Bravely said, IanB. The broad tone of the headlines in the London Sunday papers is respectful about Margaret but removed almost beyond belief from anything that would have been printed just a few years ago. The Observer main headline: "The world she was part of died before she did." The People: "Will this finish off the Queen Mum?" The Sunday Independent doesn't even lead on her demise, though it does have a front-page pic from those faraway days when she seemingly outshone filmstars.

Several posts have suggested she might have been happier as a citizen. So she might (and so might we all, for that matter, but of course in the UK we have to settle, as did she, for being subjects). The fact is, she did have a choice. There was no law in the land that stopped her marrying Townsend. Her problem was simply that she would have had to surrender the privileges that fall to our Monarchy's hangers-on. (Less so now than then.)

(Of course her actual marriage, years later, to Anthony Armstrong-Jones was ended on Snowdon's initiative after he had seen compromising snapshots of his wife with her then boon companion Roddy Llewellyn.)