Being very common, I have something of a mania for aristo-lit: a passion for stories about big houses and the wanton eccentrics who inhabit them ... Nevertheless, I have to admit to being somewhat unprepared for Lady in Waiting ... Is [Glenconner's] memoir a horror show or a delightful entertainment? A manual for how to live, or how not to live? In truth, I’m not sure even she would know the answer to these questions ... Much as I loved reading about the way, say, that she and her mother, the countess, would gather jackdaw eggs using a ladle attached to a walking stick...after a while there’s no ignoring the painful and widening disjunction between the outward whirl of her life and the repeated tragedies that befall her family ... In the end, her book isn’t only a record, funny and sometimes dazzling, of a way of life now almost disappeared. It’s an unwitting examination of English repression: both of how it gets you through and of how it can slay you.
... a candid, witty and stylish memoir. It is as richly spiced with malice—I doubt if Bianca Jagger will relish the put-down of her own princessy ways, or Jerry Hall the spiky comments on her lack of social grace—as it is darkened by the tragedies that befell the author’s three sons, two of whom predeceased her. But the glory of this book—a banquet of imperious egos—derives from her reports from the front on life with Princess Margaret and life with, and quite often, without, her own late husband ... This is a more nuanced portrait of Margaret ... Amid the madness of it all, moments of real pathos glimmer through a sparkling surface.
...fascinating and beautifully written ... The first (pre-marriage) chapters of this book are marvellous too, proving that some people are just born writers. Anne’s descriptions of a charmingly unambitious girls’ boarding school and a finishing school in Devon are as sure as that of a top novelist ... I can’t recommend her book highly enough. It fills this Christmas’s Queen Mary-shaped hole — and is indeed a lesson on how to take whatever life throws at us.
Given [Glenconnor's] proximity to the royals, I went into Lady In Waiting expecting juicy stories about Princess Margaret that would rival The Crown's revelations—and Lady Glenconner, with her tales of partying with Mick Jagger on Mustique and attending Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, delivered. What I didn't expect, however, was tearing up while I read them ... With a relentlessly matter-of-fact tone, Lady Glenconner acknowledges the extraordinary difficulties of her personal life ... misfortune befell her five children in a way that seems almost mythic in its devastation. Her stiff upper lip never quivers ... In Lady In Waiting, Lady Glenconnner balances the gossip you wanted with the story of a bygone lifestyle—and its costs—that you didn't know you needed.
[Glenconner's] account of the Coronation has a vivid simplicity that catches the heartstrings. Her enduring respect for the Queen shines through these memoirs ... She is astute and amusing about the Queen Mother ... Best of all are several chapters on Princess Margaret, whose lady-in-waiting she became in 1971. There is no doubt that Margaret could be inconsiderate and despotic, but Lady Anne remembers the hoots of laughter and bouts of giggles. These chapters are a lesson in how to write with patient loving sympathy, but without any protective fibs, about a difficult friend ... The anger, anxiety and remorse of a drug user’s parent is raw in these memoirs. The sorrow of Henry’s illness and death, his valour and the goodness of his friends are conveyed with poignant nobility ... Lady in Waiting is gentle, wise, unpretentious, but above all inspiring. It will make all but hard and selfish readers remember their own mistakes, and count their blessings.
It seems particularly apt that Anne Coke Tennant, Baroness Glenconner, was born into an ancient British family whose crest is an ostrich swallowing an iron horseshoe, symbolizing, as she puts it, 'our ability to digest anything.' Readers of her sometimes amusing, sometimes appalling, sometimes affecting, sometimes clueless memoir will learn that she was a perfect ostrich ... The pleasures of Glenconner’s tales must be winkled out of her sturdy if occasionally clichéd prose: revelations of the strange juxtapositions of an unexpectedly upstairs-downstairs aristocratic life ... Glenconner’s travels on Margaret’s overseas tours yield some of the book’s best anecdotes ... Despite its madcap romps, Lady in Waiting can make for sobering reading, and the downside of this privileged life, with its potential for tragedy, looms over three of Glenconner’s five children ... Glenconner’s descriptions of these difficult times are evidence of the grit that underlies her genteel affect.
...one of the chief revelations of Lady in Waiting is just how cruel and wasteful the aristocratic system has historically been to women ... [Glenconner's] real focus, at least in this book, is on her best friend Margaret, who she believes has been horribly traduced in recent years as a narcissistic monster of rudeness and self-regard. While never resorting to a cover-up, Glenconner provides a nuanced character portrait of a woman whose life sounds truly wretched ... discretion and honour emerge as the hallmarks of Glenconner’s career as a royal servant, culminating in this book which manages to be both candid and kind.
Mandel’s crystal ball and uncanny sense of timing remain intact ... simply stunning, a boldly experimental work which hooks the reader from its first pages, wending to a powerfully emotional conclusion ... a delicate web of a novel, tentative and fragile connections woven over time ... but...the strands are so strong, the weaving so complex, that this intimate book is able to carry the weight of global socio-economic ruin, shattered careers, and betrayal ... The Glass Hotel becomes stronger, and more powerful, with every page.
The great question raised by this sparkling, endearing and alarming memoir is whether the upper-class English habit of repressing emotion and ignoring trouble for as long as possible is an admirable form of courage or a reprehensible recipe for disaster ... It has been known for the survivor of a difficult marriage to write about it as an act of revenge; Anne Glenconner, sweet-natured, generous-spirited and above all determined not to dwell, has not done so. Her book records the best as well as the worst consequences of the currently unfashionable stiff upper lip.
...a window into both the glamorous side of the British aristocracy and its unpleasant underbelly. [Glenconner]describes a life full of jet-setting adventure—such as flying around the world from Hong Kong to Australia with Princess Margaret—and great tragedy, including the deaths of her two eldest sons ... Ms. Glenconner found solace in her role as lady in waiting to Princess Margaret, accompanying the princess to events, giving hosts and organizers advance notice of her desires, and being a travel companion and confidante. She says the sometimes controversial princess stood by her through her most difficult times, and she decided to write the book, in part, 'to set the record straight…. So many peoplehad written about her in a not so very nice way who didn’t know her at all.'
Whether describing scenes of delicacy or debauchery, these insider accounts are fascinating. Glenconner is unfailingly perceptive, honest, and amazingly down-to-earth, a survivor who embodies the British trait of 'getting on with it.' A definite thrill for royal watchers and fans of Downton Abbey, this entertaining peek behind the royal curtain should attract a wide audience.
...Glenconner's meticulously detailed memoir of her life in service to the crown will whet the appetite of anyone hungering for more tales of Britain's royals ... A pleasing blend of detail and balance, the book provides sufficient glimpses into sumptuous palaces and shooting parties to inspire awe and keen insight into the people who inhabit them. Glenconner's candor about wealth and privilege enables readers to sympathize ... The poor-little-rich-girl story is hardly new, but what makes this account fresh and poignant is Glenconner’s use of affluent characters to demonstrate the extent to which class trumps power ... By unflinchingly examining everything from her troubled marriage and her fraught relationship with her children to the solace she found in service, the author emerges as a flawed yet steely woman worthy of respect. In laying her life bare, she demonstrates the limitations of being a woman in the British class system, showing that privilege is no insulation from suffering or pain ... A must-have for loyal royal fans.
