Townsend recalled that "we felt mute and numbed at the centre of this maelstrom"; Elizabeth also wanted the media circus to end. Townsend only had his RAF income and, other than a talent for writing, had no experience in other work. He wrote in his autobiography that Margaret "could have married me only if she had been prepared to give up everything -- her position, her prestige, her privy purse. I simply hadn't the weight, I knew it, to counterbalance all she would have lost" for what Kenneth Rose described as "life in a cottage on a Group Captain's salary". Royal historian Hugo Vickers wrote that "Lascelles's separation plan had worked and the love between them had died". Warwick said that "having spent two years apart, they were no longer as in love as they had been. Townsend was not the love of her life – the love of her life was her father, King George VI, whom she adored".
Townsend recalled that "we felt mute and numbed at the centre of this maelstrom"; Elizabeth also wanted the media circus to end. Townsend only had his RAF income and, other than a talent for writing, had no experience in other work He wrote in his autobiography that Margaret "could have married me only if she had been prepared to give up everything -- her position, her prestige her privy purse. I simply hadn't the weight, I knew it, to counterbalance all she would have lost" for what Kenneth Rose described as "life in a cottage on a Group Captain's salary". Royal historian Hugo Vickers wrote that "Lascelles's separation plan had worked and the love between them had died". Warwick said that "having spent two years apart, they were no longer as in love as they had been. Townsend was not the love of her life – the love of her life was her father, King George VI, whom she adored".