Lady in Waiting

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The late Princess Margaret was perhaps one of the sadder members of the royal family, if only for the fact that she seems to have been a chain-smoker and whisky-drinking cougar who never did very much at all apart from waltzing about being an entitled princess, in all its connotations. This memoir is written by the lady-in-waiting who was closest to her, Anne, Lady Glenconner, now in her nineties, a blue blood connected either by family or friendship to nearly everyone in aristocratic circles in the UK.
 
Anne knew she was a disappointment right from birth, when she should have been a boy destined to become the next Earl of Leicester. In her era, upper-class girls had little value other than finding a suitable husband before she was out of her teens, preferably one with money and high status, and to produce more heirs, while putting up with husbands that any self-respecting modern woman would kick out. She didn’t receive any form of higher education and was expected to tolerate all her husband’s foibles, including abuse, gas-lighting and adultery, and keep her mouth shut.
 
This upbringing explains to some extent why Anne married the ghastly and mentally unstable Colin Tennant and stuck with him through behaviour that would break anyone else. The honeymoon “education” in France should have been enough for her to bolt and demand an annulment. It is interesting to speculate if she’d married her first love, Johnnie Spencer (who ditched her because of perceived insanity in her genes) how modern royal history might have been different. Johnnie married another woman instead and became the father of the late Princess Diana. (One can see echoes of Anne’s experiences in Diana’s own story.)
 
Much of the book covers the tedious development by Colin of the island of Mustique in the Caribbean, which became Princess Margaret’s famous bolt-hole after her marriage failed, and the haunt of many other celebrities. The locals who had once independently grown cotton for export were deemed capable of simply turning into menials serving the rich and royal tourists.
 
Whether she wrote this autobiography herself, or was helped by a ghost writer, is debatable. Whoever did the historical copy editing didn’t bother to closely check facts and there are a number of anachronisms that have slipped through, e.g. Anne reminisces about Sir Thomas Cook, “… the founder of the package holiday incidentally …”, coming to her school. This must have been time-travel given he died in 1851. There are also confused references to mad King Ludwig of Bavaria’s numerous castles and one of his mistresses, Anne’s ancestor, Jane Digby. It was the gay and mad King Ludwig II who was famous for dabbling in castles, but not women. Jane Digby’s lover was his grandfather, King Ludwig I, who may have been only slightly mad and was definitely not gay. And quite a few more that perhaps only fussy history fiends like me would spot!
 
Some behind-closed-door stories also feel apocryphal but, given the general nuttiness and eccentricity endemic in this family, others are so outrageous or improbable that they are probably true. These stories found their way into the media, with one particularly appalling episode featuring Colin who was so incensed at his wife and Princess Margaret being put into first class on a plane while he was relegated elsewhere, that he lay down in the aisle and had a full-on tantrum worthy of any three-year-old, resulting in him being forcibly removed, after which British Airways banned him for life. It wasn’t the first time Colin had behaved in such a manner, he had another tantrum during an opera which was so bad Anne had to put a rug over his head to shut him up and the conductor had to repeat the scene. These antics by any normal person would result in them being certified and cared for in some mental institution. Apparently, all the royal family were aware of his tendency to tantrums and somehow blithely ignored them.
 
The coup de grace came when the insufferable Colin left everything in a two-line Will to a male friend that could have left Anne and her children destitute. She fortunately had some assets in her own name and, of course, good connections to rally round and support her.
 
One has to admire Anne’s psychological strength. How she coped without coming apart from the seams herself with the tragedies involving her three sons in particular is more than the average person could dare to imagine. Perhaps she had become so used to denial or those proverbial English traits of pulling up socks and gritting teeth as defences, they helped through these events in her life.
 
Unlike other biographers who perhaps never knew Princess Margaret personally, she is kinder towards her, and the Princess comes across as smarter, funnier and a little more likeable than might be expected.
 
If there’s anything to be gleaned from this expose, it’s the familiar trope that a privileged birth and wealth will never guarantee happiness.
 
Three stars.

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