says Theo Aronson, author of 1997’s Princess Margaret: A Biography, “and she had been left with almost nothing.

You wonder if she had sensed this.” The younger daughter of Albert, Duke of York, and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, “Margot” (as the family called her) and big sister “Lilibet” were blessed with “a jolly childhood—there would be riding and bicycling and other country pursuits,” says Margaret Rhodes, 76, a cousin. “We were wonderfully unsophisticated in those days.” An extraordinary complication, however, soon arrived in the person of twice-divorced Wallis Simpson, an American whose love affair with Albert’s older brother David, soon to be King Edward VIII, altered the course of history. Barred by church law and tradition from marrying Simpson, Edward abdicated in 1936, forcing the shy, stuttering Albert to become King George VI. Six-year-old Margaret, along with the rest of her family, viewed the change warily. “I have only just learned how to spell ‘York’,” the young princess was said to grumble, “and now I am not to use it anymore.

I am now to sign myself ‘Margaret’ all alone.” Her sense of isolation deepened during World War II, when Margaret and Elizabeth were spirited away to a stripped-down Windsor Castle, 18 miles from London. With their parents defiantly sticking out the Blitz at Buckingham Palace, the princesses remained in the care of their governess, Marion Crawford. The family enjoyed some postwar tranquillity, but in 1952, the King, a heavy smoker, died from a pulmonary blood clot. With that, 25-year-old Elizabeth became Queen, inevitably relegating her kid sister to the background—not the flamboyant Margaret’s natural habitat. Unlike Princess Diana, who balanced high-life indulgence with charitable deeds, Margaret never worked to ingratiate herself with the public. “She belonged to a generation where princesses didn’t have to do anything apart from look attractive and do a few duties,” says Aronson. She didn’t really like cutting ribbons, and the British public, in turn, grew indifferent to her. Even her nephew Prince Charles, 53, who issued a rare televised statement on behalf of his grieving mother upon Margaret’s death, emphasized her aesthetic attributes rather than her contributions to Britain and the Commonwealth.

“My aunt was one of these remarkable people who was incredibly vital and attractive when she was young,” he said. And good at getting attention. At her sister’s 1953 coronation Margaret sparked a scandal by brushing a bit of lint off the uniform of Townsend, a member of the Royal Air Force and equerry to her late father. The momentary, intimate flick exposed a two-year-old secret: The princess, 22, and Townsend, 38 and the newly divorced father of two sons, were having an affair. The 5’1″ Margaret was “a girl of unusual, intense beauty,” rhapsodized Townsend in his 1978 autobiography, Time and Chance. “She was, by nature, generous, volatile.” That volatility surfaced in Margaret’s resolve to marry Townsend, even though his divorce made him unsuitable in the eyes of the Church of England and its head—Margaret’s sister, the Queen. Marry Townsend, the British cabinet told her, and you’ll lose your title, privileges and annual income. Bowing to the ultimatum, Margaret ended the liaison in 1955.

“Mindful of the Church’s teachings…and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before others,” she told the public. Years later, Glenconner says, the princess—who last saw Townsend shortly before his death in 1995—still sometimes wondered “what her life would have been like if they had married.” Notes Theo Aronson: “She was very in love with him.” It didn’t help that her family showed little sympathy. Her mother and sister “didn’t rally around Margaret,” Aronson says. “They left her to it.” That was often the case. Although Margaret remained loyal to her sister and the pair enjoyed a close bond, they also had their differences. Elizabeth and the Queen Mum loved horses, hunting and Wellington boots; Margaret preferred the theater. Her frailty—prone to migraines and respiratory illness, she had part of a lung removed in 1985 and suffered strokes in 1998 and 2001—also separated her from her heartier mother and sister and contributed to emotional woes, says Christopher Warwick, author of Princess Margaret—A Life of Contrasts: “There was a longish period where her spirits were on a seesaw.

Up and down.” So, too, was her love life. On May 6, 1960, soon after Townsend married 19-year-old Belgian heiress Marie Luce Jamagne, Margaret wed society photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones. “She was genuinely in love with Tony,” says Rhodes, but her choice may have been spiced, in part, by defiance. Everyone “expected her to marry a foreign prince or a nobleman,” says Aronson. “But she went for this bohemian world and showed the rebellious part of her nature.” Throughout the ’60s and ’70s the princess kept one heel in the royal world and one in the mushrooming counterculture—making friends with Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and dancer Rudolf Nureyev—hitting discotheques and visiting a commune near London. Yet even as she honed her reputation as a chain-smoking (up to 60 Chesterfields a day), party-loving night crawler, Margaret also proved herself a loving mother to her two children with Armstrong-Jones: Viscount Linley, 40, and Lady Sarah Chatto, 37. Unlike Elizabeth’s brood, Margaret’s children are happily married and pursuing independent careers.

Linley, wed to heiress Serena Stanhope and the father of Charles, 2, runs a successful furniture design business; Chatto, a painter, is married to fellow artist Daniel Chatto, with whom she has sons Arthur, 3, and Samuel, 5. “Margaret had successful and well-balanced children who are both making their way and have good marriages,” says her friend Lord St. John of Fawsley, 72. She wasn’t as lucky. Margaret and Armstrong-Jones, known as the Earl of Snowdon after the Queen gave him that title in 1960, divorced in 1978—the first such royal split in more than 400 years. “They were both very strong characters,” observes Rhodes. If Margaret’s marriage was troubled, her affairs were no refuge. In February 1967, she began a dalliance with Robin Douglas-Home, 35, a talented and troubled pianist and the nephew of a former prime minister. The romance, complete with amorous letters that were later made public (“Our love has the passionate scent of new-mown grass,” she wrote), ended in March 1967.

Nineteen months later, Douglas-Home committed suicide. Things didn’t go much better with Roddy Llewellyn, a landscape gardener she met when he was 25 and she 43. Their eight-year affair was a template for royal scandals that followed. Photographed cavorting in a bathing suit with a naked Llewellyn in 1976, she “demeaned the Queen and the whole royal family,” says James Whitaker, a veteran royals reporter. Ignoring the public outcry, the pair held court at Les Jolies Eaux (“Pretty Waters”), her villa on the isle of Mustique, and at Kensington Palace, where Margaret entertained guests with show tunes (Oklahoma! was a favorite). The affair ended amicably in 1981, when Llewellyn, who was eager to marry, became engaged to fashion designer Tania Soskin. In later years Margaret’s up-all-night joie de vivre gave way to an earlier curfew.

Her social life—which included partying with Mick Jagger (an island neighbor) and actor Peter Sellers (despite rumors, Margaret’s friends denied that she and Sellers were ever an item)—cooled, and she visited Mustique less often. Weakened by burns she sustained in 1999 from too-hot bathwater (her reflexes had been slowed by an earlier stroke), the princess limited her public activities to support of the Royal Ballet and the occasional official appearance. Out of the public eye the Windsors, “unlike a lot of families, spent a lot of time together,” says Glenconner, who adds that Margaret joined her mother at the latter’s Windsor residence nearly every weekend. Margaret was also close to Prince Charles, though she maintained only a loose bond with his sons Prince William , 19, and Prince Harry , 17. As for their mother, who died in 1997, “at the beginning Margaret was very kind to the Princess of Wales,” says Glenconner. Eventually, however, Diana “fell from favor as she fell out with Prince Charles,” says St. John.

“Blood is thicker than water.” If indeed the two princesses were counterparts—Diana the latter-day embodiment of the stylish, passionate and wounded Margaret—their final exits could not have contrasted more starkly. Diana’s death froze the nation; reaction to Margaret’s passing was subdued and public mourning minimal. A small, private service was scheduled for Feb. 15 at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle—the 50th anniversary of her father’s funeral. (In a break with royal tradition, Margaret expressed a wish to be cremated and to have her ashes placed in St. George’s Chapel, near her father’s tomb.) Yet friends say they will most remember the spitfire Margaret of her ’60s and ’70s heyday. “She was a spark,” says Nicky Haslam, 62, a close friend of Lord Snowdon’s. “Most of the royals are too scared of giving opinions.

But if she didn’t like something, she’d say, ‘Wasn’t it awful?’ ‘Wasn’t it ghastly?’ I loved that about her.” Michelle Tauber Simon Perry and Nina Biddle in London Show Full Article Make the most of your garden this summer with decking, garden furniture, lighting - Mirror Online 12:29, 27 Sep 2012 By Adrienne Wild Most people remember him for that royal romance, but Sir Roddy Llewellyn has been a landscape gardener for more than 30 years... and here he reveals his style secrets, which will work anywhere, whatever the size of your plot Share Get daily news by email The Queens’ garden, Sudeley Castle He might be a baronet with a playboy past, but today Sir Roddy Llewellyn prefers to think of himself as just plain Roddy from Wales...although others tend to see him as a rather cool gardener. Still, there was a time when Sir Roddy was rarely out of the gossip columns. In the 1970s he hung around with the in-crowd and had an eight-year affair with Princess Margaret.

But things changed when he settled down and married in 1981. As for the “cool” tag, he’s thrilled with the label but laughs it off as not being relevant. “My colourful past is well and truly behind me as I definitely prefer and enjoy a quieter life at home in Warwickshire with my wife Tatiana,” says Roddy. Rewarding And he feels his life now is far more ­rewarding as he can spend most of his time gardening. To him, plants are his personal God and gardening his religion. Roddy was introduced to gardening by his nanny when he was three. He still remembers the sense of wonder he felt when a few seeds thrown on the ground ­miraculously turned into food or beautiful flowers. It’s this sense of wonder that has never left him and which he has shared over the years with fans of his books, newspaper articles, radio shows and TV programmes. He might be 65 in October, but he is as busy as ever as a well-­respected landscape designer and has won awards for his ­innovative show gardens at the Chelsea and ­Hampton Court shows.

He is a well-known face on the garden talks circuit and as an after-dinner speaker, ­admired for his wicked wit, ­inspiring ideas and knowledge of plants. Roddy is also a patron of the Southport Flower Show, which is expecting up to 70,000 garden lovers from August 16 to 19. “I love this show as it reminds me of those where you would find the vicars judging jam,” he says. “But best of all there’s no Chelsea crush or any celebrity nonsense. Just ­gardeners enjoying a day out looking at and buying plants and getting ideas for their own plots.” On the professional front, one of Roddy’s key clients is Sudeley Castle near Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, in the Cotswolds. Since 2010 he has been involved in new projects, designing beds and planting... quite a challenge as he’s following in the footsteps of the late, great designer Rosemary Verey. Sudeley Castle is best known for its ­roses and Roddy has the privilege of revamping the grounds and replacing worn-out plants.

Research He’s taking time doing his research and ­replacing bit-by-bit the old-fashioned varieties, which only looked good in June. He is bringing in modern English roses from David Austin, which are trouble-free plants with beautiful blooms and built-in fragrances. But he is quick to point out that you don’t have to live in a castle to call on his services. And whoever the client is, he follows the exact same approach when creating a new garden. First he creates a skeleton with buildings, ­structures, ­hedges and trees, before adding the flesh – plants. Then it’s time for a final ­decorative flourish, which Roddy calls the eyelashes and toenails. His philosophy is much the same as the ancient Chinese: “A walk through the garden should prove to be an exciting journey filled with mystery and intrigue with something new around every corner,” he says. So what’s left for Roddy to achieve? “I’d like a garden with a raked beech wood full of bluebells, a miniature railway and a natural stream,” he says. “But as I have no ­intention of moving again, it remains a dream.” Southport Flower Show runs from August 16 to 19.

Buy tickets by calling 0844 847 1555 for £16, saving up to £5 at the gate. Sudeley Castle is open every day (10.30am to 5pm) until October 28. Admission £11. Roddy's planting tips If there’s an old apple tree in your garden, plant clematis Francis Rivis through its branches. I’m having an ongoing “love affair” with these plants. Partner penstemons with the herbaceous clematis integrifolia, so they can “chat”. It’s one of my design signatures to plant neighbours so close they can touch each other and become very friendly. I especially likes the combo of the black and golden-leaved elders... and I’m planting them everywhere! If you’re a first-time vegetable gardener be realistic. It can be a very time-consuming hobby and the demands of our fast-paced lifestyles mean many people will face disappointment and failure. When we moved to my place five years ago I opted for a reasonable-sized veg plot before attempting to tame the garden.

Yet I am already fed up with it after failure after failure due to the heavy rain we have been having, as well as the constant battering from south-westerly winds. *** Gardening Q&A Q - I’d like to add height to my boundary fence but want to avoid using wood if possible. Any ideas? Jesse ­Greenwood, Bude, Cornwall A - You could add a pleached beech hedge – a common feature in Britain’s grandest gardens. It’s a raised hedge where the main trunks are left bare to just below the fence or wall level and the tops of the branches trained along wires and then plaited or intertwined when they touch within the row. This is also a good solution if you want to revive an old conifer hedge. *** Q - Tiny green caterpillars are eating my gooseberry leaves. Is there anything I can do to stop them? Rosemary Wyatt, ­Ringwood, Hants A - I’m afraid they are ­being eaten by gooseberry sawfly larvae. These are green and ­caterpillar-like with shiny black heads and spots on their bodies. As well as feeding on gooseberries, they are also partial to the leaves of red and white currants.

You can either pick them off by hand or spray with organic control such as Scotts Bug Clear Gun for Fruit and Veg. *** Q - Why do gardeners fix straw-filled pots on canes in flowerbeds? Mel Roberts, Ringwood, Hants A - This is an old-fashioned but reliable way of trapping earwigs, which damage the petals of ­chrysanthemums and dahlias. The pests feed at night after spending the day in damp, sheltered places. A clay pot loosely filled with straw, turned upside down on canes and ­positioned at flower height works as a perfect trap. *** Scandalous Women: The Princess and the Gangster - Fact or Fiction? The Princess and the Gangster - Fact or Fiction? Princess Margaret and John Bindon photographed on Mustique A few months ago, I watched a little British film called The Bank Job. The film is based on the 1971 robbery of Lloyd's Bank in London to steal photographs kept in a safe deposit box, and subsequently hushed up by MI5.

The photographs were rumored to be of Princess Margaret in a compromising position set on a Caribbean beach with a small-time gangster and actor by the name of John Bindon although he’s not specifically named in the film. The robbery became known as the “walkie-talkie bank job” because a member of the public overheard the robbers talking on a two-way radio. I had never heard that Princess Margaret had been involved with a gangster, so I was intrigued. However, flipping through the two biographies of Princess Margaret that I own, one by Christopher Warwick and the most recent by Tim Heald, Warwick doesn’t mention him at all and Heald dismisses the rumors. So I turned to the good old Internet to do some research. I found Bindon’s Wikipedia entry which gave me some clues; apparently there were two separate documentaries on British television that detailed the alleged relationship, as well as an article in the Daily Mail written by journalist Wendy Leigh, the author of several biographies of Prince Edward, Hugh Grant and Grace Kelly. Here are some facts that can be confirmed: Princess Margaret was introduced to Bindon on the island of Mustique where she owned a home for many years, in the late 1960’s.

Bindon was dating Vicki Hodge at the time, a baronet’s daughter turned model and actress. Bindon later claimed that not only did he and the Princess have a brief affair but they had also done drugs together. The princess later publicly denied meeting Bindon, until photos surfaced that showed otherwise. She then claimed that while she might have had a nodding acquaintance with him, the rumors that they had any kind of sexual relationship were absurd. Despite the palace denials, Bindon’s ex-girlfriend Vicki Hodge believes that the story is true. “John told me that he had sex with Princess Margaret the first time that he went to Mustique (that would have been in 1968 according to Wikipedia), Hodge told The Daily Mail. “He always told me about his affairs, but he refused to go into details. In those days in Mustique, everyone thought nothing of making love on the beach. It could well have been that Margaret and John’s one dangerous moment was on the beach and that someone could have snatched a photo.” So who exactly is this John Bindon guy? Well, John “Biffo” Bindon was born in 1943 in Fulham, London.

The second of three children, Bindon had dropped out of school by the age of 15. He was soon given the nickname of “Biffo” for starting or getting into fights. By the time he was out of his teens, he had already done a stint in prison for possessing live ammunition. After a series of odd jobs, Bindon decided that acting was his true calling. Director Ken Loach spotted him in a pub and cast him in a film called Poor Cow, but his next big break was playing a gangster in a film starring Mick Jagger where he played a violent gangster, typecasting him from then on. Bindon was suspected of running a protection racket in west London, and that he had ties to the Richardson Gang and to the Kray twins. Nobody apparently knows the extent of his involvement in the London underworld. He was also known for something else; apparently he was so well-endowed that one could hang five beer mugs off the end of it. Again, according to Vicki Hodge, one afternoon in Mustique while the butler was serving lobster and champagne, Princess Margaret while sipping her usual gin and tonic was asked by her friend Lord Glenconner if she wanted to see it.

She said yes, and examined it ‘rather like a fossil.’ Princess Margaret’s enduring love affair with Mustique began in 1960 when her good friend Colin Tennant gifted her with ten acres of land as a wedding gift. She had a house built and called it “Les Jolies Eaux,” meaning the beautiful waters. It became her favorite escape from London and royal life over the years. By the time she allegedly met John Bindon, her marriage to Lord Snowdon was already in trouble, and they would separate for good in 1978. Mustique was also the scene of some wild parties that became the stuff of legend. According to the Daily Mail, Princess Margaret’s lover, landscape gardener Roddy Llewellyn, Colin Tennant, and Nicholas Courtney all stripped naked and were photographed by Margaret (oh yeah, that’s totally wild). While it makes for a scandalous story, I have a hard time believing it. Although Princess Margaret was known as the Party Princess, there were still boundaries that weren't crossed. Before her marriage to Lord Snowdon, she loved to go out to nightclubs every night, dressed to the nines, drinking and dancing until the wee hours.

She loved nothing more than singing around the piano or playing charades. During the sixties, she and Lord Snowdon spent a great deal of time with a more glittering showbiz crowd, no the usual sort of people that royalty hung around with. While Princess Margaret allegedly had affairs with Peter Sellars and Warren Beatty, they at least had good looks and talent to recommend them. A thug like John Bindon might have been a curiosity to someone like Princess Margaret but I have a feeling that she would draw the line if he tried to take liberties. While she loved to laugh and flirt, Princess Margaret was always aware that she was the Queen’s sister, and never let people forget it. She might have enjoyed his off-color jokes but Bindon was not her type. Even Roddy Llewellyn, her much younger lover, was the son of a baronet. Bindon later claimed that MI-5 warned him off. While Bindon had a credible career as an actor, he also had a vicious temper. While working security for Led Zeppelin, he got into a number of fights with crew members, journalists, and bouncers. He developed an addition to cocaine and heroin.

Later he was arrested for stabbing to death gangster, Johnny Darke, at a London pub but he was acquitted. He later died of AIDS (although some claim it was liver cancer) in 1993, at the age of 50. Despite the lack of evidence, the rumors still persist. At least two programmes have been shown in Britain that suggest that Princess Margaret and John Bindon were once lovers, including The Secret Life of Princess Margaret (ITV 2005) and The Princess and the Gangster (Channel 4, 2009). Posted by Baronet Roddy pops in - Wales Online News Baronet Roddy pops in BARONET Roddy Llewellyn was among the guests at a Bridgend care home to celebrate the 101st birthday of the nanny who inspired his love of gardening. Share Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email BARONET Roddy Llewellyn was among the guests at a Bridgend care home to celebrate the 101st birthday of the nanny who inspired his love of gardening.

Rebecca Jenkins, originally from Llanblethian, has been at Heathfields Residential Home on Merthyr Mawr Road, Bridgend for the past three-and-a-half years. But she spent much of her life caring for Roddy, as well as his brother Dai and sister Anna. She became such a part of the family that after the children grew up, she stayed on as a cook and later looked after Roddy’s own children. The baronet from Crickhowell, Powys, is famous for his eight-year relationship with Princess Margaret in the 1970s. But he says his love of gardening began at the age of three when Miss Jenkins gave him a packet of seeds and he watched them grow. Care home manager Kathrine Ralph, 37, said: “Rebecca is quite a sprightly 101-year-old. “But she had a lot of visitors that day so she was pretty worn out. “She absolutely adored Roddy and he is all she talks about. “He was her favourite. “Roddy coming was the highlight of the day.

“He is actually a really nice person, just quite down-to-earth and normal.” At the party on June 11, Miss Jenkins also received flowers from the mayor of Llanblethian as recognition of her work in the community. Like us on Facebook The moment a princess fell for a gangster | Daily Mail Online The moment a princess fell for a gangster by WENDY LEIGH Last updated at 13:37 26 May 2007 This week it was claimed armed robbers tried to steal steamy pictures of Princess Margaret and her gangster lover from a bank vault. So just what DID the pair get up to - and what did those photographs show? As the dark red sun sank into the shimmering Caribbean sea, a tall, muscular man and a petite, curvaceous woman with perfect porcelain skin and sparkling blue eyes made love on the beach. It wasn't the first time a couple had cavorted openly on a Mustique beach at sunset. In the sexually uninhibited Seventies, the private island was a gilded playground where the rich and famous could party in private. For the most part, those who went there had little to fear from public exposure.

But for the couple on the beach that night, it was different. The couple making love were the Queen's sister, Princess Margaret, and notorious London gangster John Bindon, reportedly the inspiration behind Vinnie Jones's character in Guy Ritchie's film Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels. Princess Margaret's clandestine affair with tough guy Bindon (a violent thug turned actor) has been the subject of intense speculation for many years. This week, a British film, The Bank Job, unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival, provoked new suggestions that sexually incriminating pictures were secretly taken of her in Mustique. The film suggests compromising photographs of the Princess taken on the island were at the centre of a bank robbery in London in the early Seventies. It claims that the £500,000 raid - £5million in today's money - on Lloyds Bank in Baker Street was aimed at securing the pictures. It became known as the "walkie-talkie bank job" because a member of the public overheard the robbers talking on a two-way radio. Scroll down for more... But then, mysteriously, a government gagging order - a D-notice - prevented further coverage of the raid.

Model Vicki Hodge - daughter of baronet Sir John Hodge and sister of Wendy Kidd, then a top model - was the long-term lover of John Bindon and was with him and Princess Margaret on Mustique during his second trip there in the Seventies. She believes that the gangster and the Princess did, indeed, have a sexual encounter -and they may well have been secretly photographed. "John told me he had sex with Princess Margaret the first time he went to Mustique," Vicki said from her home in Barbados. "He always told me about his affairs, but he refused to go into details. "In those days in Mustique, everyone thought nothing of making love on the beach. "It could well have been that Margaret and John's one dangerous moment was on the beach and that someone could have snatched a picture." Princess Margaret's love affair with Mustique began in 1960. The island had been bought by Colin Tennant, later Lord Glenconner, in 1958 for £45,000, and he gave her ten acres of land as a wedding gift. She had a house built and called it Les Jolies Eaux - meaning "beautiful waters".

It became her favourite escape from life in London. By the early Seventies, her marriage to Lord Snowdon was in trouble and she retreated to the island with Roddy Llewellyn, a landscape gardener 17 years her junior. The wild parties on Mustique, also home to Margaret's photographer cousin, Lord Lichfield, were the stuff of legend. One tale has it that Llewellyn, Colin Tennant and his friend Nicholas Courtney all stripped naked on the beach to be photographed by Margaret. Whether she allowed risque pictures to be taken of herself is unclear. Vicki Hodge - a tall blonde, with a glittering smile, whose past romances included Rod Stewart, Yul Brynner, Ringo Starr and Margaret's nephew Prince Andrew - may have been jealous that her gangster boyfriend was romantically entangled with the Princess, but she wasn't in the least bit surprised. "John was tall, broad, with an air of menace, coupled with a boyish charisma that rendered him irresistible. Scroll down for more... "The Princess loved his cockney accent, his rhyming slang and dirty jokes," she remembered.

According to Vicki, Margaret - who had enjoyed sexual encounters with actors Warren Beatty and Peter Sellers - was also beguiled by Bindon's primary "asset". One afternoon in Mustique, as a butler served lobster, and illustrious guests supped on champagne and caviar, the Princess, cigarette holder in one hand and a gin and tonic in the other, swopped offcolour jokes with Bindon. Then, according to Vicki, Lord Glenconner made a startling suggestion. "He turned to John and said: 'Ma'am knows about your advantage in life and would really like to see it.' " Tennant, of course, was referring to Bindon's manhood - a sight so spectacular that he routinely displayed it with five half-pint beer mugs dangling from it. So he didn't think twice after the extraordinary request. "He jumped up," remembers Vicki "and with Princess Margaret and her lady-in-waiting in tow, walked along the beach. "Then he took out his appendage. The Princess examined it rather like a fossil. We all gasped. Vicki knew she was witnessing a drama the Princess was enacting for her own and John's amusement.

For, in fact, she had already seen Bindon's much vaunted asset. Margaret, as those who knew her will attest, was a little in love with danger. Yet nothing in her privileged universe had prepared her for the danger inherent in John Bindon. Born into a tough, working-class family in Fulham, West London, Bindon had been beaten by his violent father, and by the age of 16 was in Borstal. After that, he served two years in Maidstone Prison for attacking a man with a bottle. It was there Bindon encountered - and became enthralled with - Frank "Mad Axeman" Mitchell, a crony of the omnipotent Kray Twins, who ruled London's underworld. But as Bindon's career as an enforcer for the underworld took off, his brutal good looks opened yet another, quite different door. After director Ken Loach spotted John in a Fulham pub and cast him in his seminal film Poor Cow, he began taking small parts in other films. He invariably played a thug, acting in Get Carter with Michael Caine, Performance with Mick Jagger and Barry Lyndon with Ryan O'Neal.

It was while making Performance that he met Vicki Hodge, the rebellious, stunningly beautiful daughter of a baronet. "The attraction was instantaneous. It was typical of me - always a rebel and an adventuress - to fall for the most dangerous man in London, worlds apart from my upbringing," she said. Dazzled by him, she managed to overlook the shocking evidence of who he really was and the violence he wrought. He once cut off a man's arm with a machete, and ultimately turned his thuggery on Vicki during arguments when he lost his temper. Bindon also had a particularly vicious fight with gangster Ginger Chowles. Chowles' son, Vince, remembers: "My father was drunk and having a go at Bindon. "Then Bindon ran over and kicked him so hard my dad fell down the stairs and broke his arm. "Bindon jumped on top of him and continued hitting him. "Eventually, a showgirl called Suzie broke them up. Bindon walked away virtually unscathed." On another occasion, an angry Bindon laid into a pub manager - supposedly by accident - and broke his jaw. According to Bindon, they had a "little misunderstanding".

Afterwards, the pub manager said he had never been hit so hard in his life. This, then, was the man who was introduced to Princess Margaret. The wayward Princess was instantly fascinated by him. And if anything was going to happen between the pair, Mustique was the perfect setting. Nude sunbathing was de rigueur, and at lunchtime, cars would deliver silver, fine china, all manner of delicacies and champagne, which maids and butlers set out on the beach. Then the party would continue. "No one was that worried about security," Vicki explained, "so MI5 would monitor things from the top of a cliff and not crowd the Princess. "John became a sort of court jester to the Princess, telling her jokes, pouring her champagne, catering to her in every way, and she loved it." Bindon spent three weeks on Mustique, basking in Princess Margaret's admiration. And - smitten by him - she continued the liaison in London. "There would be phone calls at our flat in Fulham, summoning John to Kensington Palace.

"He would put on a fresh shirt, press his trousers, then a car would pick him up." According to Vicki, the Princess and the gangster even went out in public together. "They'd never arrive anywhere together, but I saw them at Gasworks, a restaurant where one of the attractions was a chess set with pieces in the form of couples having sex in different positions. "John and the Princess were always laughing together, and it was obvious she was entertained by him." All the laughing stopped, however, when Bindon was arrested for stabbing to death a fellow gangster, Johnny Darke, at a London pub. He was put on trial for murder at the Old Bailey in 1979, but after actor Bob Hoskins stood as a character witness, he was acquitted. Princess Margaret had finished with Bindon by then, but his arrest and trial must have confirmed to her the extreme foolhardiness of ever having been involved with him. Instead, she continued to pursue her romance with the much younger Llewellyn, until he jettisoned her for his current wife, Tania. Princess Margaret died in 2002, aged 71. Colin Tennant was ultimately compelled to sell Mustique.

While Patrick Lichfield, Mick Jagger and Tommy Hilfiger still owned houses there, Princess Margaret's son, David Linley, sold her house, Les Jolies Eaux, while she was still alive, at which she was said to be deeply unhappy. As for John Bindon, his film career collapsed after the trial and Vicki Hodge says he took to selling himself for sex. In 1993, he died of Aids. Vicki, the blue-blooded blonde with a taste for the dark side, moved to Barbados and married a local businessman. She still lives in the Caribbean, not far from Mustique, with memories of Princess Margaret, her lover John Bindon, and a decadent world long gone. But perhaps there still exists, somewhere, salacious photographs which preserve forever the moment a princess fell for a gangster.

How MI5 raided a bank to get pictures of Princess Margaret | Daily Mail Online How MI5 raided a bank to get pictures of Princess Margaret by BETH HALE Last updated at 07:55 21 May 2007 In the heady days of the 1960s and 70s, the Caribbean island of Mustique was the exotic playground where Princess Margaret held court. It was on its shores that she was famously pictured with her lover Roddy Llewellyn. And, it seems, it could also have been the scene of an even more intriguing photographic scandal, kept firmly under wraps. A film purporting to be based on fact will suggest that sexually compromising photographs of the princess taken on the island were at the centre of a bank robbery in 1971. It will claim that the £500,000 raid on Lloyds Bank in Baker Street, London, was, in fact, aimed at securing the steamy snaps. The Bank Job, clips of which were shown at the Cannes Festival last week, has the photographs being placed in the bank for safe-keeping by Michael X, a well-known criminal originally from the Caribbean.

The £500,000 raid - worth £5million in today's money - made the headlines in September 1971. It became known as the 'walkie-talkie bank job' because of a fluke tip-off from a member of the public who overheard the robbers talking on a two-way radio. But then mysteriously a government gagging order, a D notice, was imposed to prevent further coverage. Four men were jailed in 1973 for the raid and Michael X was hanged for murder in Trinidad in 1975. The film, written by Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais, will claim it was the non-monetary contents of the safety deposit boxes which spurred the raid. "What happens in the film is that the raid on Lloyds is set up by MI5," said producer Steven Chasman. "They knew that a box owned by Michael X with those photographs was inside the bank vaults," he told the Sunday Times. Figures from the security services are said to have called on minor gangland contacts to initiate the raid, who in turn tipped off criminals who knew the bank would be easy to break into.

The writers of the film claim to have spoken to figures who were directly involved with the robbery, who separately claimed that it was aimed at getting hold of the photographs. And while the film does not detail what is exactly in the pictures and Princess Margaret is not referred to directly, Mr Chasman said: "We are pretty clear who we are talking about." Whether there ever were 'incriminating' photographs of the princess is of course open to conjecture. Margaret adored Mustique, the sub-tropical paradise where she could let her hair down away from prying eyes and cameras. Her love affair with the island began in 1960 when she was given a plot of land as a wedding present by her former escort Colin Tennant, later Lord Glenconner. By the time of the raid, her marriage to Lord Snowdon was in its final rocky stages and she retreated to the island with Llewellyn, a landscape gardener 17 years her junior. The wild parties on the island, also home to Margaret's photographer cousin, Lord Lichfield were the stuff of legend. Story has it that once Llewellyn, Colin Tennant and Nicholas Courtney all stripped naked on the beach to be photographed by Margaret.

As for whether she allowed risque pictures to be taken of herself, it is unclear. Asked whether he thought pictures might have existed, Lord Snowdon said: "I would have thought it unlikely." He added he had never heard of the bank robbery-MI5 'plot'. Rumours about Margaret's 'colourful' life have long abounded. She was rumoured to have had affairs with lovers including Peter Sellers and, more improbably, Dusty Springfield. It has also been suggested she had an affair with late tough-guy actor and gangster John Bindon, boyfriend of baronet's daughter Vicki Hodge, an actress and model. He was a favourite of the princess and once boasted that he impressed her with his party trick of balancing five half-pint beer mugs on his manhood. One recent book suggested that they conducted a six-month affair which had the authorities so concerned that MI5 was brought in to keep it under wraps. Sir Dai Llewellyn - Telegraph Sir Dai Llewellyn Notorious Lothario known as the 'Conquistador of the Canapé Circuit’ — or simply 'Dirty Dai’ .

7:00PM GMT 14 Jan 2009 Sir Dai Llewellyn, 4th Bt, who died on Tuesday aged 62, became famous as a playboy, bon viveur and darling of the gossip columns, his reputation reflected in soubriquets such as “Seducer of the Valleys”, “Conquistador of the Canapé Circuit”, “Dai 'Lock Up Your Daughters’ Llewellyn” or simply “Dirty Dai”. Dai Llewellyn attending a book launch at the Westbury Hotel, London in 2006 The son and heir of the gold-medal-winning equestrian baronet Sir Harry “Foxhunter” Llewellyn, and brother of Princess Margaret’s one-time paramour Roddy Llewellyn, Dai Llewellyn was celebrated for his serial seductions of “It” girls, models and actresses, his relentless appetite for partying and his outrageous indiscretions. Good-looking in his youth, with dark Welsh curls, his success with women was famous. He claimed, in his heyday, to be in the habit of going through Queen Charlotte’s Balls “like a dose of salts”.

He insisted, though, that he “never got up in the morning and thought, 'I’m going to screw three girls today’.” But: “If it happened, it happened.” His seduction methods were direct and somewhat lacking in refinement: “I am not one of these oily Italian method-pullers,” he said. “Thirty years, and I still can’t undo a bra. The only trick is that I do not waver. I know what I want and so do they.” Stories of Llewellyn’s priapic exploits, mostly gleefully retailed by the Don Juan himself, proved irresistible to the tabloid press. The journalist Peter McKay, who became a friend, was once having lunch with him at San Lorenzo when Llewellyn suddenly leapt from the table and disappeared for half an hour. “What happened?” asked McKay when his host returned, looking flushed. “Oh, I just remembered,” said Llewellyn.

“I left my secretary tied up in the bath.” Related Articles Sir Dai Llewellyn dies of cancer 14 Jan 2009 Nor, it seemed, were members of the opposite sex put off by his claim that women were “past it by the age of 30”, a fact which, in his view, gave older men the “right” to have affairs with young girls. In later life, however, he admitted that time and the accretion of several stones in superfluous body fat were taking their toll on his technique: “At my age and weight, it’s taking me about a month to laugh the ladies into bed.” Quite what Llewellyn did by way of a career was never entirely clear. He once described himself as a “a kind of upper-class redcoat” who “earned his living out of being Dai Llewellyn”. In practice this seemed to involve a bit of PR work, organising the odd celebrity party, and a lot of schmoozing of rich toffs in jet-set nightclubs such as Tramp and Annabel’s.

“Dai Llewellyn’s London,” wrote one interviewer, “is a web of reciprocal favours, backhanders and feuds which require all his reputed Machiavellianism to manage.” One feud was that with his younger brother Roddy, with whom he fell out in the 1970s after he spilt the beans in the press about Roddy’s relationship with Princess Margaret. Dai claimed that his indiscretion (“for which I have eaten humble pie ever since”) was merely a “pretty tame” section of a four-part autobiographical series about his own life, published when the affair with Princess Margaret was already “common knowledge”. Roddy Llewellyn, though, took a different view. If truth be told, Dai’s appetite for humble pie had its limits. When Roddy Llewellyn told the Daily Mail in 2006 that he could not forgive his brother’s “betrayal”, Dai dismissed him, with characteristic insouciance, as a “snob and a resentful, chippy little twerp”, proclaiming that he had become “bored to tears by the little twit”. The brothers were reconciled shortly before Dai’s death.

David St Vincent Llewellyn was born at Aberdare on April 2 1946, followed, 18 months later, by his brother. Their family were Monmouthshire yeomanry who found coal under the farm in the 19th century and then wangled a Lloyd George baronetcy. Their father, Sir Harry Llewellyn, 3rd Bt, would win a gold medal for showjumping at the 1952 Olympics on his horse Foxhunter. A second son, he had already been knighted for services to sport when he inherited the baronetcy from his elder brother, Rhys, in 1978. Dai’s mother was the second daughter of the 5th Lord de Saumarez and a descendant of Admiral Sir James Saumarez, second-in-command to Nelson at the Battle of the Nile. “I hardly had a relation who wasn’t titled,” Dai Llewellyn claimed. After an early childhood spent at Gobion Manor near Abergavenny, the family moved to Llanvair Grange in Monmouthshire.

Dai was sent to prep school at Hawtrees, and then to Eton, where his romantic inclinations were aroused by the custom of soliciting letters from girls at nearby schools. “All the letters that came back were put in a rack, and if the postmark said 'Ascot’ then you knew it was from a Heathfield girl; West Sussex was 'Southover’.” Unfortunately, Dai was a late developer. His voice did not break until he was 15, so the coveted letters never did arrive in his rack. He made up for lost time when he went to study Philosophy at the University of Aix-en-Provence. There he lost his virginity to an older, American woman “who smelt so disgusting that it put me off doing it again for several months”. On his return to Britain, however, he “met someone wonderful and never looked back”. His career as a fully fledged cad and bounder had begun. After Aix, Llewellyn got a salesman’s job with Qantas, ran a travel agency in Cardiff and moved for a while into advertising.

Then, in the late 1960s, he was invited to lunch by Victor Lownes, who ran the Playboy Club and had recently bought the Clermont casino from John Aspinall and wanted Llewellyn’s advice. When Llewellyn suggested that it needed “more window-dressing to bring the Arabs in”, Lownes responded my making him the club’s “social secretary”. “Start on Monday,” Lownes ordered. “Double the salary.” According to Llewellyn, his job description was “to sit at a table, drink a lot of claret, eat a lot and have a simply lovely time”. Though he subsequently left the Clermont and opened Tokyo Joe’s in Piccadilly and Wedgies on the King’s Road (eventually resigning from both, “exhausted”), he continued to live the onerous life of a Mayfair boulevardier into the 21st century.

It was Nigel Dempster, in the early 1970s, who first noticed Llewellyn’s impressive track record in the bedroom and elevated him to the status of gossip column fixture: “There was no Aids or anything — it was a marvellous time,” Llewellyn reminisced. Quite what Sir Harry Llewellyn made of his son’s chosen career is not recorded. While Dai admitted that his father would probably have preferred him to be “slightly more sensible”, he felt that his parents were at least relieved that he had not turned out to be a “pansy”. Llewellyn claimed to have fallen in love three times, firstly with Lady Charlotte Curzon, to whom he claimed to have proposed 100 times in a single evening (she turned him down). In the 1970s he was engaged to Beatrice Welles, daughter of Orson, but their relationship became so tempestuous that people stopped inviting them to parties. Inevitably, he broke it off. In 1980 he married Vanessa Hubbard, the convent-educated niece of the Duke of Norfolk.

Signalling his determination to go on as if nothing much had happened, he reportedly rolled up at the wedding, reached out of the car and handed a near-empty bottle of champagne to a group of gawping youths. The couple had two daughters but divorced seven years later. Other women in his life included the 1960s pin-up Annegret Tree, Tessa Dahl, daughter of Roald (“much prettier than Sophie”), Judith (now Lady) Wilcox and the Swedish-born interior designer Christel Jurgenson, to whom he was briefly engaged in 2006. After succeeding in the baronetcy on the death of his father in 1999, Dai Llewellyn bought a house at Aberbeeg, near Abertillery, and briefly flirted with the idea of returning to his roots and becoming a respectable pillar of Welsh society. In practice he spent little time in Wales, and in 2003 he announced he was packing his bags, claiming he had been forced out by rampant nationalism.

Llewellyn promised the (largely indifferent) Welsh people that he would return across the Severn Bridge only for his own funeral, but in 2007 he injected some excitement into the Welsh Assembly election campaign by announcing that he would fight the marginal Cardiff North seat for the UK Independence Party. Britain’s withdrawal from the EU was “the most important issue there is”, he proclaimed, and the Assembly was “a load of Horlicks”. He never grew up. On a visit to South Africa aged 60, he claimed to have fallen through a bedroom floor into a cellar while “attempting to roger a girl called Nettie”, the girlfriend of a friend. “I wish I could tell you this was an isolated incident,” he told a journalist. Sir Dai Llewellyn is survived by his two daughters and numerous former girlfriends. His brother succeeds him in the baronetcy.

Question: Which baronet had an eight-year affair with Princess Margaret in the 1970s?
Answer: Roddy Llewellyn