Princess Margaret made 'secret visits to Caribbean villas of famous'

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Queen Elizabeth always made sure she had left London for Balmoral before allowing the great unwashed to snoop around Buckingham Palace during the summer. Yet her sister, Princess Margaret, was, I learn, just as nosy about other people’s homes as any troublesome tourist.

Television personality Susannah Constantine, who was the girlfriend of Margaret’s son, David, the Earl of Snowdon, for six years in the 1980s, has made the extraordinary revelation that the princess would secretly enter the holiday homes of rich and famous people who lived on Mustique in the West Indies.

Margaret was given a ten-acre plot of land on the southern tip of the tiny island as a wedding present from flamboyant Scottish aristocrat Colin Tennant, the 3rd Lord Glenconner, who bought Mustique and transformed it into a playground for the jet set.

‘She loved snooping round people’s houses,’ says Susannah, 61, the former co-host of What Not To Wear.

Referring to the overbearing and sinister housekeeper in Daphne du Maurier’s gothic novel Rebecca, she adds: ‘She was like Mrs Danvers, and virtually had a master key for every house on the island.’

Margaret was given a ten-acre plot of land on the southern tip of the tiny island as a wedding present from flamboyant Scottish aristocrat Colin Tennant, the 3rd Lord Glenconner, who bought Mustique and transformed it into a playground for the jet set. Pictured, the royal in Mustique in 1976

Queen Elizabeth II arrives in Mustique and is welcomed by Princess Margaret in 1977

Susannah says she stayed on Mustique with King Charles’s aunt ‘five or six times’.

Among the homes they entered was a Japanese-style villa called Britannia Bay House, which belonged to pop superstar David Bowie.

It was designed to look like a temple, decked out in clashing animal print, which the late singer once described as ‘the most delightful cliche’.

Susannah says: ‘We went to his house and snooped around. No security.’ The Princess remarked waspishly of Bowie’s home decoration: ‘She went, “This would look very nice in downtown Tokyo”, because it was sort of Balinese-esque. That was her sort-of put-down, of not particularly approving of how it was decorated.’

The presenter, whose own mother struggled with bipolar disorder, developed a close relationship with the Princess. Speaking to The Travel Diaries podcast, she adds: ‘I miss her.’

Margaret’s property on the island, Les Jolies Eaux, meaning beautiful waters, was built with the help of theatre designer Oliver Messel.

The house was a private sanctuary for the Princess, who enjoyed a lively social life on Mustique with friends including her ‘toy boy’ Roddy Llewellyn, the landscape gardener with whom she had an eight-year affair.

Five years before she died, Margaret gave Les Jolies Eaux to her son, who sold the property to American businessman Jim Murray.

Princess Margaret and Susannah Constantine. Susannah says she stayed on Mustique with King Charles’s aunt ‘five or six times’

Princess Margaret and David Bowie pictured meeting one another in 1969

Other famous names who have owned homes on Mustique include Rolling Stones singer Sir Mick Jagger and members of the Guinness family.

In 2021 it was revealed that Bowie had even gone so far as to have Princess Margaret removed from a private bash at his villa on the private Caribbean island – due to her being ‘drunk’.

Bowie’s friend Edward Bell previously told The Daily Mail: ‘He was telling me about a party he’d hosted in Mustique.

‘Princess Margaret had been invited – and got so drunk that he had to have her chucked out.

‘I said, “Oh dear, she sounds as bad as some of those pop stars.” He took that badly and walked straight off.’

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