‍IN THE Swinging Sixties it was the ‘in-thing’ to be seen with a rock star, the more notorious and high profile the better. Who better then than pot-smoking, womanising wild boy Mick Jagger?

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‍But did his fame on stage and in the bedroom stretch as far as royalty? Did Princess Margaret have an affair with him? The question has haunted journalists in Fleet Street for a lifetime.

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‍Not without reason, Jagger said himself that he had about 4,000 lovers and his second wife Jerry Hall, once described him as a “dangerous sexual predator.” When they divorced, he allegedly slept with the therapist he was seeing for sex addiction.

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‍After Margaret’s death on February 9, 2002, best-selling American writer Christopher Andersen wrote that the rock star first met the princess, in her 30s, at the 16th birthday party of Lady Victoria Ormsby-Gore, daughter of the former British ambassador to the United States.

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‍The story, revealed in the Mail Online, was that as Jagger surveyed the room, Princess Margaret, wearing one of her cleavage-baring gowns, beckoned him over. Immediately, Jagger sprang to his feet — leaving behind his indignant girlfriend, supermodel Chrissie Shrimpton. She had reason for concern.

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‍At the time, drinking, smoking, partying free-wheeler Margaret, was creating a trail of news, anecdotes and love affairs, even though she was married to Tony Armstrong-Jones. At parties she would glue a box of matches to her glass, so that she could light cigarettes without disturbing her drinking. And she was known to like younger men.

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‍“There was a flirtation going on there, definitely,’ said Lady Elsa Bowker, whose husband, Sir James Bowker, was Britain’s former ambassador to Austria and Burma. After that night, according to one courtier, Margaret and Jagger spoke on the phone constantly and she invited him to social events and private dinners out.

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‍The courtier said: “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 there was something going on.” Were they ever lovers? If they were Jagger, has never kissed and told — but the Fleet Street rumours grew, even though there was no real proof.

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‍However, Margaret’s sister The Queen was apparently not impressed with the gossip. And for years Mick’s knighthood was strangely withheld while the Beatles and Elton John got theirs.

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‍Writer Anderson said: “The Queen could tolerate the Beatles because they were clean-cut and sort of sweet, the Stones were coarse, brutish and seemingly possessed of insatiable sexual appetites. Elizabeth insisted Margaret stay away from Jagger, believing that he would only tempt her to commit more infidelity.”

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‍In 1971, Margaret persuaded Jagger to build a house on the paradise island of Mustique her favourite hideaway. He did, and they shared many private times there. Margaret and Jagger were to remain close from then on.

‍Mustique was reported to be a nest of affairs and sexual shenanigans and one of the people Margaret was alleged to have had an affair with there was notorious gangster John Bindon – known in Flet Street for his party trick of hanging five half-pint beer tankards from his manhood.

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‍It was claimed that Margaret once had Bindon showing her his lengthy appendage on the beach in front of one of her ladies-in-waiting.

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‍When Jagger was living with his girlfriend Marianne Faithfull in Cheyne Walk, they were invited to a party to celebrate a visit by the American poet Allen Ginsberg. Guests included Margaret and several of her titled cousins, five Cabinet members, a smattering of Oxbridge intellectuals, and his uber-wealthy neighbour John Paul Getty II, it was later reported in the Mail.

‍None shone brighter that night than Mick — in a mulberry-coloured tunic with flouncy sleeves — and Marianne, bra-less in a tight purple blouse and miniskirt.

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‍While they were chatting with Margaret, a butler passed around a silver tray heaped with brownies — made from a hash recipe popular with hippies at the time. The chef, however, had apparently doubled the amount of hash normally included.

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‍A guest recalled: “People began freaking out. All these ladies and lords, curators of the British Museum and various MPs, were rushed away in their chauffeur-driven cars to have their stomachs pumped.”

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‍The Queen was told that her sister had been rushed to the hospital suffering from severe food poisoning. The truth was somehow kept out of the Press at that time.

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‍But it was impossible to block Jagger’s knighthood for ever, and in 2002, the year Margaret died, Jagger’s name was announced in the Birthday Honours List. On December 12, 2003, he turned up to be knighted in his trainers, but instead of the Queen, he got Charles, standing in for his mother.

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‍Charles didn’t like Jagger, but his wife, Diana did. She invited him to tea at Kensington Palace. Aware of the Margaret rumours, Charles insisted she cancel the meeting, said Anderson.

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‍After a row, Diana grudgingly agreed to invite a pop star Charles found less threatening — the slightly paunchy and balding Phil Collins.

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‍WAS A BID TO KILL QUEEN VICTORIA
A SINISTER PLOT BY SECRET SOCIETY?

‍DID YOU KNOW? That when waiter Edward Oxford attempted to kill Queen Victoria as she took a carriage ride through Hyde Park in 1840, he fired two shots. His first shot missed, but that was part of his plan.

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‍He believed the carriage would stop so those onboard could investigate the sound of the bang. They did. And Victoria got out too, giving him a better shot, but he was a lousy gunman, and he missed.

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‍Oxford was jumped on by the crowd and later charged with treason. Police and some historians believed he was a member of a secret society known as Young England, who wanted to install a stronger monarch who could influence parliament, it was reported.

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‍The sentence for treason was hanging, but police couldn’t find any bullets so the court agreed he just shot gunpowder at the Queen – and found him not guilty on grounds of insanity, The Times reported.

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‍After three years in Broadmoor Hospital, Oxford was released and sent to Australia, where he flourished, marrying a rich widow – and becoming a successful journalist!

‍Woman in her fashionable cat hat

‍WORLD OF STUFFED CAT HATS
AND DEATH DOLLS FOR GIRLS

‍WILD BEARS stuffed to be dumb waiters with drinks’ trays at country homes; monkeys turned into lamps; crocodiles fashioned into parlour cabinets; giraffes’ spines made into coat hangers; horses’ hooves mounted on solid silver, used as doorstops; stuffed cats reshaped as ladies’ hats and death kit dolls for girls to learn how to mourn. This was the growing world of Victorian taxidermy and death … and some of the Press and animal lovers weren’t happy.

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‍For the explosion of the taxidermy phenomena, led to a huge rise in the number of Big Game hunters, eager to make money from animal furniture. The royal seal of approval for this cruel cash-spinner came at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and was reported by the world’s Press.

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‍When Queen Victoria visited the taxidermist area at the Crystal Palace show, she ordered two fur coats for her and Albert. She had also been impressed with a large chair made from the bones of a baby elephant. So much so that she began to collect stuffed animals and animal furniture herself and keep them in a wild menagerie at the Palace.

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‍But she never stuffed her own pets, they were buried after a ceremony in a special Palace graveyard. She had 640 dogs in her lifetime. The Royal Party were also fascinated viewing horses’ hooves in a choice of over 100 different designs, including ink pots, tobacco jars, bells, cigar stands, spirit lamps, match boxes and trinket cases. All advertised for sale in newspapers such as The Morning Post.

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‍At this time, the public’s attitude to death was different to today. With death rates high among the young from diseases such as tuberculosis, measles and diphtheria, parents often had their children’s bodies embalmed and even photographed with the rest of the family on the sofa  or put them to bed in their rooms at night as always, for days after their deaths.

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‍Little girls were often presented with ‘Death Kits’, which included a doll and miniature coffin. The child would practice dressing the doll, laying it out for visitors and placing it in the coffin, ready for a funeral. Other dolls would be dressed in black to mourn. This allowed girls to practice funeral rituals, preparing them for the societal expectations of mourning and the realities of death. Passing on was a normal way of life all around her and stuffed pets were often kept in the house.

‍A death toy for girls

‍The Great Exhibition was a major international event in London's Hyde Park, showcasing this Victorian way of life and the country’s industrial and cultural achievements in a giant glass structure nicknamed The Crystal Palace by Punch magazine. The nickname has stuck until this day.

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‍The grand show was organised by Prince Albert and featured over 100,000 exhibits from around the world, attracting six million visitors and underlining Britain's position as an industrial power. It was probably the most successful, most memorable and influential cultural event of the 19th century and ran from May 1 to October 15. Its success confounded the predictions of its many doubters in parliament and the Press.

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‍Publications that criticised the exhibition included the radical-leaning Reynolds’ newspaper, which called it a "gigantic humbug" for the working class, and the Tory-protectionist John Bull magazine, feared the effects of free trade and warned of foreign revolutionaries invading Britain. Sound familiar?

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‍The world’s leading English taxidermist of this era was Rowland Ward, who, as a boy was fascinated by animal life and often removed the skins of small mammals in his parent’s kitchen to make moulds and casts. He soon had an impressive knowledge of animal structure.

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‍After 10 years working for his taxidermist dad, Ward started his own business at a showroom called "The Jungle" in London’s fashionable Piccadilly. His ambition was to make taxidermy a refined art, superior to the old-fashioned crude style of straw-stuffed animal skins.

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‍He wanted animals to look as life-like as possible and he would set them in natural groups. When he was modelling an animal in a particular pose, he would make frequent visits to the zoo before he obtained exactly the look he wanted.

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‍Then from a drawing or a small wax model, a life-size copy was reproduced in his workroom. He developed the use of wood wool to stuff his wood and metal skeletons, over which was placed a cloth-like modelling compound to shape the muscles and folds in the skin.

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‍Ward insisted on making a series of careful measurements of an animal’s body and he led the field in projecting animals to participate in Victorian life such as giant Indian Tortoises with hollowed out backs as musical boxes; alligators with hollowed out stomachs standing erect on their hind legs as drinks’ cabinets; tiger skulls as bedroom lamps and stag antler cutlery.

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‍He became extremely rich thanks to big purchases from customers including one order for 60 rhinoceroses, 300 grizzly bears and 30 lions to be stuffed.

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‍STUFF THAT!

‍VICTORIAN philosopher Jeremy Bentham ordered that his body should be preserved by a taxidermist in his will. When he died on June 6, 1832, it was. Dressed in his own clothes it still stands in a glass case with a wax head in the foyer of University College London.

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‍TERRY MANNERS

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‍15 September 2025