Antony Armstrong-Jones

1930 – 2017 · Generation XXXVII · Photographer · House of Windsor

Antony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon, was a photographer who married into the royal family and kept working. He was born in Belgravia on 7 March 1930, the only son of the Welsh barrister Ronald Armstrong-Jones and Anne Messel, whose brother was the stage designer Oliver Messel. His parents divorced before he was five. At sixteen he caught polio on holiday in Wales, which left his left leg an inch shorter than the right and a lasting limp. He went to Eton and read architecture at Jesus College, Cambridge, coxing the winning Cambridge boat in the 1950 Boat Race but leaving without a degree.

He trained under the society photographer Baron and built a name with theatre and society portraits. In 1957 he took the official portraits of Elizabeth II and Prince Philip for their tour of Canada. In May 1960 he married the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, and in October 1961 he was created Earl of Snowdon. They had two children, David and Sarah. As Constable of Caernarfon Castle from 1963, he designed the investiture of the Prince of Wales there in 1969.

Marriage did not end his career. He became artistic adviser to The Sunday Times Magazine and one of Britain’s most respected photographers, best known for portraits of the famous, among them Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier, David Bowie and J. R. R. Tolkien. The National Portrait Gallery holds more than 280 of his photographs. He co-designed the Snowdon Aviary at London Zoo, opened in 1964, and, shaped by his own illness, campaigned for decades for disabled people.

He and Margaret divorced in 1978, and that December he married Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, a marriage that ended in 2000. He died in Kensington on 13 January 2017, at the age of 86, and his funeral was held near Caernarfon.

Place in the family

• Antony Armstrong-Jones married Margaret Windsor, a sister of Queen Elizabeth II.

One of 53 people of House of Windsor (from 1917) in this archive. The present house — it renamed itself Windsor in 1917, setting aside the German title Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

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Partners

• Married Margaret Windsor (1930 – 2002) in 1960; the marriage was dissolved in 1978 — 2 children together

Children

• David Armstrong-Jones (1961 – )
• Lady Sarah Chatto (1964 – )

Life

• 1930 — Born
• 1960 — Married Margaret
• 1978 — Separated from Margaret
• 2017 — Died

Sources

1. Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon · Wikipedia
2. Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon · Wikipedia