Anne Tennant, Baroness Glenconner

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, she served as a maid of honour at the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 and was an extra lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, from 1971 until the Princess's death in 2002. Her memoir, Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown, became a New York Times Best Seller.

Early life Anne Veronica Coke (pronounced "Cook") was born on 16 July 1932 at 13 Queensberry Place, South Kensington. She is the eldest daughter of the Hon. Thomas Coke and his wife, Lady Elizabeth (née Yorke), the son and daughter of Thomas Coke, Viscount Coke, and Charles Yorke, 8th Earl of Hardwicke, respectively. Her great-grandfather, Thomas Coke, 3rd Earl of Leicester, died in 1941, whereupon her grandfather succeeded as the 4th Earl of Leicester and her father became Viscount Coke. Following her grandfather's death in 1949, her father became the 5th Earl of Leicester. She has two younger sisters, Carey (1934–2018) and Sarah (born 1944). Their father served as equerry to George VI from 1932 to 1952.

Coke spent much of her childhood at the family estate, Holkham Hall in Norfolk. 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, her husband David Ogilvy, 12th Earl of Airlie, and their children, David and Angus.

As Sandringham House lay less than twenty miles from Holkham, Coke was a regular childhood companion of Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. The King and Queen were friends of her parents, and the family was often invited to Christmas parties at Buckingham Palace.

Coke has compared herself to Lady Mary Crawley in Downton Abbey, as she was the eldest of her father’s three daughters and had no brothers, so one day the family estate and peerages would go to a cousin; which in due course they did.

Debut and early adulthood In 1950, at the age of eighteen, Coke was presented at court, and was named "debutante of the year" by Tatler. In 1953, she served as one of the maids of honour at the coronation of Elizabeth II in Westminster Abbey. suggested that a genetic condition in the Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis family may have caused early childhood deaths in males and learning disabilities in females.

Marriage and children On 21 April 1956 at St Withburga's Church, Holkham, she married the Hon. Colin Christopher Paget Tennant, son of the 2nd Baron Glenconner. He died from AIDS. His son, Euan Lovell Tennant (born 1983), is the current heir presumptive to the barony. The Hon. Christopher Cary Tennant (born 25 April 1968), who suffered severe brain damage in a motorcycle accident in 1987. The Hon. Flora May Pamela Tennant (born 8 November 1970), a goddaughter of Princess Margaret. She married Anton Ronald Noah Creasy in 2005 and has two children. The Hon. Amy Jasmine Elizabeth Tennant (born 8 November 1970). No issue.

Lord Glenconner succeeded as the 3rd Baron Glenconner on 4 October 1983. The couple divided their time between Mustique, St Lucia, and the United Kingdom. They remained married for 54 years until his death in 2010. After his death, it emerged that he had made a new will leaving his estate to an employee, Kent Adonai. The family contested the will, and after prolonged legal proceedings the estate was divided between Adonai and Cody Tennant, the 4th Baron Glenconner. Lady Glenconner now lives in King's Lynn, Norfolk. They commissioned Oliver Messel to design a house for the couple, later named Les Jolies Eaux.

Lord and Lady Glenconner introduced Princess Margaret to Roddy Llewellyn in 1973, initiating a relationship that lasted eight years and contributed to the breakdown of her marriage to Lord Snowdon. After Princess Margaret's funeral in 2002, the Queen told Lady Glenconner that she was grateful for the introduction, as Llewellyn had "made her really happy".

She was appointed Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order in the 1991 Birthday Honours for her personal service to the Royal Family.

Lady Glenconner's memoir, Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown, was published in 2019. She stated that she wrote the book because she was "fed up with people writing such horrible things about Princess Margaret", describing Craig Brown's Ma’am Darling as "that horrible book".

Awards and honours

In popular culture Lady Glenconner is portrayed by Grace Stone in the second, Nancy Carroll in the third and fourth seasons, and Imogen Stubbs in the sixth season of the Netflix television series The Crown.