Princess Margaret’s lady-in-waiting Anne Glenconner on why she doesn’t regret staying with her abusive husband – and how she is having the ‘time of her life’ at 93… including with her lifelong friend King Charles

Over the years she has more than proven herself as a survivor, having endured violent beatings and infidelity at the hands of her husband, as well as the tragic loss of two of her children.

But now aged 93, Lady Anne Glenconner, the former lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, looks back at her fulsome life with a degree of fondness – and remains surprisingly philosophical.

‘In life you have to take the rough with the smooth’, she sagely advises in an interview with Hello! magazine.

Her no-nonsense approach to her remarkable life lies at the core of her latest memoir, in which she reveals that despite unhappiness she also experienced love and admiration for her husband – and doesn’t regret staying with him.

She has also opened up about what it has meant to be accepted into the inner circles of the Royal Family, including her closeness to lifelong friend King Charles – as well as to share her childhood with his late mother, Queen Elizabeth II and aunt, Princess Margaret.

Manners and Mischief: An A–Z of Royal Tales and Surprising Wisdom follows her best-selling memoir, Lady in Waiting, published in 2019, which revealed fascinating insights into her life among the royals – as well as harrowing details of her abusive marriage to her husband of 54 years, Colin Tennant, later Lord Glenconner.

At the time she had never put pen to paper, but amid the pain of having been cut out of her late husband’s will she found the impetus to finally tell her story in her own words.

‘It was the most extraordinary thing that has ever happened to me. I was 87, I had never written anything before, but Colin had left this horrible will which left nothing to me and I thought: “What can I do now?”

‘And then I was sitting next to this very nice young publisher at lunch, rabbiting away. And he said: “Have you ever thought of writing a book?” When I started to prepare for it, I realised that I had had, actually, the most extraordinary life.’

Born on July 16, 1932 as Anne Veronica Coke to The Hon. Thomas Coke and Lady Elizabeth, she was the eldest of three children and spent much of her childhood on the family estate, Holkham Hall, in Norfolk.

As a young girl, she spent time playing with young Princess Elizabeth and Margaret, both at her home and at Sandringham, which is a few miles from Holkham Hall.

She  was presented at court in 1950 and named Tatler’s debutante of the year. Three years later, she was selected as one of the maids of honour at the Coronation of Elizabeth II. 

Then in 1955, she met her husband, Colin Tennant, the 3rd Baron Glenconner, and swiftly fell in love. The couple married the following year at a lavish wedding attended by the Queen, the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret and went on to have five children.

In 1971 she was appointed lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret. 

On the surface, she led a charmed life of privilege and contentment. 

But Lady Glenconner shared in her 2022 memoir Whatever Next?: Lessons from an Unexpected Life, how Tennant was shockingly violent at times.

His worst rages came after he bought the Caribbean island of Mustique in 1958, a decision Lady Glenconner later described as a ‘great leap into the unknown’.

The mother-of-five was left deaf in one ear after a particularly vicious beating – during which she feared her husband would kill her.

It happened one night in the late 1970s, when the family were celebrating the birthday of their twin daughters, Flora and Amy, on Mustique.

Tennant was infuriated by Lady Glenconner’s decision to excuse herself from speaking with clients so she could return to her children.

After roughly forcing her into his car and driving them home, Tennant physically attacked her.

‘Drawing up at the house, I got out of the car and before I knew what was happening, he hit me across the head from behind with his shark-bone walking stick,’ she said.

‘It knocked me straight to the ground. And then he launched in on me.

‘I lay there, trying to protect my head and begging him to stop. He didn’t: he was in a frenzy, quite out of his mind. I was utterly terrified, convinced he might actually kill me.

‘I have no idea how long it lasted, but eventually he tired himself out. I lay there until I heard his car drive off, then crawled into the main house and locked myself into the bedroom.’

Lady Glenconner, who is still deaf in one ear to this day, said Tennant did later apologise and promised he would not do it again.

Adding to their strained marriage was the double tragedy of losing their two eldest sons at a young age. 

Charlie, who was addicted to heroin, passed away from hepatitis C in 1996 aged 39, while Henry died from an Aids-related illness, aged 29, in 1990. 

Meanwhile their youngest son, Christopher, was left in a coma after suffering a terrible brain injury in a motorbike accident in Belize in 1987, from which she nursed him back to health.

Through it all, Lady Glenconner – now a grandmother of six and great-grandmother of five – maintained that she doesn’t regret staying in her marriage until Colin died in 2010.

‘The children were so much happier we stayed together,’ she says. ‘In a way, he was a man of many parts. He was clever and amusing, he educated me and was wonderful in lots of ways. 

‘But then the flip side was that he was dangerous as he couldn’t control his temper; and because I have got this stiff upper lip I stayed with it for 54 years.

‘Sometimes it was awful and I loved the time it wasn’t. I think in life, you have to take the rough with the smooth. 

‘When you marry someone you marry their bad parts too. Sadly [domestic violence] is so widespread and I’ve been terribly humbled by the letters I got from people and I try to help. 

‘It’s difficult, because behind closed doors you don’t really know what’s going on.’

Few knew until her later years what she had been through – but she counts King Charles as one of her closest confidantes. 

The closeness of their families has led to a decades-long friendship and she dines often with him at Sandringham, which is only ten miles from Lady Glenconner’s family home, Holkham.

‘We just have the best time ever,’ she says. ‘I talk with him about the past and all the happy times we had at Holkham. My mother was a lady-in-waiting to the late Queen, and he used to stay with us. 

‘My mother taught him how to [shape] pottery, which he loved. And when he went to Gordonstoun [boarding school], where he wasn’t very happy, I think she made all the difference. 

‘She used to write to him a lot and send him books on pottery and I’ve got lots of letters from him to my mother.

‘One said he was really excited as he was making some soup bowls and was very worried he hadn’t fired them properly and that when people put soup in they might break.’

She also reveals having ‘great admiration’ for Queen Camilla. The two women share a mutual interest in helping domestic violence charities. 

‘My last book, Picnic Papers, was sold in aid of the charity, SafeLives, that she’s patron of and she got me on board for that. She knew a bit about my life and encouraged me to write about it.’

Among Lady Glenconner’s many fascinating experiences is her attendance at two coronations – Queen Elizabeth II, and again as a guest at King Charles’s ceremony in 2023. 

Thinking back to 1953, she says: ‘The Queen was not nervous, but there was obviously a certain nervousness everywhere. It was being televised all around the world and it really was the most marvellous day of my life.’

And of the King’s Coronation, she says: ‘He could only invite 120 or so close friends, so I was very honoured to be asked. And of course, it was wonderful, because I could relax. I had dinner with him three days later. I went in and he said: ‘How was it Anne?’ And I said ‘Magnificent!’

Now a nonagenarian, Lady Glenconner has more than put the sadder times behind her – and says she is in fact busier than ever.

‘How could I not be having the time of my life? Here I am, at 93, and the other day I went to Vienna. I did a talk and went to the wonderful opera. And then I went to Chatsworth for the Queen’s Reading Room Festival, where I was sitting next to Jilly Cooper. I had the most wonderful dinner with her with lots of champagne. I couldn’t believe it that just a few days later she died.’

She continued: ‘It’s fantastic because for a lot of my life, being married to Colin and being lady-in-waiting, I was invisible. I mean, quite rightly with Princess Margaret, less so with my darling husband.

‘So here I am at my age, suddenly I’m out with a bang. People ring me up, wanting me to do things. And I am enjoying it.’

Read the full interview with Lady Glenconner in Hello! magazine, on sale now.