Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown

The Crown, is a Netflix television series, about Queen Elizabeth and her reign, that most of us enjoy. Lady Anne Glenconner, the author, was asked to assist several of the stars as they played the parts of Princess Margaret and her Lady In Waiting. She loved every minute of it.Living life in a great manor, the Holkham Hall, with servants and some wealth was not the best of times. Father, Earl of Leicester and a mother who showed little emotion, except ‘keep a stiff upper lip’ to see you through the bad times, and the good times if there were any. Veronica Coke, now known as Lady Anne Glenconner, tells us the story of her life, and quite a story it is.As a child her hands were tied to the head of the bedstead at night by her nanny. Her parents did not know since they were seldom around. Somehow she managed to grow up with the British reserve, but also with naivitivity In life.Anne and Princess Margaret had been childhood friends, and as young women they took up their friendship again. Anne was one of Queen Elizabeth’s six Maids of Honor at her coronation, which was the thrill of a lifetime As a young woman,Anne fell in love with a young man who broke their engagement to run off with another woman. That man turned out to be the father of Diana, Princess of Wales. Broken hearted she instead married an older man, full of eccentricities, Colin Tennant, who eventually became Lord Glenconner. He was a millionaire with a castle in Scotland, and all to the good. Anne thought him very handsome and endearing. His kind of behaviors would be enough to turn off most of us today, but Anne grinned as she was taught.In the 1970’s, Anne was made Princess Margaret’s Lady in Waiting. She loved Margaret, and even though Margaret had her down days, Anne was certainly used to that kind of behavior. Anne’s husband gave Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones a piece of land in Mustique where she built a villa, Les Jolies Eaux. Anne was Lady in Waiting for Margaret for thirty years. These years are the best part of the book, funny and sad, but with good insight into the life of this royal. Her chapter of the last months of Princess Margaret’s life is extremely well written and poignant.Anne and her husband went on to have five children, three of whom had terrible deaths, and how Anne was able to carry on is questionable. Certainly there were good times and many humorous moments that Anne writes about, but the miseries seem to be major. Anne shows some insight into her life, and her time with her children are her joy. The real shock is that Anne’s husband died and left his estate to someone else. Her entire life was gone, practically penniless what was she to do? She rose to the occasion, as always.Recommended. prisrob 03-25-2020

Anne Glenconner started life as Anne Veronica Coke, daughter of The Honorable Thomas Coke (son of Viscount Thomas Coke) and Lady Elizabeth (daughter of Charles Yorke, the 8th Earl of Hardwicke). Ultimately her father became the 5th Earl of Leicester. With their main estate, Holkham, being less than 20 miles from royal estate Sandringham House, the royal children Elizabeth and Margaret were playmates, their father an equerry, their mother a lady of the bedchamber.With this book, we get a little window into the life of the British aristocracy - the boarding schools, the shooting parties, the debuts, the rounds of parties. The pressure to make a good match and competently run a household. The need to produce a male heir promptly.And, fundamentally, the need to be the supportive wife. Anne married the erratic, and from the book's description certainly narcissistic, Honorable Colin Christopher Paget Tennant, ultimately the second Baron Glenconner. Although delightfully amusing, and leading her on a round of social engagements that were front-page news, her life was one of service to him, to his crowd-gathering tantrums, and to the guests and projects he dropped on her; of service as a Lady in Waiting for multiple decades to Princess Margaret; and of service to her own children - it's a wonder she managed it all. Not much room for her own life there.With that in mind, I found the book interesting, but dated in its views. It's very chatty and seemingly open, but much is glossed over. We know, today, for example, that the introduction of Roddy Llewellyn and Mustique to Princess Margaret, both performed by the Glenconners, were public relations nightmares for the royal family, but the author shares little of the negative, commenting instead on the reassurance offered her by the Queen Mother at the Princess's funeral. We miss a frank sharing of the contemporary press coverage at the time. It's very much a book of feelings, rather than frank admissions and actions.But perhaps, by the time you're 87 years old, that's how you see things. And it's extremely interesting nonetheless. I wish there had been more photos. My Hachette softcover was 321 pages.