The original royal rebel Princess Margaret and her island of 'Mustake' | Royal | News | Daily Express ROYAL The original royal rebel Princess Margaret and her island of 'Mustake' AFTER those pictures of Prince Harry partying in Las Vegas people might think he was the Royal Family’s wild one but when it comes to royal rebels, few could rival the Queen’s younger sister Princess Margaret. 01:41, Sun, Nov 3, 2013 HIDEAWAY: Margaret on her villa’s balcony [ALPHA] Her playground was the tiny Caribbean Island of Mustique and this stunning 1973 photograph captures the height of her hedonistic heyday. Taken by her cousin Patrick Lichfield, it shows Margaret’s best friend Colin Tennant (later Lord Glenconner) triumphantly raising his walking stick as she reclines beside him. The image, part of a new London exhibition, also features friends and workers from the 1,400-acre paradise, owned by Tennant, as well as schoolchildren, a policeman and private aeroplane.

It was the one place where the Princess “could truly relax”, but how did her love affair with the resort, now favoured by William, Kate and the Middleton clan, begin? Margaret, who died aged 71 in 2002, was the original sybaritic sibling. An incredibly beautiful and glamorous 22-year-old, she scandalised the monarchy in the Fifties when she fell in love with a married man, royal aide Group Captain Peter Townsend, who was 16 years older and had two children. Margaret eventually accepted that marriage to divorcé Townsend (frowned upon by the Queen, courtiers and the Church of England) would not work. She was then romantically linked with several men, including Tennant who came from a fabulously wealthy Scottish cotton family. After her surprise marriage to society photographer Antony Armstrong-Jones in May 1960 (the first royal wedding to be broadcast live on television) the couple honeymooned on the Royal Yacht Britannia for six weeks in the Caribbean.

HEDONISTIC: Princess Margaret reclines on a chair next to Colin Tennant [PATRICK LICHFIELD ] Magaret scandalised the monarchy in the Fifties when she fell in love with a married man Tennant had bought Mustique for £45,000 the previous year and presented Margaret with a 10-acre plot as a wedding gift. A decade later he built her a five-bedroom colonial villa, Les Jolies Eaux (Beautiful Waters). For more than 20 years Margaret escaped freezing British winters, royal stuffiness and the paparazzi by fleeing to her idyll in the Grenadines in February and late autumn. Although she and her husband, now Lord Snowdon, had two children, David and Sarah, their marriage ran into trouble within five or six years and both began a series of affairs. Never keen on Tennant, Snowdon dubbed the island “Mustake” and refused to return there, making it even more of a personal retreat for Margaret. Soon the stories of wild parties fuelled by cocktails and spirits seeped out as Margaret and Tennant mixed with aristocrats, showbiz stars and rock royalty.

In his book Princess Margaret: A Biography, the late author Theo Aronson wrote: “By the late Seventies Mustique was a glittering meeting place, the most exclusive island in the Caribbean. Although still primitive in some ways, the single landing strip had to be lit by car headlamps in emergencies and the airport building was a small hut, it boasted dozens of million-dollar holiday homes, owned by businessmen and stars such as Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Billy Joel. PALS: Colin Tennant, pictured, bought Mustique for £45,000 and gave Margaret a plot there [PA] “The hub of island life was Colin Tennant’s hotel, the Cotton House, and life on Mustique was like a very grand Scottish house party.” Jagger first visited the island at the invitation of Margaret and there were even rumours of a romance between the two. A friend told Aronson: “Like many other women, she found him sexy and exciting.

If you saw them laughing together, dancing, the way she’d put her hand on his knee and giggle at his stories like a schoolgirl, you’d have thought something was going on.” On a typical day Margaret would rise late, sunbathe and picnic, her trademark black cigarette holder never far away. She would swim in “slow motion style” and there were evening cocktails, dinner parties, parlour games and the weekly “jump up” at the Beach Bar. By the mid-Seventies her marriage was all but over and in 1973 Tennant introduced her to landscape gardener Roddy Llewellyn, 17 years her junior, who became her on and off lover. One day Margaret took a photo of Tennant, Llewellyn and their friend Nicholas Courtney naked on a beach which somehow ended up in a Sunday newspaper. After a picture of Margaret and Llewellyn together in swimsuits was published in 1976, the Snowdons publicly acknowledged their marriage had broken down and they were divorced two years later. Mustique’s jet set fame reached its zenith with Tennant’s 50th birthday party in 1976.

Guests including Mick and Bianca Jagger were flown in for the week-long thrash and “Gold Night” fancy dress ball. A deeply tanned Margaret was pictured in a caftan and turban, dripping with jewellery, as she “crowned” Tennant “King of Mustique”. By now, however, the island was attracting an undesirable element, including East End crook John Bindon. When a photo of Margaret with jailbird Bindon appeared in a tabloid, there were rumours of a fling with him. If Mustique gave Margaret great happiness, it was also the setting for unexpected heartache. Beset by financial problems, Tennant sold the island and moved to St Lucia; in February 1981 Margaret was on Mustique when Roddy Llewellyn told her he had fallen in love with a woman of his own age, Tatiana Soskin, whom he married soon afterwards. in 1998 Margaret suffered a mild stroke there and the next year she was badly scalded when she stepped into a boiling bath, an accident from which she never fully recovered.

She gave Les Jolies Eaux to her son Lord Linley in 1998 but, to her distress, he sold it. Now a new royal generation is flocking to the island but surely Margaret would scoff at signs for one of the current by-laws: “no nudity.” ? Patrick Lichfield’s Caribbean is at the Little Black Gallery in Park Walk, London, until December 7. Framed prints of the Mustique Group photo are for sale at £1,400 each Related articles Princess Margaret’s lord of Mustique leaves estate to manservant - Telegraph Saint Lucia Princess Margaret’s lord of Mustique leaves estate to manservant Lord Glenconner, the one-time playmate of Princess Margaret, has shocked his family by leaving his estate on St Lucia to his West Indian manservant. Lord Glenconner Photo: ANDREW CROWLEY By Nick Collins , and Emily Gosden 7:30AM BST 18 Jun 2011 Follow The Scottish aristocrat, formerly Colin Tennant, had been expected to leave the beachside house and valley overlooking the Caribbean, to his 17-year-old grandson, Cody Tennant.

But he changed his will seven months before his death last year in favour of his companion and manservant of 26 years, Kent Adonai. His widow, Lady Anne, said she had previously agreed with her late husband that the estate would pass to Cody, his grandson by his eldest son, who died in 1996, and the heir to his title. She said: “Not one member of his family was named in this new will – not me, his wife for more than half a century, or any of his children or grandchildren. “We are hoping Kent will follow what we all knew were my husband’s wishes, namely that Cody would be left his estate in St Lucia.” Challenging the will was not possible under St Lucian law, she added. Related Articles Lord Glenconner dies aged 83 29 Aug 2010 A friend of Mr Adonai’s said that Lord Glenconner’s children discovered what had happened only when they visited the island after his death. He said Mr Adonai was not living in any of Mr Tennant’s former properties but in the village of Morne la Croix.

Apart from holidaying together in the Caribbean and at the family estate in Scotland, Lord Glenconner and his wife led separate lives after his move to Mustique, the island he bought in 1959. He transformed it into a millionaires’ playground where he regularly entertained Princess Margaret, for whom he built a house, and rock stars including David Bowie. He sold Mustique for £1 million and moved to St Lucia in 1992. His wife preferred to live in England, where she was lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. Meanwhile, Mr Adonai, 45, struck up a close relationship with Lord Glenconner and it was in his arms that the millionaire died aged 83, after a heart attack in August. Miron Joseph, a friend of Mr Adonai, said at the time that he was “in pieces”, adding: “Colin Tennant was like a father to him.” Silvalius Fontenard, 50, the manager of the local credit union, said last night: “He was the lord’s right hand man for many years. He did everything for him. “I don’t think people would begrudge him having an inheritance.

He’s a nice, very down-to-earth guy.” Lord Glenconner’s two eldest sons died before him, but he is survived by his wife, his youngest son Christopher, daughters Flora and Amy, and his grandchildren. They were last night gathering at their estate in Peeblesshire, Scotland, ahead of a service in his memory today. That estate and its baronial castle at The Glen, near Innerleithen, are understood to have been inherited by Lord Glenconner’s 27-year-old grandson Euan. Princess Margaret suffers stroke on holiday island | The Independent Princess Margaret suffers stroke on holiday island Wednesday 25 February 1998 00:02 BST Click to follow The Independent Online PRINCESS MARGARET was last night recovering in a Caribbean hospital after suffering a mild stroke. The Queen's 67-year-old sister was taken ill on the island of Mustique, where she had been holidaying for three weeks. After treatment at the island's surgery she was flown by air ambulance to Barbados. Witnesses said the Princess, 11th in line to the throne, was well enough to walk onto the plane and last night she was said to be in a stable condition.

It is understood she has suffered no serious paralysis. Ken Will, spokesman for the Mustique Company, which runs the island, said: "She was able to walk from her car across the Tarmac to the plane. She was also sitting on the plane, there was no need for a stretcher." Princess Margaret, four years younger than the Queen, was well known as a heavy smoker who used to get through 60 cigarettes a day, though she has since given up. Cigarette smoking is widely recognised as one of the risk factors associated with strokes. She has suffered a series of health scares, one of the most serious being in 1985 when she was admitted to hospital for an operation to remove part of her lung. The section removed turned out to be non-malignant. Despite her operation she failed to give up smoking immediately, although she did cut down to 30 cigarettes a day. But ill-health has dogged the Princess, who suffered a nervous breakdown in the 70s. In May 1992 she had to cancel several days of engagements with a "feverish cold" and in late November with a "feverish infection".

In January 1993 she was admitted to hospital with pneumonia. In this latest episode, the Princess fell ill while being entertained by friends at their holiday home. Medical staff were immediately called to help her and she was taken to a nearby doctor's surgery for treatment. The Queen yesterday carried on her normal engagements and made no reference to her sister's condition. Lord Snowdon, from whom the Princess is divorced, was said to be "most concerned" and has been in touch with the couple's children, Viscount Linley and Lady Sarah Chatto. The Princess will be flow back to Britain when she is well enough for the long journey. Loyalty and duty, page 3 More about: Princess Margaret: A new book lays bare the riotous antics with the lord of Mustique Colin Tennant | Daily Mail Online comments Although she would go on to become a byword for glamour, Princess Margaret looked gauche and out of place when she arrived at her first London party. Reeking of mothballs, she was wearing a ginger fur stole that was hideously out of fashion. As Colin Tennant later remarked, it had ‘obviously been lent to her at the last minute by her mother’.

Yet that long-forgotten party was the start of what would become an intriguingly close and enduring relationship between Margaret and Colin — the heir to Lord Glenconner and then one of the most eligible bachelors of late Forties’ high society. Mystical Mustique: Princess Margaret and dancer at the gold themed 50th birthday party of Colin Tennant on the island of Mustique in the West Indies He would later provide an entree into a decadent new world, far removed from the one in which she grew up. Thanks to him, she ended up mingling with a louche set of stars, multi-millionaires and aristocrats on the Caribbean island of Mustique; and it was Colin who introduced her to her lover, Roddy Llewellyn, then gave them a love nest for their scandalous affair. Flamboyant, extravagant and always hungry for publicity, the self-styled king of Mustique ensured that everyone knew of his unique place in the Princess’s life. But as his lifelong friend, I knew he planned to reveal far more in the uncompleted autobiography I was working on with him just before he died, aged 83, in 2010.

RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share By then, Margaret, too, was dead, so no subject seemed off-limits — from tales of cavorting naked in front of her to the fact that he’d once hidden behind an arch to check whether she was indeed having sex with a man she’d just met. Their friendship, he said, hadn’t fully ignited until 1954, by which time Margaret was at the height of her beauty and he’d become the favourite of her escorts. To the dismay of her usual circle, he was — as he recalled — ‘newer and funnier than they’d ever been. And possibly better-looking, too.’ Margaret had recently dumped a chinless beau called Billy Wallace — who regularly proposed and was always rejected — and so asked Colin to stay with the Royal Family at Balmoral in Scotland. Were they lovers? Not exactly. ‘We were just having a very good time,’ he told me — a good time that included what he described as ‘heavy petting’. A whole new world: Lord Glenconner introduced Margaret to a world far removed from the one she knew. He introduced her to new people including Roddy Llewellyn Speculation about their relationship, however, was increasing every day.

Every time Colin picked up a paper on the Balmoral breakfast sideboard, he was confronted with headlines that asked: ‘Will there be a proposal today?’ ‘It did raise the possibility that maybe I should [propose] ...’ he admitted, but he managed to stifle the impulse. To his relief, the Royal Family made no reference to the media furore. In fact, it was Colin and Margaret who brought it up one night, when members of the Royal Family were challenging each other to make up topical verses — to be sung to the tune of My Darling Clementine. Together, the Princess and her friend sang: ‘Oh Balmoral, Oh Balmoral, British women’s eyes are glued, Every time you have a friend there, an engagement is construed!’ Colin reflected later: ‘I don’t think that Princess Margaret ever expected me to propose — that was not the purpose of our friendship and quite possibly, that’s why our friendship has endured. Neither of us was rejected.’ In any case, he said, he wasn’t physically her type, unlike her three great loves: Peter Townsend, Tony Armstrong-Jones and Roddy Llewellyn — all of them, as Colin put it, ‘smaller, foxy men’.

However, he also claimed that the one man Margaret really wanted to marry was Sunny Blandford — the distinctly unfoxy present Duke of Marlborough. That marriage, he believed, ‘would have been very successful’, but it wasn’t to be: the future Duke was snapped up by WH Smith heiress Sue Hornby. As for his own relationship with Margaret, Colin said, the secret was that ‘we used to talk and talk and laugh. She used to flirt and flirt at parties, but never with me. I was always there for her and she relied on me in private.’ Lovers or friends? Colin Tennant said that he and Margaret 'were just having a very good time' that included 'heavy petting' That intimate friendship did not preclude Colin pursuing and marrying the Earl of Leicester’s daughter, Lady Anne Coke, with both the Queen Mother and Margaret attending the couple’s lavish society wedding in 1956. Unfortunately, that day he also made a powerful enemy. Tony Armstrong-Jones, then a society photographer but later to become the Earl of Snowdon, had been asked to take the wedding photos.

And as far as the Leicesters was concerned, wedding photographers ranked alongside hairdressers, caterers, florists and other ‘tradesmen’. Lord Leicester even referred to him publicly as ‘Tony Snapshot’. While the estate and office staff and local villagers were served champagne in the state rooms of the Leicesters’ mansion, Tony was relegated to tea in the servants’ hall. The start of the bad blood between Colin and Tony, perhaps? Colin maintained it was, though the slight was not of his doing. Indeed, he insisted that he always treated Tony well whenever they met subsequently — which apparently irritated the photographer even more. Snowdon always referred to him as ‘that s***’; and when I phoned him recently to talk about Colin, he exploded ‘I loathed the man’ and slammed the receiver down. So when Armstrong-Jones began a relationship with Margaret, Colin saw less of the Princess.

Nevertheless, when she became engaged in 1960, Colin gave her an usual choice for a wedding gift: would she like ‘something in a small box from Aspreys, or a piece of Mustique as a wedding present?’ High profile: Lord Glenconner kept Margaret amused with guests like Mick Jagger As Margaret knew, Colin had bought the tiny Caribbean island the year before. At the time, it was mosquito-infested, roamed by feral goats and cattle, and provided too little water even to draw a bath. But she chose Mustique anyway. Nor was she the only Royal to help get his island fantasy off the ground. Desperate to attract rich investors and positive publicity, Colin heard that the Queen was planning an official visit to the West Indies, so asked her and Prince Philip to stop off in Mustique. When they agreed, Colin arranged for the islanders to greet the royal couple as they stepped ashore in 1964. They were met by a most peculiar sight. Seated on bent-wood chairs, the men were wearing top hats, morning coats with waistcoats, cravats, striped trousers and spats — but no shoes.

The women were attired in long dresses and ostrich-feathered hats, and holding dainty parasols. The Queen, said Colin, thought that she’d stumbled across some sanctuary of very grand, but impoverished, members of the black aristocracy. In fact, desperate to clothe the poverty-stricken islanders appropriately, he’d had trunks of clothes, which had belonged to some ancient deceased cousins, flown out sight-unseen from Britain. As it turned out, all the contents dated back to the Edwardian era. Eccentric as it was, the visit was a success. Mustique began to take off as a society destination, and as Margaret’s marriage began to falter — leaving her, in Colin’s words, ‘crumpled and forlorn’ — she started coming out regularly to Mustique for holidays, initially staying in Colin’s villa as her own plot remained undeveloped. High jinks: Margaret and Colin don fancy dress at a house party with Roddy (far right) as a chorus boy One night in 1969, she asked him if her wedding present also included a house — and, caught on the back foot, he agreed that it did.

During her visit, she also asked to inspect her land, which Colin had marked out with stakes in the ground. While he wasn’t looking, the Princess pulled the stakes up, and hammered them in further up the promontory, giving herself more land. Colin caught her at it, and put the stakes back in their original position. The stakes danced back and forth until eventually a compromise was reached, and she found herself the proud owner of ten acres. Once her house, Les Jolies Eaux, had been built, two enormous packing crates arrived with all her furniture, which she unpacked with all the enthusiasm of a young bride. Virtually every room was furnished with individual pieces she’d been given at Ideal Home Exhibitions, which she’d visited year after year in her royal capacity. Her mismatched dinner service had also been donated, place setting by place setting, during various official visits to the great porcelain factories. After that, she returned twice a year for more than three decades.

Never one to spend her own money unless it was absolutely necessary, she grabbed any official engagements going in the Caribbean — such as independence celebrations — which enabled her to have return air fares to Mustique for both her lady-in-waiting and herself paid for by the British taxpayer. In the days before her visits, Colin invariably became highly strung and difficult — but from the moment of her arrival, he orchestrated the royal progress hour by hour. At lunchtime, a picnic — always cold chicken in Hellman’s mayonnaise, with a tired salad — was taken to a beach, where one of her ‘court’ would be deputed to swim with her. There could never be a minute without conversation. So as she swam slowly, head erect to preserve her coiffure, her companions developed a form of side-stroke so they could swim and talk at the same time. A HALF-BAKED MEMENTO OF DIANA Lord Glenconner took a liking to Diana, Princess of Wales after the death of his father Once, when the Tennants were temporarily homeless in London, Princess Margaret had them to stay at Kensington Palace for what turned out to be a year and a half.

Then there were the regular stays at Balmoral — during which Colin (by now Lord Glenconner, following the death of his father in 1983) took greatly to the Princess of Wales and Sarah, Duchess of York. He’d always come down to dinner early in order to meet up with them in the drawing room. Diana told him that when it was their ‘turn’, they’d sweep away all the tradition and stiff court behaviour in all the royal homes. With that, she bounced on the little tartan chair on which no one was allowed to sit — as Queen Victoria had been its last occupant. Rather pathetically, Colin kept as a souvenir a baked potato that had been cooked by the Queen, and served up at a Balmoral lunch by the Princess of Wales. Sometimes, Colin threw extravagant parties — with guests who included Mick and Bianca Jagger — at which she was always guest of honour. Once, when the theme was ‘gold’, he persuaded local boys to oil their bodies and wear nothing but gold tinsel cloaks and codpieces made from gold-painted coconut shells. Back in Britain, Margaret also attended house parties at Glen, Colin’s family seat in the Borders.

As it was imperative to have guests who would amuse her, there was an anxious flurry in 1973 when a man dropped out at the last minute. On the recommendation of a cousin of Colin’s, his wife Anne invited a stranger to make up the numbers: a young man called Roddy Llewellyn, who was a research assistant at the Royal College Of Heralds by day and a floor cleaner by night. To everyone’s surprise, he looked so much like a younger Lord Snowdon that he could almost have been a clone. As Roddy admits, the attraction between them was ‘mutual and instant’. Then aged 25, Roddy sat beside the 43-year-old Princess on the piano stool at Glen, turning the pages of the music score as she played. ‘Heavens, what have I done?’ Colin’s wife Anne remembers thinking as she watched them. ‘I suppose,’ she adds, ‘no one knows what qualities people see in each other.’ During their stay at Glen, Colin admitted he actually hid behind an arch on the main landing in order to witness any ‘corridor creeping’. His draughty vigil was not in vain.

‘She was very bruised by her marriage and Roddy was kind to her,’ he said. ‘They were lovers, but it was a matter of time before [they] became devoted friends.’ As Margaret and Snowdon were still living together at Kensington Palace, Colin and Anne provided a ‘safe house’ in London for her to meet her lover. Roddy also came out regularly to Mustique. Princess Margaret and son Viscount Linley in 1973 By this point, Colin was going through a ‘streaking’ phase, when he’d drop his trousers at the least excuse. One day, at a beach picnic I attended, he asked the Princess if she’d mind if he removed his swimming trunks. So long as I don’t have to look at it,’ she replied. So Colin stripped off, covering his groin with his Panama hat. Then Roddy removed his own trunks, and so — reluctantly — did I. Margaret, needless to say, remained fully clothed. After a swim and a walk along the beach, Colin photographed her with the naked Roddy and me — though the Princess was hiding certain appendages with the skirts of her bathing costume.

She then photographed us all in various poses — until we were interrupted by the arrival of a trailer-load of construction workers, who guffawed wildly as they retreated to another beach. Despite such high jinks, Roddy often felt trapped at Les Jolies Eaux. He’d send pleading notes to Colin that said: ‘Please come and talk to me.’ At least he was able to design and plant Margaret’s garden, which gave him something to do while she slept in until 11 every morning. Colin’s own relationship with the Princess remained constant. She was tolerant of his increasing eccentricities — such as his fads for wearing vinyl suits (so hot that he fainted several times) or velvet knickerbockers (in five different colours) — and he was always happy to trot off to Kensington Palace to look at her holiday snaps. The friendship was by no means all one way. Not only did Margaret’s presence on Mustique add immeasurably to the island’s reputation as a haunt of the rich and famous, but she included him and Anne — now one of her ladies-in-waiting — in her more exciting royal tours.

As the years passed, Colin became so wrapped up in his own life that he was barely conscious of Margaret’s steady decline, which began when she made over Les Jolies Eaux to her son, Viscount (David) Linley, on his 27th birthday — and Linley let it out because he needed the money. Then Margaret had a mild stroke while dining out with friends on Mustique. When Linley subsequently put the house up for sale, she said she didn’t mind — but in reality, she did. It was on her last visit to Les Jolies Eaux, in early 1999, that the Princess badly scalded her feet, triggering a further deterioration in her health. Some prospective buyers, who’d visited the house, had upset her, and she’d been drinking. According to Anne, who nursed her for three weeks after the accident, Margaret had been washing her hair under the shower while standing in the bath. With her hair over her eyes, she instinctively felt for the lever that controlled the flow of water, but instead turned the temperature control. Near-boiling water cascaded onto her feet.

It’s likely that she had a small stroke at the same time — and her health immediately started spiralling downwards. Colin saw her for what was to be the last time in May of 2001, when they lunched together. After that, conscious of her altered appearance, she barred all men from her room — even Roddy, now happily married and still a friend. Princess Margaret died in February 2002, after having another stroke. Colin refused to go to her funeral, bizarrely claiming he didn’t like pageants — but the truth is that he was utterly grief-stricken. Although he rarely admitted it, he continued to miss her dreadfully. For 50 years, he’d danced attendance on Margaret and placed her at the centre of his life: with her death, a part of him undoubtedly died with her. What made their relationship all the stranger was the fact that Colin frequently made life utter hell for those close to him. And as we shall see on Monday, no one suffered greater from his violent rages than his own wife.

Lord Of The Isle — The Extravagant Life And Times Of Colin Tennant, by Nicholas Courtney, published by Bene Factum (bene-factum.co.uk), is released on Monday, October 29, at £20. David Bowie's House on the Island of Mustique | Architectural Digest David Bowie's House on the Island of Mustique AD revisits the musician’s Indonesian-style refuge on Mustique, which appeared in our September 1992 issue Text by View Slideshow One of the cruising guides to the Grenadines sports a hand-drawn map of the island of Mustique that shows its various points of interest. Here is “Princess Margaret’s ho.” There’s “Mick Jagger’s ho.” And up here, high on a hillside, is “David Bowie’s ho.” And one heck of a ho it is, five years and more than fourteen cargo containers in the making, culminating in an Indonesian-style pavilion that horseshoes around two koi-filled ponds that descend burblingly toward the setting sun into a sort of trompe-l’eau sluice from which dark water appears to emerge magically pristine as it pours into the swimming pool. Indonesia in the Caribbean? But of course.

No architecture is out of context on Mustique, an island of follies and Taj Mahals and Kyoto gardens. “It’s a whim personified,” says David Bowie. “I love a good cliché, and this house for me is just the most delightful cliché.” Bowie, his mismatched eyes asparkle with intelligence, wit, mimicry and a distinctly sexual energy, drags on the umpteenth Marlboro of the morning. At forty-five he is ascetically lean and fit, almost gaunt. He was twenty-two when he became famous with the song “Space Oddity,” a soulful dirge about an alienated astronaut named Major Tom. He released it to coincide with Apollo 11, and when BBCTV played it moments after Neil Armstrong planted his feet on lunar soil, Bowie too was launched. He brought to rock his own theater of the absurd with a succession of extremely dramatic personae—Major Tom, the androgynous Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Mephistophelian Thin White Duke. Role changes have always been part of David Bowie’s persona. Born David Jones, he grew up in the London suburb of Bromley, the son of a children’s home administrator.

His father bought him a saxophone, and he adopted the stage name of Tom Jones—for a week, until he saw photographs of another fellow, a singer, who went by the name. He changed it back to David Jones. Then along came the pop group The Monkees, with lead singer Davy Jones. He called himself David Jay for a bit, but decided that it lacked a certain je ne sais quoi. By then Mick Jagger had become the flaming hot rocker. Jagger...dagger...Bowie was into Americana...knife...presto—David Bowie! The rest is anything but silence; it’s been very loud indeed. In 1990 he made the gutsy, artistic move of announcing that he would perform his greatest hits one more time on tour and then never again, in order to force himself to produce a new repertoire. His current band is Tin Machine, which plays to mixed but, given his exalted status, respectful reviews; two of its members are sons of the sixties comedian Soupy Sales. He is newly married to Iman Abdulmajid, a.k.a. Iman, the painfully beautiful (but not as tall as you thought) Somalian model and now actress. But about the ho....

“Why Mustique indeed,” Bowie begins. “Frankly, it was quite odd. I went down to spend a couple of days with Mick and Jerry in their house, and while waiting for the boat—I was going to take a trip up and down the Caribbean and it never happened because the propeller fell out or something—I was stranded. And I just went scouting one day, having nothing better to do, there being little else to do there, and I came across this area of land attached to Arne Hasselqvist’s. And we talked about it, and I thought, Why not?” Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconner, bought the island for a pittance in the late fifties and cleverly developed it by planting it with a royal seed, Princess Margaret, to whom he gave a parcel of land as a wedding present. He then enlisted Swedish architect Arne Hasselqvist to transform her uncle-in-law Oliver Messel’s watercolor architectural sketches into an actual ho. Hasselqvist stayed on Mustique and to date has built roughly half of the island’s houses, including his own breathtaking Japanese hilltop house, similarly arranged around tranquil koi pools (see Architectural Digest, August 1990).

“Arne was willing to sell,” Bowie continues, “if the sister house to be built on the site matched in weight the house he’d built for himself. I could agree to that, but then what to do with it? I said to him, ‘Look, you’ve obviously been to the East, Arne. Have you ever been to Indonesia?’ He’d had a romp through there, so he knew what I was talking about. He had an idea for the waters going into the pools and into the swimming pool. And then I brought in Robert Litwiller to start constructing, in a vaguely Indonesian style, a potpourri of all the islands of Indonesia, running the whole gamut, the ring of fire.” He laughs. “I wanted my own bit of the ring of fire. I wanted the sapphire,” he says, the songwriter wringing out any rhyme. “I wanted something as unlike the Caribbean as possible, because it’s a fantasy island, Mustique.

Everybody just builds a getaway from it all so they can get there and see the same people they see all around, but in a holiday situation.” A tropical hothouse version of Gatsby’s East Egg, where everyone went “to be rich together.” Bowie’s main residence is in Lausanne, Switzerland. He has an apartment in Los Angeles and a boat in the Mediterranean, “which I don’t see enough of.” He spends five or six weeks on Mustique over Christmas, and then goes back for a bit in midyear. He says he keeps things intimate, inviting just a small circle of friends, Iman and his twenty-one-year-old son, Zowie, now called Joe. “I throw one big party a year. This year it was a New Year’s party, the theme being the seventies. I put on a disco, and Iman brought a mirrored ball down with her, an electric one. We had dinner for fifty but then invited people in for dancing afterwards. They all go down to Basil’s when they’ve had enough.

That’s the one bar on the island, I’m up on the hill, which keeps me away from the odd tourist boat, which is getting less and less frequent because we’re being quite strict about what anchorage we’ll make available, because one used to get tourists coming up in cars and people-spotting, of course, basically because of Mick, myself and Princess Margaret’s house.” As for being a landmark in the cruising guide, he says, “That’s Basil’s advert,” and does an imitation: “You may well be roobin shoulders with David Booey orr maybe Mick Jagger when you come to Basil’s!” He notes, “I’ve not had my shoulder rubbed, yet.” Jagger, he explains, came to Mustique via Princess Margaret. “Mick had been with that crowd for quite some time. He knew them all through the sixties. The Stones were of course the house band for all the coming-out parties in the sixties. 'Let’s get the Rolling Stones! Daddy, can we have the Rolling Stones?’ ‘Well, tell them to wash before they come.’ That sort of thing.

So he moved in those circles at a very young age.” Jagger’s house, like Hasselqvist’s, is Japanese style, with a great croquet lawn. So Bowie bought the land in 1986, and the house was ready, except for finishing touches, by Christmas 1989, an accomplishment that deservedly swells the chest of New York designer Robert J. Litwiller, who coordinated the disparate contributions of Hasselqvist, and designer Linda Garland and landscape architect Michael White , both of whom live halfworlds away on Bali. lt was the redoubtable Litwiller who oversaw every detail, including the shipping containers from Indonesia, Italy, England, New York and Atlanta, with their concomitant nightmare of international paperwork and customs clearances. “It was something,” Litwiller says of the project with a wan smile, “I choose not to remember.” It was also, he adds, an education, during which he learned, amid much else, of the ingenuity of termites, which will bore up through thick concrete, traverse underneath floor tiles and then burrow precisely through those to get at the leg of a bamboo chair, pure candy to them.

“So you have to be very careful no one heavy is sitting in it,” he says. Not likely in this household. My Labrador retriever weighs more than Bowie and Iman together. In October 1990 a mutual friend brought Bowie together with Iman. “I’d just come out of one relationship and I was really completely uninterested in forming a new one. And then we had dinner in Los Angeles, and it was over. Or rather, it began. She’d just been there a year. She’d quit modeling to endeavor to create a new career for herself, acting, a very brave thing to do. She was very hard-line about modeling: ‘That’s it, I’m at the top, I’ll stop.’ She just did Star Wars this year. Not Star Wars, what’s that other space thing? Star Trek. Star Trek 39. And she did House Party 2. She did a television movie called Lies of the Twins,and for the first year in Hollywood, that’s pretty good.” Bowie has called himself an entertainer, not a musician. “Oh yeah, absolutely. I’ve been lucky with the songs. I can’t play anything well.” This is an amusing admission from a multiplatinum rock aristocrat.

“I play what is politely called ‘composer’s piano,’ which means I know enough chords to be able to find my way around a song but not enough to sit down on stage, like Elton John, for instance, who’s a wizard pianist. I’ll have a go at anything and get a screech or an oink out of it, and then think, Well, that’s kind of nice, play it three times and it’ll sound like an arrangement.” He adds, “I think that’s the secret to half of my success as a composer.” He says that Philip Glass, the American composer, will debut a symphonic piece at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in October consisting of a cycle of Bowie’s seventies Berlin trilogy—Low, Heroes,and Lodger, his favorite compositions. “I rollick in it because Glass was a huge influence on me in the seventies, so the cycle has sort of come full circle.” Bowie has worked in almost all the arts. He’s acted in movies, playing an alcoholic alien in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, a vampire with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon in The Hunger and a prisoner of war in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence.

He debuted on Broadway in 1980 in the title role in The Elephant Man. He’s narrated Peter and the Wolf with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra and recorded a duet performance of “The Little Drummer Boy” with Bing Crosby. (Bowie and Der Bingle, conjure on that.) Crosby, he recalls, was by then “pretty far gone, but he had a splendid voice, very loud.” He says he’s been working on a screenplay “eternally,” which he would like to direct. He sculpts and paints, though he never paints on Mustique because, he says, “the light frightens me. It’s incredibly bright. I’m not used to working in the light. And I’m not terribly good. It shows too many flaws when you’re painting in very bright light. Technique goes to hell. So I’ll retain that for the murk of Berlin or somewhere.” It’s time to go.

He has to get on a plane, which he “loathes” so much that at the height of his touring career in the seventies, when he was on the road eleven months a year, he went an entire six years without flying, requiring some truly Phineas Fogg–like improvisations. His house overlooking Lake Geneva is where he works and writes. But David Bowie’s heart seems to be in Colin Tennant’s “strange netherworld—nutty, potty” Mustique, this semi-sceptered isle, this rhinestone set in a turquoise sea, “this storehouse of anecdotes, none of which will pass my lips,” he laughs. “My ambition is to make music so incredibly uncompromised that I will have absolutely no audience left whatsoever and then I’ll be able to spend the entire year on the island.” Tweet Celebrities from Hollywood star Johnny Depp, singer John Travolta, musician Mick Jagger, Princess Margaret, author and journalist Ian Fleming to actress Oprah Winfrey and so on have their own homes in the beautiful Caribbean islands .

Let’s get more knowledge about these stars and discover where exactly their houses are through several photos as following: The famous English singer and actress Cilla Black is one among a lot of celebrities who has a soft spot on the Barbados Island, the most easterly island of the Caribbean. The actress said that she bought a holiday home on the island 15 years ago. Cilla Black and Prince Harry appeared at the Apes Hill Polo Club on the island The television host and actress Oprah Winfrey is said to spend a lot more time in her house on the island of Antigua in the Caribbean The well-known British author and journalist Ian Fleming went to his holiday home on the northeast coast of Jamaica every winter. However, the estate has now known as a resort with a number of villas. Ian Fleming’s home in Caribbean Mick Jagger is rumored to spend several million on a beachside villa on Mustique Island. The photo captured the musician enjoying the beach near his rumored new home Sir Richard Branson is the owner of Necker Island, a private island in the Caribbean. He also owns land on the Caribbean Islands of Antigua and Barbuda, a twin-island nation lying between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

Sir Richard Branson Princess Margaret used to be the owner of a beautiful house on the tiny island of Mustique in the Grenadines. This house was later sold and can now be rented out for around £2,000 a night. Princess Margaret’s house in Caribbean The American actor, dancer and singer John Travolta and his family members often have vacations at the Old Bahamas Bay hotel on the Bahamas where he is the owner of some beachfront units. John Travolta The Hollywood star Johnny Depp also owns a Caribbean island that he called Little Hall’s Bond Cay in the Bahamas Dubbed by many British tabloids as the brokenhearted Princess, Margaret recently passed on February 16, 2002 Dubbed by many British tabloids as the brokenhearted Princess, Margaret of Windsor, Queen Elizabeth's sister, recently passed on (the night of February 8, 2002).ï¿½ She is the first daughter of a Windsor king who has undeniably had at least four lovers, probably quite a few more.

Margaret was the first Windsor woman to visibly crack the stodginess that was the hallmark of the Windsor Monarchy.ï¿½ During a period of time when the ladies of Windsor were expected to be ladies, she broke as many rules as possible.ï¿½ She had steamy affairs, at least two of her affairs were while she was married, and she did not bother to hide them all that carefully.ï¿½ By most accounts, while in her early 20's, she fell in love with her one true love, Captain Peter Townsend, who was a war hero but he was also 16 years her elder.ï¿½ The two had a highly public affair and she openly declared she wanted to marry him.ï¿½ But the British royal family would not consent for her to marry Townsend, who as a divorcee was not considered suitable for a Princess of Windsor.ï¿½ Margaret fought hard but ultimately decided to place "duty before love" and ended their romance in November, 1955.ï¿½ A few years later, Margaret met the man who would father her children in the form of the remarkably handsome Anthony Armstrong-Jones, whom she married in Westminster Abbey on May 6, 19

60.

But she was apparently never really happy during her marriage.ï¿½ Observers say that she was pining for Captain Townsend and this drove Margaret to have at least two passionate affairs.ï¿½ The first was with Robin Douglas-Home, but it turned out to be tragic.ï¿½ They had originally met during the Fifties but sparks did not fly at that time.ï¿½ However when they met again in 1966, the two embarked on an intense, month-long intimate relationship. Margaret broke off their affair after speculation grew that the affair had put her marriage on the rocks.ï¿½ She sent him a farewell letter (the tabloids got hold of a copy of her letter dated March 25, 1966) telling him: "Our love has the passionate scent of new-mown grass and lilies about it.ï¿½ Not many people are lucky enough to have known any love like this."ï¿½ Douglas-Home apparently was devastated and ultimately committed suicide 18 months later.

When Margaret was in her early 40's, she did what many married men do when they reach that age - she had an affair with a much younger lover.ï¿½ Such activities are commonplace now but years ago when Margaret did it, almost no other woman of her stature before had been caught doing so.ï¿½ She was photographed topless on the Caribbean island of Mustique with Roddy Llewellyn, who was only 25 at the time and 18 years younger than she was.ï¿½ï¿½ The British tabloids coined a new term and forever after referred to Roddy as Margaret's "boy toy." The pictures of Margaret's naked breasts with her boy toy sitting next to her in a Caribbean love nest were plastered on the pages of a British tabloid.ï¿½ The pictures ultimately proved to be the catalyst for the end of her unhappy marriage.

Margaret and Armstrong-Jones were separated just a few months later and then quietly divorced.ï¿½ Most knowledgeable observers tell us that Margaret never got over Captain Townsend and that he was the love of her life.ï¿½ She was therefore never really happy with Anthony Armstrong-Jones and this lack of romantic attachment to Anthony was her excuse for having her affairs. Why did Margaret fall in love with Captain Townsend and could not get over him? Why did Margaret not follow her heart and marry Townsend? Why did Margaret marry Armstrong-Jones but not love him? The answers are always in the stars and the secrets of the stars can be understood through Magi Astrology. With Magi Astrology, we can understand the astrological reasons why Princess Margaret fell in love with Captain Townsend, but did not marry him.ï¿½ And with Magi Astrology, we also understand why Princess Margaret at first thought she did love Anthony Armstrong-Jones (or she thought she would eventually love him), but then decided she could not.ï¿½ With Magi Astrology, it is possible to understand the astrological signs of why anyone is more romantically attached to one person as opposed to another.

Of the men in her life, Princess Margaret was always the most drawn romantically to Captain Townsend and the signs of this were clearly written in the stars! CAPTAIN TOWNSEND AND PRINCESS MARGARET As we have continually explained on this website, Cinderella Linkages are the astrological keys to romantic attraction.ï¿½ Contrary to what popular astrology tells us, romantic attraction has nothing to do with Sun signs, or Moon signs or anything else that has to do with the planets' positioning in the 12 signs.ï¿½ This should be obvious since we can love one person of a particular Sun sign and yet not love anyone else born under that same sign. The astrological key to romance is Cinderella Linkages! Captain Townsend and Princess Margaret formed some very strong Cinderella Linkages.ï¿½ï¿½ï¿½ The most basic tool of Magi Astrology for analyzing Cinderella Linkages is the CAC (Combined Alignment Chart and pronounced kak).ï¿½ Below is the CAC for the Princess and Captain Townsend. The black planets represent the positions of the planets when Townsend was born and the red planets represent the positions of the planets when Princess Margaret was born.

Margaret and Townsend formed two Cinderella Linkages.ï¿½ But these two Cinderella Linkages also are the basis for their forming two Romantic Super Linkages.ï¿½ (One Romantic Super Linkage is formed because her Venus in red linked to both his Chiron and Jupiter.ï¿½ The other Romantic Super Linkage arises from her Jupiter making a trine to his Chiron and Mercury.ï¿½ This second Romantic Super Linkage is essentially exact enough to make a Grand Trine.) But there is more.ï¿½ Both Romantic Super Linkages include a Cinderella Linkage.ï¿½ AND the two Romantic Super Linkages interlock with each other because Townsend's Chiron is the basis for both Romantic Super Linkages. They also had a Sexual Linkage of his Mars being contra-parallel to her Pluto so they had a lot of spice as well as romance when they were together.

When you combine spice with a whole lot of romantic attraction, you can get the kind of love that you never forget about.ï¿½ WHY MARGARET BROKE OFF HER AFFAIR WITH TOWNSEND AND BROKE HER OWN HEART You might be asking why did Margaret choose to leave Townsend if she was so much in love with him?ï¿½ The answer could save you from having a heartbreak of your own. In the last link, we explained how Michael Jordan was having very bad transits during the months that led up to his wife's filing for a divorce.ï¿½ Well ï¿½ Captain Townsend was having very bad transits during the months that led up to Princess Margaret's choosing to end their relationship. Below is a CAC of the transits that Townsend was having in November of 1955, the month Princess Margaret made a speech telling the world she decided to choose duty over love and essentially dumped him.ï¿½ The black planets represent the positions of the planets when Townsend was born and the red planets represent the positions of the planets on November 15, 1955.

In the above CAC, it is easy to see that Townsend was having bad transits.ï¿½ Transiting Pluto and Jupiter were making Turbulent Transits to his natal Sun.ï¿½ Transiting Chiron and Neptune were making Turbulent Transits to his natal Neptune.ï¿½ï¿½ Transiting Chiron was also 150 degrees from his natal Saturn, and that was another Turbulent Transit because the 150 angle is Turbulent if Saturn is involved. That is a lot of bad transits involving very important planets, but it is even worse than that.ï¿½There are three Turbulent FOCUS TRANSITS. A Focus Transit (as taught to our members well over a year ago) is the most powerful type of transit and it can occur in two ways: One way: a natal chart has an aspect and a transiting planet makes a transit to both of the planets that form the aspect. Second way: two transiting planets form an aspect in the sky and each of these transiting planets make a transit to a natal planet.

In reality, a Focus Transit is actually two transits; but the two transits occur at the same time and form powerful Planetary Geometry (a powerful shape) and therefore are much more powerful than just two transits.ï¿½ A Focus Transit normally has the power of three or four transits. Captain Townsend was having three Turbulent Focus Transits when Princess Margaret decided that she would forsake their love.ï¿½ First Turbulent Focus Transit: Transiting Jupiter and Pluto formed a conjunction in the sky and they both were square to his natal Sun. Second Turbulent Focus Transit: Transiting Chiron and Neptune formed a square in the sky and they both made a Turbulent Angle to his natal Neptune. Third Turbulent Focus Transit: Townsend had a natal aspect of Neptune and Saturn (30 degrees) and transiting Chiron made a Turbulent Angle to both of these natal planets. During such bad transits, everyone, including Margaret, looked upon Townsend in the least favorable light.ï¿½ The result was heartbreak.

You might say that Townsend did not have a chance because of those transits.ï¿½ But we believe that if you know what is happening in the stars, you can avoid making drastic mistakes that would otherwise cause unhappiness for an entire life.ï¿½ If Margaret had asked us for our advice, we would have advised her to wait until Townsend's Turbulent Focus Transits passed and then make her decision.ï¿½ She probably would then have done it all differently and would have decided to choose love over duty and we could have helped her to find her Cinderella Time to make her dream come true.ï¿½ You see, we are idealistic and believe you can have both love and be responsible to duty.ï¿½ ANTHONY ARMSTRONG-JONES AND PRINCESS MARGARET Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones were married for 16 years and their marriage producedï¿½ two children.ï¿½ But they divorced and their divorce was bitter. Why did Margaret and Armstrong-Jones marry, and then get divorced?

The answers are always in the stars and Magi Astrology unlocks such answers.ï¿½ As we have said all over this website, the most reliable sign that two people could marry is the Romantic Super Linkage; and the most reliable sign that the marriage could get into trouble is the Saturn Clash.ï¿½ Margaret and Armstrong-Jones had both.ï¿½ Below is the CAC for them.ï¿½ The planets in black represent the positions of the planets when Armstrong-Jones was born and the planets in red represent the positions of the planets when Margaret was born. In the above CAC, we drew lines connecting the most important Linkages and Clashes but they had a lot of them so there are some important interaspects we did not draw lines for (we do not like to clutter the CAC). Margaret and Armstrong-Jones formed three Romantic Super Linkages (only one is highlighted with connecting lines shown in the above CAC).

First: His Chiron and his Neptune are parallel her Sun (this is the most romantic one they had) Second: His Mars and Mercury are both contra-parallel her Chiron Third: His aspect of Saturn trine Chiron both form interaspects to her Venus Considering that their Chiron-Mars Linkage is the Sexual Marital Linkage, and they had two Cinderella Linkages, they had a lot going for them.ï¿½ However, their natal charts also formed two Nuclear Clashes, and we believe these two Clashes were too much for them.ï¿½ (Margaret formed no bad Clashes with Captain Townsend.) When a couple form both very strong Linkages and also bad Clashes, the normal result is attraction during the first stage, then confusion and ultimately antagonism.ï¿½ This is what happened with the Princess.ï¿½ But if you are in a love union and you have similar conflicting signs in your CAC, it does not mean your relationship will also break up.ï¿½ When it comes to matters of personal relationships, all the rules of astrology are what we call 77 TYPE RULES.ï¿½ Such rules work 77% of the time (almost 4 out of 

5).ï¿½ These are very reliable and good rules and if we know how to use them, we are much less likely to suffer heartbreak and much more likely to find happiness in love.ï¿½ For this reason, although such rules are not 100% (nothing about human relationships is, especially when it comes to love), we should still definitely learn the rules and utilize them in our lives.

One reason there cannot be 100 percent rules about love is that God smiles on love and God smiles on lovers -- so He designed the stars to leave enough wiggle room so He can answer our prayers and make our relationships the exceptions to the rules if we are worthy.ï¿½ We promised our members we would teach them Magi Astrology before we teach the public.ï¿½ We taught our members about Focus Transits over a year ago on our Members Only Website.ï¿½ If you might like to join the Magi Society and get a head start on learning Magi Astrology, please click here and send us an email . Kate Middleton and Prince William in Mustique: 10 top facts about the private Caribbean island where royals are on holiday - Mirror Online A beach on the island of Mustique in the Caribbean (Photo: Getty) Share Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email Kate Middleton and Prince William are enjoying their holiday on the Caribbean island of Mustique before they enter the later stages of pregnancy . Fancy joining them? Here are the top 10 facts that you need to know about the private island. 10.

Mustique is part of a series of islands called St Vincent and the Grenadines in the West Indies. 9. When Spanish sailors first saw the island group in the 15th century, they named them 'Los Pájaros' or 'the birds', because they resembled a small flock of birds flying across the sea. 8. It is now a private island, owned by the Mustique Company, which is in turn owned by the people who have homes on the island. 7. The island has100 private villas, most of which are rented out through the Mustique Company. There are only about 500 year-round residents of the island, who mostly live in the villages. 6. There are two hotels on the island, called the Cotton House and The Firefly. The Cotton House only has 17 rooms, which cost up to $3700 a night. 5. It's a popular hang-out for celebrities, with stars such as Amy Winehouse, Bryan Adams, Mick Jagger and Jeremy Clarkson holidaying there. 4. The Royal family have been regular visitors to the island; this is the seventh time Will and Kate have visited.

The Queen has been three times, first in 1966, and then again in 1977 and 1985. 3. In 1971 the ship SS Antilles hit a reef just off Mustique, caught fire and sank. All passengers and crew were evacuated safely, but part of the ship can still be seen from the island. 2. The Queen's sister Princess Margaret was given a 10-acre plot of land on the island as a wedding present in 1960, and built a residence called Les Jolies Eaux. She once scalded her feet there after being “distracted” as she ran a bath. 1. The Middleton's holiday home boasts an infinity pool, games room and stunning views of the Caribbean Sea. The house is owned by a wealthy Venezuelan family - and very hard to get to.. Mustique still fit for a prince after 40 years - Telegraph Mustique Mustique still fit for a prince after 40 years Made famous by Princess Margaret in the seventies, Mustique still justly attracts royal patronage. Maggie O'Sullivan explains why.

Mustique's sandy beaches are away from prying eyes The sumptuous Cotton Club is the larger of Mustique's two hotels Image 1 of 4 Princess Margaret was given a 10-acre plot on the island as a wedding present Photo: LICHFIELD/GETTY Development on Mustique is restricted to 120 villas Maggie O'Sullivan 3:13PM BST 11 Aug 2008 On Friday, Mustique — a 1,400-acre private island in the Grenadines — celebrated a very special 40th birthday: that of The Mustique Company, the consortium of residents that has run the island since 1968. Colin Tennant, now Lord Glenconner, bought Mustique for £45,000 a decade before founding The Mustique Company and began turning it into a glamorous holiday hideaway. But what really put Mustique on the map was the arrival of Her Royal Highness the Princess Margaret in the sixties. Lord Glenconner had given her a 10-acre plot on the island as a wedding gift and she commissioned theatrical designer, Oliver Messel, to build her a villa, Les Jolies Eaux.

As Lord Glenconner once told me: “She filled it with things she had seen at the Ideal Home Show: there was an awful lot of Formica.” You can rent Les Jolies Eaux, though it has been extensively refurbished so there is little trace left of its former owner. In the early days, life on the island was simple: the roads were little more than tracks; fresh water was scarce, and the mosquitoes were fiercesome. But the infrastructure improved once Lord Glenconner began to sell land to carefully vetted, mostly British, buyers and, by 1969, there were proper roads and what is surely one of the world’s chicest little airports, complete with thatch-roofed departure/arrivals hall and a pristine white picket fence. Princess Margaret adored Mustique because it was somewhere she could let her hair down. And the parties at Les Jolies Eaux — the only property she ever owned–— were legendary. Regulars included her cousin Lord Lichfield, who had a villa nearby, gangster John Bindon — with whom Princess Margaret is rumoured to have had an affair — and Mick Jagger.

It was here, too, that she conducted her affair with Roddy Llewellyn, a landscape gardener 17 years her junior. Related Articles Property in the Caribbean: In search of gold 11 Aug 2008 Nude sunbathing was de rigueur, and lavish picnics were set out on the beach on fine china. MI5 apparently kept a discreet watch from a nearby hilltop. Princess Margaret gave Les Jolies Eaux to her son, Lord Linley, when he married in 1998, but, much to her distress, he quickly sold it. Lord Glenconner severed his connections with the island in the mid-1970s and has made no secret over the years of his distaste for Mustique and the people who live there now. But, as Prince William and girlfriend Kate Middleton’s visit last week proves, the island continues to attract the rich and famous. Mick Jagger has a villa there; as do Tommy Hilfiger, Bryan Adams, Shania Twain, the Guinness family, and Belle and John Robinson, owners of Jigsaw.

The reason the wealthy still flock here is partly to do with the island itself — it has seven white-sand beaches, an average daily temperature in the mid-80Fs and is rarely troubled by hurricanes. But it is also due to The Mustique Company which controls almost every aspect of island life, from the villa rentals to the watersports. It has limited the number of villas that can ever be built on the island to 120; refuses to allow the little port to be extended or the airport modified so that it can accept private jets; and jealously guards the privacy of its residents. Bylaws on the island include — how Princess Margaret would have scoffed — no nudity. They also stipulate: “when walking about the island in bathing-suits, please also wear cover-ups such as T-shirts or pareos”. Boats are not permitted to land on the beaches and picnics are allowed in designated areas only. Most people travel around by Mule — the local term for a golf cart — and the speed limit is set at a stately 20mph. If you have a criminal record or are undesirable in any way, you can forget it.

Needless to say, paparazzi, beggars and beach vendors are all banned. However, the right type of visitor is welcomed. Seventy of the island’s 100 private villas can be rented from $4,250 to $150,000 (£2,200 to £7,700) a week, or you can stay at one of two hotels, the tiny Firefly or the sumptuous Cotton Club, which Messel also designed. However, anyone who comes expecting the hedonistic party island of Princess Margaret’s day, will be disappointed — unless you happen to know Tommy Hilfiger, who threw a party for Beyoncé in 2004 and was pushed into the pool fully clothed by Bryan Adams. This is a quiet island. There are none of the noisy Caribbean staples: no jump-up on a Friday night, no pungent fish fry and no reggae belting out from rum-shacks on the beach. Apart from the odd foray to the famous Basil’s Bar or to the beach, residents tend to stick close to their villas or their neighbours’ villas.

The Mustique Company throws a cocktail party at the Cotton Club on Tuesday nights, but it is a sedate affair. Sanitised? Certainly. Dull? Just a little. But the attraction of Mustique for Prince William and Kate Middleton, no doubt, is that it is one of the few places in the world where they can stroll around without being watched and photographed. It is also one of the safest places : while the murder rate escalates throughout the Caribbean, the only murder in Mustique’s recent history occured 10 years ago when a French heiress was found stabbed to death in her villa — a crime that has never been solved. So happy 40th birthday, Mustique. It is comforting for many of us to know that in an ever-changing world, there are still some things that don’t change very much at all. Getting there ITC Classics (01244 355300; ) offers seven nights’ b&b at Cotton House from £2,202 per person, based on two sharing and including return transfers and flights with British Airways from Gatwick, for September departures. Staying there Firefly ( ) has double rooms from £435 per night for full board.

For details of villas to rent, visit . Note that all villas come with a minimum of three staff who live on the premises. 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.

Question: On which island in the Caribbean did Princess Margaret have a home?
Answer: MUSTIQUE