Princess Margaret to be remembered

LONDON, England -- Up to 1,900 people, including the British royal family, are to mark Princess Margaret's life during a memorial service at Westminster Abbey on Friday.

The service will take place two months after the death of the princess who was patron to a string of orchestras and ballet groups.

About 25 members of the UK royal family as well as 600 foreign royals, dignitaries and friends will attend the service along with 600 colleagues from charities and other organisations.

In addition 580 members of the public, who asked to be present at the service and were selected by ballot, will be there.

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Actresses Dame Judi Dench and Nanette Newman, film maker Bryan Forbes, and jazz musicians Johnny Dankworth and Cleo Laine were expected to be among the congregation with the princess's former lover, Roddy Llewellyn.

At the princess's request, the 50-minute service is to be sung by four choirs -- from Westminster Abbey, King's College, Cambridge, St George's Chapel, Windsor, and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, London.

Before the service, led by Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr Wesley Carr, an orchestra is to play a selection of the princess's favourite music, including Tchaikovsky's "Awakening" pas de deux from the ballet, Sleeping Beauty, and compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Actress and friend, Felicity Kendal, is to give a reading along with princess Margaret's son, Viscount Linley.

Opera stars Dame Felicity Lott and Bryn Terfel are to be soloists in the service which, in accordance with the princess's wishes, is to be set around Faure's Requiem.

The princess, who died on February 9, aged 71, will be remembered 10 days after the funeral of her mother.

Margaret's private funeral service had been held at St George's Chapel, Windsor, on February 15, before her cremation in Slough.

The memorial service will take place at the same mediaeval abbey where she was married to Antony Armstrong-Jones more than 40 years earlier.

The Queen Mother, who died at the age of 101 on Easter Saturday, requested that no memorial service should be held for herself.

The princess' ashes will be placed in the George VI Memorial Chapel where her parents' coffins are interred.

The princess had a strong interest in music and dance. By the age of four, she was taking music lessons and became an accomplished pianist.

She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from London University in 1957, when she also became the Royal Ballet's first president, and was president of the Sadler's Wells Foundation and Trust.

In addition, the queen's younger sister was patron of Scottish Ballet and the Halle Concert Society, and president of the English Folk Dance and Song Society.

Princess Margaret was also linked with charities concerned with children's welfare and youth activities, and nursing organisations.

Among the royals due to attend were the princess's son David his wife Viscountess Linley, and the princess's daughter, Lady Sarah Chatto, and her artist husband Daniel.

Also expected to be there were the queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Wales with prince Harry, the Duke of York, the Earl and Countess of Wessex, the Princess Royal with her husband Commodore Timothy Laurence, Prince Michael of Kent, and Princess Alexandra.

Official court mourning, for both princess Margaret and the Queen Mother, comes to an end after the memorial service.