"In the summer of 1993, I was living in a cockroach-infested flat and earning my rent selling advertising space in magazines, a job I was so bad at it was almost a talent. On the table next to mine, was a guy who worked on a Royal magazine, very camp and very funny and every morning, we’d tear through the papers looking for leads. One morning, we were doing exactly this and he suddenly said, "Oh, she’s dead!" I said, "Who?" And he said "The Dirty Duchess," and off my blank look said "Oh, come on, Sarah, you must have heard of the Dirty Duchess" - and that was the beginning.

There was a photograph to accompany the obituary, a frail, bird-like woman glaring out from under a giant sculpted black wig with a restrained imperious fury, there were details of her like of death, beauty, style and privilege, her many affairs, her vicious divorce from her second husband, the Duke of Argyll, the notorious Polaroid photographs and the speculation about the identity of the Headless Man. Still, after all this time, the speculation about who he was. I wasn’t a writer at this time, I didn’t even know that I was going to be a writer but there was that little shiver in the blood of looking at the woman in her obituary photo and wondering, "But who are you? What’s your story?"

And here we are, several decades later with A Very British Scandal, the tempestuous marriage and the bitter, brutal divorce of the Duke and Duchess of Argyll. It’s a story about a woman who refused to be slut shamed, who refused to go quietly and refused to do as she was told. She set fire to the expectation of her class, gender and her sex rather than go quietly. She put the private lives of the wealthy, the landed and the titled all over the front pages, not the untouchable great and good, but bare forked animals. Judge Wheatley’s three-hour long indictment of Margaret’s character, her sexual morals, destroyed her and meant that even when she’d died, two telesales people in North London would talk about the 'Dirty Duchess’ - but I think she’s heroic.

And she was honourable. Even before the nature of the photographs were made evident, Margaret was accused of having more than 80 lovers. She could have defended herself - some were single friends in extra-marital affairs and others, if she’d been honest about them, would have been sent to prison for being gay. But Margaret never betrayed her friends. That’s honour. She was spoiled, troubled, complex, demanding, infuriating, beautiful, stylish, silly, generous, vain, bloody-minded, very funny and brave. I love her for all of it.

She’s an icon. This is a very small part of her story." - Sarah Phelps - 9 December 2021

Production Notes for A Very British Scandal

Written by Sarah Phelps (The Pale Horse; Dublin Murders), A Very British Scandal focuses on the divorce of the Duke (Paul Bettany) and Duchess of Argyll (Claire Foy), one of the most notorious, extraordinary and brutal legal cases of the 20th century.

Famed for her charisma, beauty and style, Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, dominated the front pages, as a divorce featuring accusations of forgery, theft, violence, drug-taking, secret recording, bribery and an explicit polaroid picture - all played out in the white-hot glare of the 1960s media.

A Very British Scandal turns this scandal inside out in order to explore the social and political climate of post-war Britain, looking at attitudes towards women, and asking whether institutional misogyny was widespread at the time. As her contemporaries, the press, and the judiciary sought to vilify her, Margaret kept her head held high with bravery and resilience, refusing to go quietly as she was betrayed by her friends and publicly shamed by a society that revelled in her fall from grace.

Produced by Blueprint Pictures, A Very British Scandal will premiere on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in the UK and be available on Amazon Prime Video in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Sony Pictures Television are the international distributors and brokered the deal with Amazon Studios.

Filming took place across the United Kingdom earlier this year.