Sunday 15 March 2020

My review of Anne Glenconner's Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown.


Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown 

by Anne Glenconner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Lady Glenconner's life could arguably not have failed to make unputdownable reading. One might think it impossible for any aristocratic wife of the owner of the island of Mustique, and royal Lady-in-Waiting, to get this wrong, considering readership thirst. Yet being a prominent peeress and socialite does not always a fine author make. Some other daughter of an earl may not have been blessed with this one's magnetic persona or storytelling prowess. Whilst she humbly acknowledges the publisher's support, this articulate and amusing woman is a born raconteuse.

Her words glow with the impish charm and wry wit reminiscent of the late great Nancy Mitford, another highborn Mistress of Anecdote whose work became an industry. Literary critic Raymond Mortimer wrote that Mitford's Madame de Pompadour "reads as if an enchantingly clever woman was pouring out the story to me on the telephone." In Glenconner's Lady in Waiting we find a similar flair. As with Mitford's globally loved works, Lady Anne's narrative makes no stab at literary greatness, instead riding on candour and authenticity guaranteed to entertain.

Her breathtakingly privileged status never once becomes the storytelling liability it could have, in connecting with everyday people. Her frankness and humility win us onside, without an ounce of the pomposity that has been the undoing of some biographers of her rank.

That we can't help but empathise over some of the awfulness life has thrown at her, is testimony to the balance of this piece. Her starchy aristocratic father Thomas Coke, 5th Earl of Leicester, her impossible but fabulous husband Colin Tennant, 3rd Baron Glennconner, her adored yet tragic two sons the Hon. Henry and Charles Tennant, were never going to make Lady Anne's life a walk in the park. But fabulous times she has enjoyed and she shares these generously with her readers, taking us on the ride of our lives.

Having anticipated this finely polished biography for a year, I drank it up in four nights and was saddened to close the last page.

A classy and delicious read. More please, Lady G.


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