It was a last act of rebellion by a Princess who defied convention all her life. Who would ever have guessed that Princess Margaret’s final journey would take her from the medieval splendour of her funeral service at St George’s Chapel, Windsor to the humble surroundings of a suburban crematorium?

At her wish, no members of her family followed her on the eight-mile drive to Slough, but beside the hearse’s chauffeur sat Inspector John Harding, who had been the Princess’s bodyguard for more than 20 years, poignantly determined to carry out his duty to safeguard her to the end.

A king’s daughter would not normally make such a departure from this world. But it’s exactly what Margaret wanted. She had planned her own funeral meticulously. She did not want to be laid to rest at Frogmore, the windswept Windsor burial ground where most royals have been buried for the last 70 years. There was no room for her coffin in the vault in which her father King George VI lies beside the nave of St George’s Chapel, Windsor. The only alternative was cremation, so that her ashes can now be interred with him, the man dearest to her memory at the end.

For the full story of Princess Margaret’s moving funeral service, see this week’s HELLO! magazine