Princess Margaret's Former Lady-in-Waiting Reveals the Moment the Late Royal Made a Host "Burst Into Tears" Over Her Behavior
Anne Glenconner's new book reveals what it was really like working for the late royal.
Princess Margaret was famous for her love of a good time, but that also led to some sticky incidents, as her former lady-in-waiting, Anne Glenconner reveals in her new memoir, Trunks Tiaras. Lady Glenconner served the late princess for 31 years, and she admits that Margaret could sometimes let people down.
In a serialization of the book in the Daily Mail, Lady Glenconner wrote that “traveling around the world with a princess was great fun.” However, one of their journeys was a slight disaster due to the free-flowing alcohol.
“A trip to New Orleans during Mardi Gras proved too much temptation for both Princess Margaret and her maid,” Lady Glenconner wrote. “We’d had a fabulous day watching the floats go past and enjoying the carnival. It was all great fun, but there had been rum on tap all day.”
Princess Margaret stands on a dock in Mustique with Lady Glenconner and her husband, Colin Tennant, Lord Glenconner, in 1977.
Princess Margaret’s maid got so drunk that when it came time to prepare a bath for the royal, she “crawled into the bathroom on all fours, barely managing to reach up to the taps.”
Lady Glenconner said that she put the maid to bed, “ran the bath and told Princess Margaret that the maid wasn’t well,” adding that Margaret “was not remotely cross about the fact that she’d been unable to fulfil her duties.”
But the next day, it was the princess who couldn’t commit to her duties. The Trunks Tiaras author explained that they “were supposed to be visiting a historic house which the owner, a nice woman, had been doing up all year in preparation for the visit.”
Lady Glenconner (third from left) served as a maid of honor at Queen Elizabeth's coronation.
Despite committing to the visit far in advance, Princess Margaret refused to get out of bed. “I had a little tap tap on my door from the maid who said, ‘I’m so sorry but I can’t seem to get Princess Margaret up,” Lady Glenconner wrote. “She says she has a headache.’”
Lady Glenconner said she replied, “Well she’s jolly well got to” and attempted to get Margaret out of bed. “Most of the time this worked but, on this occasion, she simply said, ‘Oh, Anne, stop bullying me,’ and pulled the covers back over her head,” the author shared.
“I ended up having to call the lady whose house we were supposed to be visiting to tell her Princess Margaret was unwell and that I would be attending on her behalf,” Lady Glenconner wrote, recalling that “the poor woman was naturally extremely disappointed and burst into tears on the telephone.”
Princess Margaret is pictured in 1960.
The author also recalled a time when a "very tired and rather grumpy" Princess Margaret arrived in Australia and ignored a group of Girl Guides who had been waiting to meet her.
"It was my first visit with her abroad, so I was a little anxious but I pulled her aside and said, ‘Ma’am, I’m so sorry to ask but the Guides have been waiting here for hours and I know how kind you are and that you won’t want to let them down. Could you possibly just go over and say hello?’" Lady Glenconner recalled.
Fortunately, Princess Margaret took the speech to heart and greeted the girls. "To her credit she did," Lady Glenconner wrote. "Sometimes my powers of persuasion worked, unlike the disastrous hangover in New Orleans."
