In reality, the Princess and Townsend didn't correspond at all in the decades after their split and the letters they exchanged are now in the royal archives. She in turn reveals that she still has all the letters he sent to her during the height of their romance. In The Crown season 5 episode 4, Peter Townsend says he kept every single one of Margaret's letters to him and offers to return them to him to prevent them falling into the wrong hands. Did Princess Margaret keep all of Peter Townsend's love letters? There is no evidence that they shared one last kiss, as was depicted in The Crown.

They are thought to have spent the afternoon chatting like old friends, yet other guests at the event are said to have found him disgruntled and convinced that in agreeing to part, he and Margaret had set a noble example which seemed to have been in vain. Margaret is reported to have said that Townsend, who was then aged 77, looked 'exactly the same, except he had grey hair'. Yet rather than meeting him in public, as Margaret did in the Netflix drama, she decided not to attend the reunion they'd both been invited to, for fear it might be picked up by the press and invited him to lunch at her apartment in Kensington Palace. Peter Townsend and Princess Margaret shared a romance in the 1950s (Image credit: Getty)

Time and Chance by Peter Townsend