Margaret, Duchess of Argyll (1912-93), emerged as an outrageously scandalous figure when her husband, the 11th Duke, cited 88 men as her lovers. They allegedly included government ministers and three members of the Royal Family. By Donald Trelford
The most famous exhibit in her 1963 divorce from the Duke was a Polaroid picture of the Duchess, naked except for a pearl necklace, engaging in a sex act with a man, also naked, who was wearing a mask. Speculation went on for decades about the masked man. Was it Duncan Sandys, Churchill’s son-in-law, or the film star Douglas Fairbanks Jnr? Years later it emerged that the man in the mask was in fact a less celebrated figure, an American banker called Joe Thomas. Her name is in the news again, 28 years after her death, aged 80, in 1993, with a BBC drama about her, A Very British Scandal. The Duchess is played by Clare Foy, the young Queen in The Crown....
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