‘I hardly dare say it,’ ventures Lady Glenconner, ‘but I’ve had a fantastic lockdown!’ She lives at the farmhouse she bought near Burnham Market, on her father’s advice, as a refuge from Colin. Life is blissfully peaceful now, but never dull. He educated me, he could be very funny.’ Colin died in 2010, leaving his fortune to his servant. Lady Glenconner tried to leave, when Charlie was a baby: ‘But my mother said: “You go straight back.”’ They were married for 54 years. (She was enraged by Craig Brown’s 2017 savage, mischievous biography, Ma’am Darling.) The Margaret of Lady Glenconner’s memoir isn’t without certain ‘royal moments’, but her many kindnesses are emphasised. It was chiefly to correct public opinion of Margaret that Lady Glenconner set about writing her book. In 1971, Princess Margaret asked her to become a lady in waiting, a position she held until the Princess’s death in 2002. She was a maid of honour at the Coronation in 1953, before marrying the colourful Colin Tennant (later Lord Glenconner), creator of Mustique. Here I am, next year I’ll be 90, and I’ve got this exciting, amazing life.’īorn Lady Anne Coke, eldest daughter of the 5th Earl of Leicester, she grew up at her beloved Holkham, where the Cokes were close to the Royal Family as a child, she played with Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret at nearby Sandringham and her father was equerry to George VI. ‘Sometimes, I feel like a child,’ she enthuses.
It recently passed 100,000 sales in America, has been published in France and bought by Russia and Japan.
Her memoir, Lady in Waiting, is a publishing phenomenon, selling nearly half a million copies in the UK alone and spending 37 weeks in the bestseller charts.
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