Princess Margaret‘s former lady-in-waiting Lady Anne Glenconner has revealed how she found ‘solace’ in her garden during ‘dark times’.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Telegraph to mark the release of her book Lady Glenconner’s Picnic Papers and other Feasts with Friends in paperback, the British socialite, 93, opened up about the death of her two sons.
‘My garden has been a constant companion. It has seen me through so much sadness, so much grief,’ explained the late Queen Elizabeth II‘s friend.
‘The most difficult time of my life was losing two of my sons. Henry died of Aids in 1990, Charlie died of drugs in 1996. My third son Christopher had also been in an appalling motorcycle accident.
‘At one awful point, I thought I was going to lose all three. When I got home from nursing Christopher, I would sit in the garden. In dark times, it became a place of solace, of peace.’
Lady Glenconner’s second son Henry, who came out as gay after getting married and having a son, died aged just 29 from Aids in 1990, while eldest Charles passed away in 1996 from hepatitis.
Meanwhile, her third son Christopher, born in 1968, suffered a catastrophic head injury in a motorbike accident while on a gap year in Belize. She nursed him as he spent four months in a coma, before caring for him for five years after he woke up.
Mother-of-five Lady Glenconner, who for decades served as a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, also endured a campaign of abuse from her late husband of 54-years, Colin Tennant.
Lady Glenconner uses her gardens to provide solace during ‘dark times’ (pictured at a service of celebration to mark the 60th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation at Westminster Abbey, June 4, 2013)
The 3rd Baron Glenconner subjected his wife to sadistic beatings and was a flagrant adulterer – but the couple stayed married until his death in 2010.
During the ‘dark times’ she suffered, Lady Glenconner took ‘solace’ in her gardens, where she had eventually planted a touching gesture to remember her sons.
The aristocrat revealed to The Telegraph how she planted trees in her garden that represented them.
In her garden, she planted a red beech for Henry because of his own red hair while Charlie had a horse chestnut grown in his name since he greatly enjoyed collecting conkers as a child.
Lady Glenconner revealed how she says hello to the trees that represent her children every day.
In her 2022 memoir Whatever Next?: Lessons from an Unexpected Life, Lady Glenconner recounted some of her husband’s worst rages.
The mother-of-five was left deaf in one ear following 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, after he bought the Caribbean island in 1958.
Lady Glenconner also served as a lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret (pictured left)
Lady Glenconner met her husband, high profile aristocrat Colin Tennant, at a debutante ball at the Ritz during the summer of 1955 and quickly fell in love
Lady Glenconner’s eldest son, Charles, died from hepatitis in 1996 (pictured together at his christening in 1957)
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.
Shortly before he died, Tennant changed his will and left everything he owned to his valet, Kent Adonai.
Lady Glenconner later said that the decision was ‘one last flourish of his sadistic side, the side that revelled in the distress of others and which at times had made any sort of marriage to him seem an impossible burden’.
Lady Glenconner with her husband Colin Tennant on the island of Mustique in March 1973 – in one of his rages on the island he beat her so hard that she went deaf in one ear
Lady Glenconner served as a maid of honour at the late Queen’s Coronation in 1953. Above: She is seen third left on the Buckingham Palace balcony with the Royal Family after the Coronation service
‘I could not and would not be broken by him from beyond the grave, any more than I would allow it when he was alive … I made a conscious decision not to dwell on that final act of cruelty.’
Lady Glenconner later admitted that her decision to share her own story of her husband’s abuse had been ‘influenced’ by Queen Camilla’s work with domestic abuse survivors in her role as patron of the Safelives charity.
