When I was a child, we used to spend Christmases and summers at Holkham Hall, Norfolk, only 12 miles from Sandringham. Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret would come to visit, and Princess Margaret and I got on terribly well. She was absolutely my type of friend – quite naughty and full of mischief, and she and I used to have a wonderful time racing around Holkham on our tricycles. We were not allowed to tricycle in the marble halls but we did, of course, and I always remember the Queen, who was a bit older, standing on the steps saying “that’s very naughty both of you, what are you doing?” We shot off through another door screaming with laughter.
The Queen was always looking out for Princess Margaret, she was a wonderful big sister. She was quite correct, she knew we shouldn’t be there. I remember her enjoying these tin horses we had, that you could sit on and if you moved, the horse went along. She was always keen on horses, and she loved my mother’s dogs, too.
We didn’t see each other for years after that because of the war. We did see them once at Glamis Castle in Scotland, though – I remember Princess Margaret telling me about the ghost at Glamis, known as the Tongueless Woman, that ran across the lawn. But then they were at Windsor, and Princess Elizabeth spoke to the children of Great Britain every few months on the radio. We’d sit listening to our wireless, we loved it, and at the end she’d say “now, Margaret, say goodbye”, and Princess Margaret would say “bye children everywhere”. Princess Elizabeth would talk about how it was a difficult time for all children, and she spoke to the evacuees and how they must be missing their parents. It was a sort of pep-up talk. I always wished afterwards I’d told her how much it meant to us.
I was in America, where I’d gone to sell the family’s Holkham Pottery, when I got a telegram from my mother. I remember opening it and it said “Anne come home now, the Queen has asked you to be a maid of honour at her coronation”. I was thrilled. We only rehearsed with the Queen once at Buckingham Palace. She wore a curtain or something like that around her middle; she told us she’d look very different on the day, and we laughed.
The day of the coronation was fantastic. The four of us maids of honour went to the Abbey door to wait for her. We could hear this roar, and round the corner came a golden coach. We hadn’t seen her in her dress before. The pages opened the door, and there she was sitting in the coach, we were the very first people to see her. She looked wonderful, she had such beautiful skin and eyes, she was so pretty, with a wonderful figure, and this gorgeous dress all embroidered with the flowers of the Commonwealth and Great Britain.
We helped her out, she didn’t say anything to us, she was very calm. The Duke of Norfolk had put a piece of cotton so she knew exactly where to stand on the carpet. We were behind her with her train rippling over our hands, and little satin handles to hold it up. She looked round, and said, “Ready girls?” and off we went. It was incredible. The abbey was filled right to the ceiling. We knew exactly what to do, and she was just very, very calm, which in turn made us feel very calm, and it all went without a hitch.
The Queen hadn’t really wanted the coronation to be televised because it was a religious ceremony, but Churchill said that the people of Great Britain and the Commonwealth should be able to watch it. So they agreed that when she was anointed the cameras would be turned off, since that was such a solemn moment. They put a canopy over her, and we and the bishops were the only people who saw her being anointed. They took away all her regalia, and she was dressed in a linen dress over her coronation dress. Lord Cholmondeley and the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire helped her to put the dress on. Lord Cholmondeley was a wonderful man, very handsome, very upright, but I don’t think he’d ever dressed himself let alone anyone else. He could not do hooks and eyes up, so they put press studs on the dress. I saw him pressing them in and afterwards I said to her, “Was that all right ma’am? It didn’t look very comfortable”. She said “no it was not, he really pressed them in”.
It was very moving. She was anointed and she gave her life to all of us; we were so incredibly honoured to have seen it. We were attached to her for the whole day, she couldn’t move without us because we were carrying her train. Afterwards we had lunch, coronation chicken. When the Queen got back to Buckingham Palace, she took her crown off and put it on the table and that was the moment Prince Charles, aged four or five, rushed forwards and seized it. My mother managed to get it back off him – how awful if he’d dropped it.
The Queen skipped along the corridor after the ceremony, sat on the sofa, put her legs up – it was a marvellous moment of relaxation and joy that the whole day had gone so well. Then there was an amazing moment when we came out on the balcony, you could physically feel the crowds cheering. It was the beginning of a new Elizabethan age and the end, really, of this awful war that had gone on so long. Every time she turned to leave they wouldn’t let her.
By that time she was really enjoying it all, amazed at this sea of people.
Several years later, my husband, Colin Tennant, Baron Glenconner, and I gave Princess Margaret a piece of land on Mustique, which Colin had bought. She built a house there, and it made all the difference to her life, it was the first house she owned. The Queen came to visit twice – the Britannia anchored off Mustique, a huge ship nearly as big as the island. We decorated everything for her.
We’d asked my mother-in-law, who was very eccentric rather like my dear husband, to get clothes for the people in the village because in those days you couldn’t get anything, and we wanted them to look nice. Anyway these huge boxes arrived, and when we opened them, we discovered to our horror that she’d bought a job lot of Victorian clothes, which she thought would be more fun. The villagers thought they had to dress up like that for when the Queen came, and I remember the ladies getting into their crinolines, the men wearing stove pipe hats, and they all lined up on the jetty to welcome the royal visitors. When the Queen stepped on to the island, she turned to Princess Margaret and said “I had no idea Mustique was in a Victorian time warp”.
The Queen loved swimming on Mustique. She normally never swum because the media might take a photograph, but we were able to keep only the people we wanted there. She was quite surprising sometimes. She had a great sense of humour, and she could mimic people and accents. She was always having fun with the children, ragging around with them, she had that side to her.
She and Princess Margaret had a wonderful relationship. Princess Margaret was so proud of her and loyal to her. When I was at Princess Margaret’s wake, one of the ladies came up and said “the Queen would like to speak to you”. I went along to see her and she thanked me and Colin for giving Princess Margaret the house and told us how much she loved her time in Mustique. She said, “you made her very happy”, which I thought was really generous and very nice.
I’ve just got the greatest possible admiration for her. She promised she was going to give her life to the Commonwealth and Great Britain and she did. She didn’t put a foot wrong, she had a very difficult time, but she was dedicated, and she was there, until she left us.
• Lady Glenconner was maid of honour at the Queen’s coronation, and is the author of Lady in Waiting and A Haunting at Holkham.
