Princess Margarets Wedding Day

Some publications are books. Others are souvenirs. And then there are the wonderfully British little booklets that exist somewhere between printed keepsake, national mood board and official memory. Princess Margaret’s Wedding Day belongs proudly to that last category: a 32-page pictorial tribute to ceremony, pageantry and the determinedly polished presentation of royal life at the precise moment it wished to be admired.

Published in 1960 by Pitkin Pictorials, this is exactly the sort of item Britain used to produce so well: slim, handsome, informative and utterly convinced that a royal wedding deserved to be preserved not merely in newspapers and conversation, but in a dedicated booklet to be bought, kept and occasionally rediscovered decades later in a second-hand bookshop. Which, frankly, it has now done rather well.

There is something delightful about the title in its complete lack of embellishment. Princess Margaret’s Wedding Day. No subtitle, no coyness, no need to explain why anyone might care. The assumption is simple: this happened, it mattered, here are the pictures. And in 1960, of course, it mattered enormously. Royal weddings occupied that special territory where romance, constitutional theatre and national distraction all met in one glittering package. A princess marrying was not merely a private event. It was public spectacle with hats.

And what spectacle. The whole occasion had everything the royal pictorial tradition requires: grandeur, fabric, protocol, flowers, polished carriages of thought if not always literal carriages, and an atmosphere of choreographed joy in which even the smallest detail seemed to carry constitutional weight. Pitkin Pictorials, with its admirable talent for packaging British heritage into manageable printed form, was made for this sort of thing. It specialised in the compact preservation of events, buildings and institutions, turning history and ceremony into something you could slip into a pocket or place reverently on a side table.

That is part of the charm here. This is not a sprawling biography or a thick modern retrospective with revisionist footnotes and a chapter on media scrutiny. It is a period piece from the event itself, or close enough to it, carrying the fresh sheen of contemporary admiration. It offers not distance, but immediacy. Not analysis, but presentation. The wedding is not yet history here. It is still occasion. That makes the booklet all the more evocative, because it preserves not just the images, but the tone of the moment—the way Britain wished to see the monarchy, and perhaps itself.

As a 32-page booklet, it also has the virtue of compact seriousness. Pitkin publications always seem to suggest that you can, and indeed should, be properly informed in a relatively small number of pages. There is a wonderful efficiency to that. Why produce a vast tome when a neatly assembled pictorial can do the work with glossy restraint? The result is a publication that feels both modest and ceremonial, a souvenir with just enough authority to stop it feeling flimsy.

As sold by Crappy Old Books, this copy is in Good condition, which feels entirely fitting. A royal wedding booklet ought to have survived with dignity. Not pristine in some unnerving, untouched way, but nicely kept, like something once bought with genuine interest and then stored among other respectable household reading. Good condition suggests it has weathered the decades well, retaining all the charm of an object made to commemorate a bright public day and now re-emerging into a world much less certain about ceremony, though still rather fond of looking at it.

There is also a pleasing irony in its afterlife. Once sold as a timely memento of a royal event, it is now also a historical artefact in its own right. The booklet is no longer merely about Princess Margaret’s wedding day; it has become part of the story of how such days were packaged, remembered and domesticated for the public. It tells us as much about 1960 Britain and its appetite for royal imagery as it does about the wedding itself. Which is really the best sort of second-hand bookish magic: the subject ages, and so does the object, until each starts illuminating the other.

Perfect for royal memorabilia collectors, lovers of Pitkin ephemera, students of post-war British culture, or anyone who enjoys slim publications devoted to occasions once considered unquestionably important. It is charming, visually nostalgic and quietly steeped in the assumptions of its time. A little booklet of monarchy, mood and managed elegance.

Princess Margaret’s Wedding Day is more than a souvenir. It is a snapshot of a nation looking at itself through the lens of royal spectacle and finding the result pleasing enough to print. Small, ceremonial and unexpectedly evocative, it now enjoys the sort of second life only second-hand books can provide.

Condition: Good. 32-page booklet. Still neat, still regal, and still carrying the polished glow of a very public day. Sold by Crappy Old Books.

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