Shooting star: Lord Snowdon’s son Jasper Cable-Alexander on inheriting his father’s creative spark, photography and finding love | Tatler

Jasper Cable-Alexander

This feature was first published in the October 2021 issue of Tatler and remains unedited.

Jasper Cable-Alexander is one trendy 23-year-old. His brown hair is tied back in a straggly ponytail, his bowling shirt (emblazoned with an eagle) is oversized and his white jeans are cropped. His looks – slight build, sharp nose and electric-blue eyes – recall those of his late father, the celebrated photographer and one-time husband of Princess Margaret, Lord Snowdon. Snowdon’s affair with Melanie Cable-Alexander, the daughter of a baronet and a former journalist at Country Life, resulted in Jasper’s birth in 1998.

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Jasper is thrilled by the family resemblance and loves people mentioning it. And why shouldn’t he? ‘My dad is my idol,’ he says, as he sips a Coca-Cola at Electric House on Portobello Road. ‘I’ve always looked up to him as a father, and as a photographer.’

All of which casts doubts on newspaper reports that Antony Armstrong-Jones – who was created Earl of Snowdon in 1961 – had little contact with his son: ‘I saw my dad all the time until he died when I was 18,’ says Jasper, who is himself a photographer and a filmmaker. ‘I used to love watching him work. He always knew exactly the image he liked – he’d circle the contact sheet in red. It was really cool.’ Little wonder then that Jasper was at the memorial service for his father at Westminster Abbey in April 2017. The Queen was also in attendance, as were Jasper’s four half-siblings, David Linley (the current Lord Snowdon), Lady Sarah Chatto, Lady Frances von Hofmannsthal and Polly Fry – the daughter Snowdon fathered with his friend’s wife just weeks after marrying Princess Margaret.

Princess Margaret with her husband, born Antony Armstrong-Jones, photographer Lord Snowdon attend Badminton Horse Trials on April 18, 1970

Unlike his father, though, Jasper seems a paragon of fidelity; he has been with his girlfriend, actress Connie Martin (‘a major muse’), for four years. We should, he says with commendable gusto, expect big things from the 25-year-old Goldsmiths graduate, who has a lead role in Trapping, a Penny Woolcock-directed film that’s currently in post-production. ‘Connie is incredible,’ he enthuses. ‘She’s far more interesting than I am.’ They met on a film set and have been inseparable ever since. So inseparable that they have collaborated on several projects and share a passion for cinema. ‘We could talk about film forever,’ he says.

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Though Jasper is more than happy to acknowledge his father’s influence, he prefers working in film. And while Snowdon’s subjects were largely from the upper echelons of society, Jasper is more interested in ‘underground music and alternative imagery’, he says, showing me a dark and mysterious clip of a man hanging from the ceiling like a bat. Still, his father played a part in his cinematic ambitions: ‘As a kid, I would always explore my father’s darkroom,’ he says, his voice bearing no trace of his upper-class origins. ‘I remember opening a cupboard full of old film cameras and thinking how beautiful they were.’ There was more: ‘It was really cool to watch him work. I remember thinking, “This is an interesting way to direct people – I should do that when I’m older.” He knew how to frame people, and I do, too. I think it runs in the blood.’

Jasper, photographed with his girlfriend, actress Connie Martin

So does rubbing shoulders with bohemian types, as Snowdon and Princess Margaret did. ‘I just love hanging out with young creatives who are doing their thing,’ says Jasper. Though he’s an intense young man who doesn’t really like to party, he loves sitting around bonfires, listening to his muso chums playing guitar. And whenever the couple’s friends from the film and art world visit the flat he and Connie share, they’re directed to a canvas that covers the wall. ‘I tell them to draw whatever they want, so it’s this one big piece of art from all these creative people.’ One of those friends is art dealer Domenica Marland, whose roster of high-society artists includes Jasper, Willemien Bardawil and the illustrator Tatiana Alida, Victoria Beckham’s protégé.

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An only child, Jasper is well accustomed to getting ‘creative’ on his own. Initially brought up in west London, he moved at the age of eight with his mother to Castle Cary in Somerset, where he spent much of his childhood watching films. Well, not always – he recalls how he used to do ‘small performances’ at the Theatre Royal, Bath. He did ‘terribly, academically’ but thrived creatively, and describes his school as ‘very lovely’, wincing when I wonder aloud if it was private. ‘It’s not interesting,’ he says.

Lord Snowdon

Jasper doesn’t much like talking about himself. What he does reveal is that he met and befriended Clyde Stevenson Spencer (who was once in Motown band The Drifters) when the musician stayed in the B&B his mother runs in Castle Cary; Jasper went on to make a documentary about him, and they’re still friends. His mother is now married to Martin Redwood, co-founder of a garden- folly manufacturer (Jasper sang and handed out roses at their wedding in 2015), and plans to devote more time to her writing while she runs the B&B. The guesthouse sounds a great seedbed for Jasper’s inspiration. As were his yearly summer visits to Liguria to see his Italian uncle: it was there he took many of the photographs Domenica Marland has for sale.

But Jasper hasn’t played on his connections – he found his feet in the film world by spending school holidays working on sets and shunning university in favour of a career as a runner. Soon after, he was plucked from obscurity by the photographer Rankin, who’s shot Kate Moss and David Bowie among others. ‘I was working on this set and Rankin apparently said, “I don’t know who that is but I want to hire that guy.”’

Jasper worked for Rankin for a year and a half, travelling all over the world. But now he has decided to jump into full-time directing, at first making music videos. He is set on producing documentary films – a medium his father was fond of – and feature films; he’s a big fan of directors Harmony Korine and Roy Andersson, as well as performance artist Marina Abramović. All good role models for an up-and-comer, but Jasper Cable-Alexander’s got one problem to solve: he’s so young and fresh-faced, he still gets mistaken for the runner on his own film sets. But directing is what he’s born to do, he says, his eyes alive with ambition: ‘Sitting in the cinema, watching your own film. That’s the dream.’