Anne Glenconner was born Lady Anne Coke in 1932. The eldest daughter of the 5th Earl of Leicester, she grew up at Holkham Hall in Norfolk and was a childhood friend of the late Queen and Princess Margaret and a maid of honour at the Queen’s coronation. She married Colin Tennant, later Lord Glenconner and the owner of Mustique, an island in the West Indies, in 1956. They had five children together, of whom three survive. Her son Charlie, a former heroin addict, died of hepatitis in 1996. Her son Henry died of Aids in 1990. She was appointed lady in waiting to Princess Margaret in 1971. Her first book, a memoir called Lady in Waiting, was published in 2019 and became a surprise hit. Now she has written another, Whatever Next?, in which she reveals that during her marriage she was a victim of domestic violence.
Why did you decide to write a second memoir?
There was a great deal more that I wanted to say. But the publication of Lady in Waiting made me braver. It is extraordinary to become a bestselling author at 87, your book translated into 12 languages.
