| Honorific Prefix: | The Right Honourable |
| The Dowager Lady Glenconner | |
| Birth Name: | Anne Veronica Coke |
| Birth Date: | 16 July 1932 |
| Birth Place: | Kensington, London, England |
Anne Veronica Tennant, Dowager Baroness Glenconner (née Coke; born 16 July 1932) is a British peeress and socialite. The daughter of the 5th Earl of Leicester, Lady Glenconner served as a maid of honour at the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953, and was extra lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth II's sister, Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, from 1971 until the Princess died in 2002.[1] Her 2019 memoir, Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown, was a New York Times Best Seller.
Lady Glenconner was born Anne Veronica Coke (pronounced "Cook") in 1932 at 13 Queensberry Place, South Kensington.[2] Her parents were The Hon. Thomas Coke and his wife Lady Elizabeth (née Yorke), the son and daughter of the then-Thomas Coke, Viscount Coke and Charles Yorke, 8th Earl of Hardwicke, respectively. Lady Glenconner's great-grandfather, Thomas Coke, 3rd Earl of Leicester, died in 1941, making her grandfather the 4th Earl of Leicester and her father Viscount Coke. A few years later in 1949, her grandfather died, and her father became 5th Earl of Leicester. Lady Glenconner had two younger sisters, Carey (1934–2018) and Sarah (born 1944). Their father was equerry to George VI[3] from 1932 to 1952.
Lady Glenconner was primarily raised at her family's estate, Holkham Hall in Norfolk.[1] During the Second World War, she and her sister Carey stayed at Cortachy Castle in Angus, Scotland with their paternal great-aunt Alexandra, Countess of Airlie, their aunt's husband David Ogilvy, 12th Earl of Airlie, and the Airlies' children (including David and Angus).[4]
As the King and Queen Elizabeth's Sandringham House was less than 20 miles from Holkham, Lady Glenconner was a regular playmate of the young Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret.[5] The King and Queen were friends with Lady Glenconner's parents, and the family was often invited to Christmas parties at Buckingham Palace with the royal family.[6]
In 1950, at the age of 18, she was formally presented at court, and was named 'debutante of the year' by Tatler magazine. In 1953, Lady Glenconner was selected to be one of the maids of honour at the coronation of Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey.[4] [1] She was engaged to Johnnie Althorp, later father to Diana, Princess of Wales; his father objected to the match on the grounds of "mad blood", a reference to her Trefusis ancestry which was shared by institutionalised relatives of the Queen, and the engagement was broken off. (In 1997, the director of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute[7] opined that a genetic disease in the Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis family (i.e. of Anne's paternal grandmother)[8] may have killed male members of the family in early childhood and caused learning disabilities in females.[9])
On 21 April 1956 at St Withburga's Church, Holkham, Lady Glenconner married the Hon. Colin Christopher Paget Tennant, son of the 2nd Baron Glenconner.[1] The guests included Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and Princess Margaret; the Princess's future husband, Antony Armstrong-Jones, was the wedding photographer.[4]
Lord and Lady Glenconner had five children, three sons and twin daughters:
Lady Glenconner's husband acceded to the title of Baron Glenconner on his father's death on 4 October 1983, having already inherited the family's estate in the Scottish Borders, The Glen. Lord and Lady Glenconner divided their time between Mustique, St Lucia, and the United Kingdom.
Lord and Lady Glenconner were married for 54 years until Lord Glenconner's death in 2010. She now lives in King's Lynn, Norfolk.[4] When Lord Glenconner died in 2010, it was revealed that he had made a new will shortly before his death leaving all of his assets to an employee, Kent Adonai. The family contested this will, and after a legal battle that lasted several years the estate was divided between Adonai and Cody Charles Edward Tennant, the fourth Lord Glenconner.[18] [4] [19]
In the 1970s, Lady Glenconner was a fundraiser for Refuge on the invitation of its founder, Erin Pizzey.[20]
When Princess Margaret married Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1960, Lady Glenconner and her husband offered them a piece of land on their privately owned island, Mustique, which Lord Glenconner had bought in 1958 for £45,000.[21] They also agreed to build a house for the couple on the land. It was designed in 1971 by the leading stage designer and uncle to Lord Snowdon, Oliver Messel, and subsequently named "Les Jolies Eaux" (French: "The pretty waters").[4] Messel also designed other properties on the island.
In 1971, Lady Glenconner entered into the Princess's service as her Extra Lady-in-Waiting. Lady Glenconner was a lady-in-waiting until Princess Margaret died in 2002 at the age of 71. Over the course of her service, she accompanied the Princess on many tours abroad to destinations including the United States, Australia and Hong Kong; once, she stood in for the Princess on a trip to the Philippines to meet with Imelda Marcos, after the Princess became ill with pneumonia.[4] Princess Margaret would visit Lady Glenconner at her Norfolk home, where she would sometimes help by laying the fire or washing the car.[22]
It was Lady Glenconner and her husband who introduced Princess Margaret to Roddy Llewellyn, who began a relationship to the then-still married Princess in 1973, when he was 25 and she 43.[23] The much publicised eight-year relationship was a factor in the dissolution of the Princess's marriage to Lord Snowdon.[24]
Speaking in the 2018 documentary Elizabeth: Our Queen, Lady Glenconner said the Queen discussed Llewellyn with her after Princess Margaret's funeral in 2002. She offered Lady Glenconner thanks for having introduced her sister to Roddy, because "he made her really happy".[25] [26]
For her personal service rendered to the Royal Family, Lady Glenconner was made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order in the 1991 Birthday Honours.
In 2019, Lady Glenconner's memoir Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown, was published by Hodder & Stoughton. Speaking on her reason for publishing the book, she said: "I was so fed up with people writing such horrible things about Princess Margaret."[27] [28] In particular, she described Craig Brown's Ma'am Darling as "that horrible book, we won't mention the name of the somebody who wrote it. I don't know why people want to rot her like that."
| Country | Date | Appointment | Ribbon | Post-nominal letters | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom | 2 June 1953 | Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal | ||||
| United Kingdom | 6 February 1977 | Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal | ||||
| United Kingdom | 14 June 1991 | Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order | LVO |
| Escutcheon: | Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glenconner (Argent two crescents in fess Sable on a chief Gules a boar's head couped of the first a bordure compony of the second and first) impaling Thomas Coke, 5th Earl of Leicester (Per pale gules and azure three eagles displayed Argent).[29] |
| Supporters: | Dexter a stag Proper gorged with a mural crown Or sinister a tiger also Proper gorged with a crown palissado also Or each charged on the shoulder with a thistle leaved and slipped Gold.[30] |
| Coronet: | Coronet of a Baroness |