The future of the young princesses, Beatrice and Eugenie, will have been a legal minefield for lawyers negotiating the Yorks' divorce.

COLIN BROWN

Tropical flowers in the bedroom, lunch brought to the beach. That's Mustique.

Lord Snowdon, a teenage victim of polio, yesterday declared himself as "fit as a fiddle and working flat out" as he dismissed reports that he feared a return of the disease which left him with a withered left leg one inch shorter than the other.

The Agreeable World of Wallace Arnold

Robert Winder checks out the Vidal statistics of one of America's grandest literary men; Palimpsest: A Memoir by Gore Vidal Andre Deutsch, pounds 20

ARTS

TV Review: Wogan's Island; The Trouble With Peace

LIZ HUNT

'Fuddy-duddy' or the 'apotheosis of aplomb'? Gerald Kaufman assesses the premiership of Harold Macmillan

Peter Woolridge Townsend, air force officer, courtier, diplomat, writer: born Rangoon 22 November 1914; DFC and bar 1940; DSO 1941; Equerry to King George VI 1944-52, Deputy Master, HM Household 1950-52, Equerry and Comptroller to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother 1952-53; CVO 1947; Air Attache, Brussels 1952-53; married first Rosemary Pawle (two sons; marriage dissolved), 1959 Marie-Luce Jamagne (one son, two daughters); died Saint-Leger-en-Yvelines, France 19 June 1995.

Vicki Ward on a very modern Crucifixion

Home movies made by the late Peter Sellers, including one of him doing a spoof conjuring trick with Princess Margaret, were shown for the first time yesterday, revealing an obsessive side to the comedian, writes David Lister.

From Mrs Janis E. Summers Sir: Michael Slot's sympathy for Princess Margaret is misplaced (letter, 9 December). She was free to marry Peter Townsend and "live her life as a happy and fulfilled woman" but it required her to renounce her royal privilege. An individual can always walk away from privilege but can never walk into it.