Lord Snowdon, Princess Margaret’s former husband, dies aged 86
LORD Snowdon, the former husband of Princess Margaret, has died.
A family spokesman said the 86-year-old died peacefully at home today.
The photographer and filmmaker, who split from the Queen's sister in 1978, leaves behind four children.
Buckingham Palace released a statement saying the Queen has been informed of her former brother-in-law's death.
They declined to comment further.
Lord Snowdon shared two children with Princess Margaret, David Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley, and Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones.
After a messy, public divorce from the Royal that lasted 16 years, Lord Snowdon went on to marry Lucy Lindsay-Hogg.
The couple had one daughter together, Lady Frances Armstrong-Jones, and split in 2000.
Lord Snowdon also fathered a daughter, Polly Fry, shortly before marrying Princess Margaret in 1960.
A DNA test taken by Polly in 2004 confirmed the Earl was her father, but he denied taking the test until four years later when he admitted the truth.
While the Earl will be largely remembered for his failed marriage to the Queen's sister, he was also an acclaimed photographer and passionate campaigner for the disabled.
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With his legendary charm and a string of lovers over the years, his tangled affairs of the heart often hit the headlines.
He was a slightly Bohemian character who, in the anything-goes Swinging Sixties, married into the Royal Family, becoming Princess Margaret's handsome groom at a grand wedding in Westminster Abbey.
The couple became style leaders of the decade, leading a glamorous lifestyle and mixing with famous faces such as Peter Sellers and Noel Coward.
A celebrity photographer who rode a motorbike, had divorced parents and was born without a title, Lord Snowdon was dubbed the "first royal rebel" for his dislike of convention.
He was the first real commoner to wed a king's daughter for 450 years.
Antony Armstrong-Jones, the Lord's full name, was the son of barrister Ronald Armstrong-Jones QC and society beauty Anne Messel, who went on to become the Countess of Rosse.
His parents separated when he was young and at 16 he contracted a form of polio, called poliomyelitis.
He overcame his disability by making a study of leg muscles and then devising exercises, but the experience was to make him a life-long campaigner against the discrimination of disabled people.
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