Church's teachings that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before others." The BBC interrupted its scheduled radio programme to broadcast the statement. In 1959, aged 45, Townsend married 20-year-old Marie-Luce Jamagne, a Belgian national he had met the previous year. They had two daughters and one son. Their younger daughter, Isabelle Townsend, became a Ralph Lauren model in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Isabelle Townsend and her family renovated and lived at Le Moulin de la Tuilerie in Gif-sur-Yvette, where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor had once lived. Death and legacy Townsend died of stomach cancer in 1995, in Saint-Léger-en-Yvelines, France, at the age of 80. The Independent wrote in Townsend's obituary that "He developed, too, a perceptible sense of relief that things turned out the way they did", because "for men like Mark Phillips and Princess Margaret's eventual husband Anthony Armstrong-Jones, [marrying into the royal family] turned out to be an almost impossible undertaking". In 2002, a sculpture of Townsend, designed by Guy Portelli, was erected at Townsend Square, part of the Kings Hill development, on the site formerly occupied by the RAF West Malling airfield. In popular culture Townsend is portrayed by Ben Miles and Timothy Dalton in the Netflix television series The Crown. Selected works References External links New York Times obituary on Peter Townsend 1914 births 1995 deaths British air attachés British expatriates in France British non-fiction writers British World War II flying aces Commanders of the Royal Victorian Order Companions of the Distinguished Service Order Deaths from stomach cancer Equerries People educated at Haileybury and Imperial Service College People from Yangon Recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross (United Kingdom) Royal Air Force group captains Royal Air Force pilots of World War II The Few 20th-century non-fiction writers Deaths from cancer in France Male lovers of royalty