'She loved cleaning my car in Marigold gloves!' Lady Glenconner reveals Princess Margaret's secret domestic side

“I've done pretty well,” she says with her trademark modesty in this exclusive shoot and interview. “I didn’t start until I was 87 and I'm hanging up my pen now, aged 94. I am one of the last ones standing at my age who is writing about what life was like very nearly 100 years ago.”

A lady in waiting

While that life contained immense privilege – she was also a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth II at her 1953 coronation – there was terror too, in the form of her late abusive husband, Colin Tennant, later Lord Glenconner. The moving account of life with Colin, to whom she was married for 54 years and with whom she had five children, made her debut novel, Lady in Waiting, a worldwide hit upon its release in 2019.  Media and fan appearances saw her travel all over the globe, but she is never happier than when at her home in Norfolk, close to Holkham Hall, where she grew up, with her twin daughters, May and Amy, 55, frequently coming by. 

“There's something magical about being by the sea, and all the big wide skies with all the birds,” she tells HELLO!. “I've got cousins and relatives all over the place and I love it; they pop in to have a cup of tea and I always have somebody coming and going. I feel extremely lucky to have such a big family.”

A royal connection

Also nearby is the Sandringham estate, where she frequently dines with her good friend, the King. She attended his 2023 coronation, making her one of very few people to have seen both Charles and his mother take the throne.  Her family friendship with the royals goes back decades: her mother, Elizabeth, Countess of Leicester, was a lady of the bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth and her father, the 5th Earl of Leicester, was an equerry to King George VI, while Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother all attended her wedding to Colin in 1956. 

Anne became a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret in 1971 and the pair got along swimmingly; Trunks and Tiaras is a love letter of sorts to their decades-long friendship.  “I really loved her and she was a wonderful friend to me,” she says now. “People said she was spoilt and difficult – I never found that. I just used to be amused. What people forget was that when she was young, her father was emperor of half the world, so her family was terribly grand. People thought she ought to behave like them. Well, she didn't! I indulged her a bit but there were moments when I didn't. I always managed to get her to do everything she should be doing.” 

That included times, written about in Trunks & Tiaras, when she would be dispatched on some of their international trips to raise Margaret the morning after a late night: “Everybody knew she liked a drink – I'm not saying anything untoward. But she didn't do that very often. All these places we went to were made more fun because I was with her.”

World travellers

Together they travelled to Egypt, Canada, Australia, Italy and the United States while also visiting royal residences like Balmoral and Holyroodhouse. Royal Lodge in Windsor was a particular favourite, since it was where they spent time with the Queen Mother.  “She was enormous fun and always delightful,” Anne says. “She was such a good hostess. She was always interested in what one was doing, and she always asked about my parents, who she knew very well.”  

During their travels, the two women were feted by ambassadors and world leaders while experiencing once-in-a-lifetime thrills, such as dining with archaeologists from Tutankhamun’s tomb and having a personal shopping bazaar set up for them within the Egyptian embassy, so that Margaret could browse in peace. “President Reagan was wonderful,” she says. “He was charming. Barbara Bush was lovely too, but Nancy Reagan wasn't so friendly to me.”

Away from the glamorous receptions and dinners, there was also a relaxed side to Princess Margaret. “She loved cleaning my car and she had a huge pair of yellow Marigold gloves,” Anne reveals. “I had a chandelier and to my horror, she managed to get that down. I don't know how she did it. She started taking off bits, and I said: ‘Well, ma'am, how do you know how to put it together again?’ and she was a bit taken aback, because she'd rather forgotten about that.”

She also saw another side to Raine, Countess Spencer – the second wife of John, 8th Earl Spencer, the father of Diana, Princess of Wales. Anne says that Diana’s stepmother was nothing like her unflattering portrayal in Earl Spencer’s recent tell-all memoir, Swan Song. 

“I liked her. I was godmother to her daughter, Charlotte, and she was godmother to my daughter May, and she was very generous to her. I think from the children's point of view, she probably was difficult, but she was wonderful with Johnnie [Earl Spencer] – she saved his life when he was ill. And then, interestingly, she became great friends with Diana.”

Personal tragedies

While Anne espouses the traditional British stiff upper lip, which saw her cope with the devastating deaths of her sons Henry in 1990 and Charles in 1996, she also reveals some personal struggles from her childhood in Trunks & Tiaras that continue to affect her. When she and her sister Carey were aged seven and five, they were left with a relative for three years while their parents travelled to Egypt. “We sadly had a very unkind governess [while staying with a great aunt] and that jolly well toughens you up, because you're on your own. Not having any parents around brought on anxiety.”

That feeling was exacerbated by living with a mercurial husband. To the outside world, they led a charmed life between their Scottish castle and the Caribbean island of Mustique, which they transformed into an exclusive destination. But behind closed doors, Colin was prone to violent rages and left Anne penniless when he died. 

“The thing is, he made me so nervous,” she says. “Because I never knew what he was going to do. And that made me terribly anxious. The feeling of being alone when I was seven would come back to me. I still have slight anxiety when somebody comes over that I am not expecting.”

Then she adds, brightly: “And that’s why you have to have one's hair always looking nice.”

Anne recently organised an auction of her belongings – including an antique tiara – to raise money for the care of her only surviving son, Christopher, who fell into a coma after suffering a brain injury from a motorbike accident in Belize in 1987. She helped to nurse him back to health but he still requires lots of medical care. “His wife Joanna’s an absolute saint but she will need more help with him. Hopefully he will have the help he needs later on.”

Now looking forward to Christmas and a 2027 trip to Amsterdam, she was delighted to recently discover she has become a gay icon in America. “I did something for the King's Trust the other day and they said to me: ‘Would you like to know who sponsored you? It's the gay community in Milwaukee.’ I thought that was great.”