Lady Glenconner defends Diana's 'generous' stepmother after Earl Spencer's claims about the woman they called 'Acid Raine'

Lady Anne Glenconner has defended Princess Diana's 'generous' stepmother after Earl Spencer's disparaging remarks about the late Countess Spencer in his new book Swan Song.

Princess Margaret's former lady-in-waiting, whose new book Trunks and Tiaras is being serialised by the Daily Mail, said Raine Spencer was 'wonderful' with the 8th Earl Spencer after their marriage in 1976.

Lady Glenconner, 94, credited Raine, who died ten years ago from cancer, for 'saving' John Spencer's life and praised her as a wonderful godparent to her daughter May.

'I liked her,' she told Hello! magazine. '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.'

Charles portrayed the late British socialite unflatteringly in Swan Song - including detailing the infamous fight between Raine and Diana at Althorp House in 1989.

He recalled the moment Diana pushed her down the stairs after Raine said she felt 'sorry' for the then-Prince of Wales Charles because he was married to 'someone quite as stupid' as her.

In Swan Song, Robert Hardman noted, the 'charge sheet against Lord Spencer's late stepmother, Raine, runs on for pages'. 

Writing in the Daily Mail, the royal biographer suggested Raine's marriage to Charles' father John and the years they spent together at Althorp House still 'clearly rankles' the historian. 

In his divisive memoir, Charles claimed Diana found out about John's marriage to Raine via the newspapers and criticised her for selling many of Althorp estate's assets. 

He described it as Raine 'feathering her own nest for when [our] father was no longer around'. 

In his book, which was released ahead of the 30th anniversary of Diana's death, Charles said he and Diana spent their school holidays at Althorp House, but preferred the outdoors because Raine had a 'total aversion to the countryside and to exercise'. 

'We were guaranteed to be free of Raine outside,' Charles wrote about the 'stepmother we could not stand'. 

That there was no love lost between Charles and Raine is well-known. 

The Telegraph reported that the Spencer siblings nicknamed John's second wife 'Acid Raine' while Diana's former butler Paul Burrell claimed they would all sing 'Raine, Raine, go away' when they saw her. 

But in one of the book's most damning passages, Charles detailed the moments before Diana pushed Raine down a set of stairs the day before his first wedding in 1989. 

Explaining that it was the day before he married Victoria Lockwood, Charles recalled family members - including his mother Frances Shand Kydd - arriving at Althorp House for tea. 

When a staff member seated Frances next to himself, Diana became outraged and reportedly said: 'This is Charles’s mother, Raine, and she has to be included with the rest of us - not sent to a separate room like some naughty child! Do you really have no idea how to behave?' 

As tensions escalated, Raine lashed out at Diana, whose marriage to now-King Charles was steadily deteriorating, and said: 'I have always felt so very sorry for the Prince of Wales, marrying somebody quite as stupid as you.' 

Diana paused then 'hooked a long leg round Raine's calves before shoving her down the carpeted staircase', the Earl wrote, adding the family never spoke of the incident again. 

Raine met Diana's father Johnnie, who was recently divorced from her mother Frances Shand Kydd, at a cocktail party when she was still married to her first husband, Gerald Legge, the future 9th Earl of Dartmouth.

Raine came as an unwelcome addition to the Spencer family, and was often ganged up on by the children.

When Earl Spencer slipped into a coma after suffering a stroke in 1978, Raine reportedly kept Diana and her siblings away from the hospital, insisting she should be the only one to take care of him.

Ingrid Seward said: 'All the Spencer children behaved very badly to Raine; it wasn't just Diana. They were purposely ganging up on her.'

After moving into Althorp, the Spencers' ancestral home, Raine began to redecorate, which included selling antique furniture that had been owned by the family for hundreds of years and gilding picture frames in bright gold paint.

'I think when children found out what Raine was doing at Althorpe, they loathed her even more and they did try and stop her. 

'They talked to their father, but I think he was scared of not supporting Raine because he needed her so much at every level of his life,' Raine's biographer Angela Levine said.

Raine was invited to Diana and Prince Charles' wedding but was kept at the back of Westminster Abbey while her parents sat at the front, and when Johnnie died in 1992 she was kicked out of Althorp by Charles with her belongings in black bin liners.

However, Diana and Raine made amends after Johnnie Spencer died, with the princess expressing her gratitude for all the 'love' she had shown her father.  

After Charles and Diana divorced in 1996, Diana made the surprising move of inviting Raine to dinner at Kensington Palace.

'Diana was fully aware of what she was doing, she knew that this was a U-turn day. She knew the Spencer family would not be very happy but she couldn’t care less because she thought it was time Raine came back,' Diana's butler Paul Burrell said in the film.

For the last year of Diana's life the pair remained very close and spoke on the telephone every morning, before Diana died in Paris in 1997.

Thirteen months after she was removed from the Spencer family home, she married her third husband, Count Jean-François Pineton de Chambrun, but the marriage lasted just three years.

Raine died in October 2016 following a short battle with cancer.