Princess Suffers Mild Stroke
Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II's sister, suffered a mild stroke while on vacation in the Caribbean island of Mustique, Buckingham Palace said Tuesday.
The 67-year-old princess, the queen's only sibling, suffered the stroke Monday night. She is in stable condition, a palace statement said.
The princess was treated by doctors on Mustique and then flown to Barbados, a larger island, where she was to be hospitalized today. The palace said she will return to England as soon as she is well enough for the trans-Atlantic flight.
Ken Will of the Mustique Company, which operates the paradise island, said the queen's younger sister walked to the airplane flying her to Barbados for medical tests.
"She was able to walk from her car on the tarmac to the plane. She is not on a stretcher, she is sitting in the plane," Will told BBC radio.
Margaret, who is four years younger than the queen, regularly goes on holiday to Mustique.
Divorced in 1978 from photographer Earl Snowdon, the princess is among the least publicly active members of the British royal family.
Lord Snowdon was "most concerned" the British news agency Press Association reported. He and Margaret have two children, Viscount Linley, 36, and Lady Sarah Chatto, 33.
The health of the princess, who was once second in line to the throne but is now only the 11th, has been a concern in the past to the royal family.
Surgeons removed a section of her left lung in January 1985, with newspapers speculating that her condition was brought on by chain-smoking.
Princess Margaret is generally viewed by the British public as a lonely, perhaps even tragic figure.
Critics have called her as a jet-setting playgirl or a gin-drinking hedonist whose behavior often upset the queen and pained the upper echelons of Buckingham Palace.
The princess's most recent public appearance was late last month when she visited her 97-year-old mother, who had a hip replacement, in a London hospital. The Queen Mother Elizabeth left the hospital last week.
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