Lady Sarah Armstrong Jones, the only niece of Queen Elizabeth II, was present at her mother’s bedside when Princess Margaret died on February 9, 2002. Born on May 1, 1964, at Kensington Palace, she entered the world seventh in line to the throne. Her birth placed her at the heart of one of the most scrutinized royal marriages in British history. Her parents, Princess Margaret and photographer Anthony Armstrong Jones, had married in 1960 at Westminster Abbey.
Their wedding was the first royal ceremony ever broadcast on television, watched by an estimated 300 million people. The marriage was initially seen as a modern, glamorous fairy tale. By the time Sarah arrived, her father had already been created Earl of Snowdon, a title granted the year before her brother David’s birth in 1961. Sarah grew up in Apartment 1A at Kensington Palace, a 20-room residence furnished with fine antiques.
Her childhood spanned three distinct homes: the London palace, the Messel family estate of Nymans in Sussex, and a villa on the Caribbean island of Mustique, which Margaret received as a wedding gift. The island, where her father’s uncle Oliver Messel designed the villa Les Jolies Eaux, later became the backdrop for the public unraveling of the marriage. Behind the public facade, the marriage was failing. Biographer Anne de Courcy, writing with Snowdon’s cooperation, described a union blighted by infidelities and mutual cruelty.
Margaret’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Glenconner, recorded that Snowdon would hide cutting notes in his wife’s books, glove drawer, and among her handkerchiefs. The couple eventually communicated in grunts when passing in hallways, and a surviving list reportedly detailed reasons Snowdon hated his wife. The marriage produced documented consequences beyond its two children. Polly Fry, born months after the 1960 wedding, was later confirmed through DNA testing to be Snowdon’s daughter.
He also had a son, Jasper, born in 1998 with a magazine editor, after his second marriage. That second marriage, to his former assistant Lucy Lindsay-Hogg in 1978, produced a daughter, Frances, in 1979. Margaret was not a bystander in the breakdown. Biographers are consistent she took lovers of her own.
In 1976, photographs of Margaret with landscape gardener Roddy Llewellyn, 17 years her junior, on Mustique were published. The images triggered public condemnation and a Member of Parliament called her a royal parasite. Sarah was 11, turning 12, when the scandal broke in the newspapers. The marriage formally ended in March 1976 with a separation, followed by divorce in 1978.
It was the first divorce of a senior royal in 77 years, since Victoria Milita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha divorced in 1901. The event stood in sharp contrast to 1936, when King Edward VIII abdicated to marry a divorced woman. The only documented account of the impact on Sarah is a single hedged line reporting she was reportedly quite shaken by her parents’ split. Sarah attended Bedales, a progressive arts school, and left with one qualification: a single A level in art.
She served as a bridesmaid at Princess Anne’s 1973 wedding and at the 1981 wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, where she was the eldest of five bridesmaids. Those two public appearances marked the edges of her childhood rather than the beginning of a public life. She worked without credit in the wardrobe department on the 1983 Merchant Ivory film Heat and Dust, shot in India. Her father had a photographic assignment there, and she found her own work on the set.
It was on that production that she met actor Daniel Chatto, the son of actor Tom Chatto and theatrical agent Ros Chatto. Their romance grew slowly from around 1986, out of public view. Sarah trained as a painter at Camberwell School of Art, studied printed textiles at Middlesex Polytechnic, and completed a post-graduate diploma at the Royal Academy Schools. She won the Winsor & Newton Prize in 1988 and the Creswick Landscape Prize in 1990.
She exhibited under her maiden name, Sarah Armstrong Jones, showing with the Redfern Gallery from 1995. Her paintings, landscapes and interiors in oil, sold at modest prices, a deliberate separation from royal association. She married Daniel Chatto on July 14, 1994, at St Stephen Walbrook, a small Wren church in the City of London. About 200 guests attended, with no children present.
The Reverend Chad Varah, founder of the Samaritans, conducted the service. Diana, Princess of Wales, attended the ceremony but not the reception at Clarence House; Prince Charles attended both. Sarah wore the Snowdon Floral tiara and her mother’s diamond and pearl earrings. She became Lady Sarah Chatto, keeping the courtesy title she held from birth and adding her husband’s surname.
Daniel received no title. No peerage was created. The couple had two sons: Samuel, born July 28, 1996, who became a sculptor and ceramist, and Arthur, born February 5, 1999, who served as a page of honor and was commissioned as a Royal Marines officer in 2022. Arthur also completed a 2,000-mile rowing challenge around Britain in 2020.
Princess Margaret’s decline began in February 1998 when she suffered a stroke while on Mustique. She had already lost part of her left lung in 1985 after decades of heavy smoking. Further strokes followed, leaving her with vision loss and paralysis down her left side. She made her final public appearances in late 2001, attending her mother’s 101st birthday and Princess Alice’s 100th birthday.
During these years, Sarah was consistently present and attentive. Margaret died in her sleep at King Edward VII’s Hospital on February 9, 2002, three days after the 50th anniversary of her father’s death. Both her children were in the room. She was cremated, and her ashes were interred in the King George VI Memorial Chapel on April 9, 2002.
The Queen Mother died seven weeks later, on March 30, 2002. After her mother’s death, Sarah’s place within the royal family deepened. Royal editor Emily Nash described her relationship with the Queen as very close and unique. Her godchildren include Prince Harry and Lady Louise Windsor.
When Prince Philip’s pandemic funeral was reduced to about 30 mourners in April 2021, Sarah was among those present. She also attended the Queen’s state funeral in September 2022. Her life stands in contrast to her mother’s. Margaret, denied the man she loved in her twenties, sought freedom through public glamour and was consumed by the attention.
Sarah chose distance and privacy. Her paintings, her small wedding, and her refusal of any title beyond a courtesy one were acts of deliberate withdrawal. In a family where everyone either performed the drama or was broken by it, she did neither.
She walked away, quietly, and remained loyal.