The trial of aristocrat Constance Marten – convicted this week alongside her lover, rapist Mark Gordon, of killing their baby daughter, Victoria – has inevitably inspired painstaking investigation into how a woman born to such privilege could choose to act in such a morally bankrupt manner.
A possible clue to her character has been hiding – if not quite in plain sight – in the pages of Lady In Waiting, the bestselling memoir by Anne Glenconner.
The book contained a vivid and, in retrospect, troubling insight into Constance Marten’s grandmother, Mary Anna Marten, a friend of the late Queen.
When they were in their mid-70s, Mary Anna – a ‘remarkable’ and ‘substantial figure’ – and Lady Anne became frequent travelling companions. ‘She would ring out of the blue and ask if I wanted to go on holiday,’ wrote Anne, recalling that the ‘strangest’ trip they ever took was to Russia.
Only when en route did Mary Anna confide she had an ulterior motive. She explained that one of her five daughters had inadvertently married someone who – Mary Anna was convinced – was a Russian spy.
Able to speak ‘a bit of Russian’, Mary Anna had arranged to talk to a man in Moscow about ‘getting rid’ of him. Their rendezvous was to be in a park. When the time came, Anne sat on another bench a little way distant from Mary Anna and a ‘shifty-looking man’, wondering ‘whether we would be arrested’.
‘When she came back, I said: “Well, what happened? Have you hired a hit man?” Mary Anna replied: “Actually, I don’t think it’s going to work quite as I hoped. There are one or two difficulties.” ’
Anne was ‘unbelievably relieved’ and ‘even more relieved when we left Moscow altogether’.
All five of Mary Anna’s daughters married – Charlotte, the second of them, to Alexander Mosley, the elder of Sir Oswald Mosley’s sons by his second wife, Diana Mitford. But Mary Anna, who died in 2010, seemingly gave no clue as to which of her sons-in-law she was so blithely considering sending to an early grave.
The future Elizabeth II and Mary Anna (right)
Gemma’s hoping for crazy rich skincare
This is one job Gemma Chan couldn’t easily turn down . . .
The Crazy Rich Asians star has become the face of her sister Helen Born’s £200-a-bottle skincare range, Sapphire Dust, which uses particles of the gemstone to give a youthful glow. Gemma, 42, pictured far right with Helen, calls the brand’s ‘skin activator’ a ‘game-changer’.
Made by Dr Dayal Mukherjee, the solution promises ‘Botox-like’ properties by combining sapphire particles to polish the skin, triggering cell renewal from within.
Gemma Chan (right) and sister Helen Born attend the Sapphire Dust Skincare lunch
Keep it to yourself, but…
A celebrated dame and national treasure is a regular user of ketamine, the destructive narcotic known as Ket.
How star photographer Hugo’s Big Day was saved
He was awarded a Royal Warrant after taking the official photographs of King Charles’s
second wedding in 2005, then Prince William and Catherine’s six years later.
But Hugo Burnand was not amused by the photos from his own big day.
‘I was in charge of the photography, getting it organised, and I didn’t get it organised,’ admits Hugo, who married Louisa Hallifax, daughter of the late Admiral Sir David Hallifax.
‘A very good portrait photographer was asked last minute to come and take some wedding photographs. I don’t think he’d done many weddings and it was a sort of disaster, to the extent that my wife cried, and not for the right reasons, when we got the pictures.’
‘That was a bit disappointing,’ he adds on his entertaining new podcast Double Exposure, which he co-hosts with celebrity portrait photographer Cambridge Jones. Old Etonian Hugo says his stepmother, Ursy, ‘saved the day’ by insisting: ‘I’m doing the formal [wedding photos].’
Hugo and Louisa, who have four children together, have since separated but remain close friends.
Has Andrew’s pal Hofit landed a royal catch?
Prince Andrew’s friend Hofit Golan is enjoying a secret royal romance.
Asked this week about her relationship status, the Israeli model tells me: ‘Well, who says I don’t have a nice gentleman? A certain royal one, too.’ Hofit, 39, refused to name her suitor at the Knights of Charity Gala, which was sponsored by ULYSSIA at the Chateau de la Croix des Gardes in Cannes.
She explains: ‘Sometimes Press is not the best thing for a relationship. It will last longer.’
Hofit Golan dressed to dazzle at the gala in Cannes
Graham’s cash snatch
Some 25 years after appearing in the Guy Ritchie classic Snatch, Stephen Graham has really got his hands in the till. Accounts at Companies House disclose that Graham – star and co-writer of Adolescence, Netflix’s most watched series of 2025 – tucked away a £3.5million profit from his two companies last year, £2.6million of it in Gralf Ltd, and the rest in Matriarch Productions. The 51-year-old, from Kirkby in Merseyside, plays Bruce Springsteen’s father in Deliver Me from Nowhere and stars in the Peaky Blinders film, The Immortal Man, due out later this year. Kerching!
Bella’s super swimwear modelling makes a splash
PHONES4U founder John Caudwell praised his new daughter-in-law, Isabella, for the ‘love, support and happiness’ she brought to his son, Jacobi, 21, during their lavish wedding this year in Juan-les-Pins, France.
And the new Mrs Caudwell is clearly keen to make a lasting impression beyond her in-laws.
I hear that Bella, as she’s known to chums, has been modelling bikinis as part of Super Swim Week at the W hotel in Hollywood.
And she’s won the approval of her mother-in-law, Claire Johnson, who was once a model herself.
‘Adore them,’ Claire says of the newlyweds.
Isabella Caudwell posing in a bikini on Instagram
A touching moment the other day at the Royal Hospital Chelsea during the funeral of one of the residents. As the coffin was being carried out of the chapel, the uniformed Chelsea pensioners broke into a soft chorus of the Dad’s Army theme tune, Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr. Hitler?. It was originally performed by Bud Flanagan for the show.
The House of Lords heard that the US Embassy owes a total of £15 million in traffic fines. This led Labour’s Lord Brennan to propose that President Donald Trump’s motorcade should be asked to pay the congestion charge and parking fees when it rolls into London for a state visit in September.
But Conservative peer Lord Callanan dreaded to think what might happen to the ‘poor parking warden having to put a ticket on President Trump’s limousine’.
Fergie on ‘brave’ King
Sarah, Duchess of York, has hailed the bravery of King Charles and the Princess of Wales in the way they have dealt with their respective cancer battles.
She was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2024, the same year the King was treated for cancer and Catherine received preventative chemotherapy. ‘They’ve pushed through and deserve an enormous star of courage,’ she tells me at the Knights of Charity Gala in Cannes. ‘The recognition shouldn’t just be for royals, but everyone battling this disease.’
Fergie, 65, was also diagnosed with breast cancer in the summer of 2023 and still has a hard time finding suitable outfits after undergoing a single mastectomy.
‘You have to have the pins in the right place… and I always forget that,’ she says.
The Duchess of York in France
Zoe Ball, who bought the house next door to ex-husband Norman Cook, is embroiled in a turf war.
‘I’ve got this gang of foxes, cats and squirrels that basically s*** in all the borders,’ the Radio 2 presenter groans. Zoe, 54, who sold her £2million Sussex country home last year to relocate to a townhouse in Brighton and Hove, tried to outwit them with lemon, thyme and mulch, but this backfired. ‘The squirrels are now digging up their monkey nuts and the bulbs they nicked off me . . . this is warfare. I’m going to sit at dawn with a pop gun under a blanket aiming at them.
‘They’re bold. They come up to me like a little gang of s****y squirrels.’ Perhaps Cook, aka DJ Fatboy Slim, has tips for managing unruly party animals?
