During this recess, the Archbishop of Canterbury got out a small flask of brandy and offered it around. The Queen, along with the other Maids of Honor, declined but I took a sip. Having had no breakfast and still feeling rather peculiar, I hoped it might give me a boost.
With the relief that the ceremony was almost over, a wave of happiness spread over me. As we followed the Queen down the aisle to Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance,” the music captured the joyous element of the day perfectly. What was even more exciting than walking down the aisle was the moment we stepped outside the Abbey where we were greeted by the outside world. The sound reached fever pitch, so loud it felt as if the whole nation was entering into one massive long cheer.
Despite the hard work involved in navigating the steps without putting a foot wrong, I can vividly remember how amazing it felt to be part of that moment. The Queen managed with ease, and luckily none of us fell. Off we went into the annex, where the first servings of Coronation Chicken were ready for the guests, a dish invented specially for the day. I should have been starving by then, but I was still preoccupied with making sure I was in the right place to hold the Queen’s train as she moved around.
By now, the rain was pouring down on London, but the crowds stayed put, waiting for the Queen to reappear. They didn’t have to wait long, and as we helped her back into the State Coach, the crowds, reunited with their Queen, roared in approval. As the coach rolled away, I watched the ecstatic lines of people waving in the rain.
While the Queen processed through half of London, accompanied in another carriage by Rosie Spencer-Churchill and Jane Vane-Tempest-Stewart, the other three Maids of Honor and I were driven to Buckingham Palace to wait for the Queen’s eventual return after the long procession.
When we got to Buckingham Palace, we stood just inside, waiting to receive the Queen, watching as everybody arrived and filed past us. Queen Salote of Tonga, who was wearing a skirt made from tapa, red feathers in her hair from the sacred kula bird, was soaking. She had kept the roof of her carriage down so she could be seen—a unique and hugely popular decision. She passed us with a wide smile, as enormous as her large frame.
More and more people walked past until finally the Queen arrived. Shortly after she got out of the coach, she turned to us with her magical smile and thanked us for all we had done, saying we’d done it beautifully. I was extremely relieved—we all were—and any remaining feeling of anxious concentration was instantaneously replaced by elation.
Inside Buckingham Palace there was a similar sense of excitement as there had been in Westminster Abbey, but it was markedly more relaxed. Although it was still formal, there wasn’t the feeling of a whole nation holding their breath, and without the television cameras, it was easier to enjoy what was going on. The role of Maid of Honor continued to be one of great privilege because staying at the Queen’s side meant we were right there to see everybody.
Prince Charles and Princess Anne were ushered in to see the Queen and, straightaway, they dashed under her dress. The Queen didn’t mind a bit. She was walking on air, although when she took off her crown and placed it on a table designated for the job, Prince Charles made a beeline for it, diving on to it with great enthusiasm. Somebody—it might well have been my mother—got the crown from the clutches of the Heir Presumptive, and put it back on the table.
Just as in the Abbey, time ran away with itself. Soon I and the other Maids of Honor were following the Queen down one of the long, wide corridors of the Palace, on our way to be photographed. The Queen was so full of excitement that she started running so we all ran with her. Equally spontaneously, she sat down on a red sofa in the gallery, her dress billowing and settling down around her. We sat with her, and when she kicked up her legs for total joy, we did the same. It was the happiest of moments.
But all the while we were having the time of our lives, a private film, commissioned by the Queen, captured Princess Margaret looking forlorn. Years later, I mentioned this to her. “Of course I looked sad, Anne,” she said. “I had just lost my beloved father, and, really, I had just lost my sister, because she was going to be so busy and had already moved to Buckingham Palace, so it was just me and the Queen Mother.”
Little did Princess Margaret or anyone else know that less than a fortnight after the Coronation her private hopes would come crashing down when the press decided she was, as it turned out accurately, in love with her late father’s Equerry, Group Captain Peter Townsend. Peter Townsend was a dashing war hero, sixteen years older than her, and after she was seen removing a piece of lint from his uniform when she was outside Westminster Abbey earlier that day, the press wouldn’t let it go. It fueled a scandal that would shake the monarchy and divide the nation.
During Coronation Day, though, I was completely oblivious to Princess Margaret’s feelings of sadness. I went on with the Queen into the White Drawing Room, preoccupied with getting ready for the official photographs. Cecil Beaton had come straight from the Abbey and had already set up two backdrops so that one group could be posed while he photographed the other. The Queen, reunited with the crown, stood in the middle of us, and we waited to be instructed.
The Duke of Edinburgh had wanted his friend Baron to take the photographs, but the Queen Mother was very fond of Cecil Beaton so she had overridden him. The Duke began to make a great deal of fuss, being frightfully bossy again, telling us where to stand and when to smile. Cecil Beaton was very commanding behind the camera. He was well known for taking a dislike to interfering comments, and the more the Duke of Edinburgh tried to have his say, the tetchier he became.
The Duke persisted, either not realizing or not caring that he was disrupting the photographer, and eventually Cecil Beaton snapped. He put down his camera, glared at the Duke of Edinburgh, and said, “Sir, if you would like to take the photographs, please do.” He then gestured to the camera and started to walk away. The Queen looked horrified, as did the Queen Mother, and realizing he had gone too far, the Duke of Edinburgh moved off.
When the photographs were finally over, the Queen stepped on to the balcony and we went with her. This felt like one of the most momentous parts of the whole day. The crowd was enormous—there wouldn’t have been enough space to put a pin between the people—stretching right down to Admiralty Arch and covering St. James’s Park. As soon as the Queen walked out, the crowd cheered so loudly I could physically feel the noise hitting us on the balcony.
As I stood there, it struck me that the cheers marked the beginning of a new Elizabethan age. We’d been through the war and we were still suffering from it, but this day was one to celebrate.
I was lucky enough to see a crowd just as big for the sixtieth anniversary of the Coronation. It really brought home to me the difference between that crowd and the crowd that had stood there in 1953. Only then did I realize that the original crowd had had no color, a direct result of the war: rationing was still in place and many people were still in uniform. For years Carey and I, like everybody else, had made our own skirts from felt because it wasn’t rationed and was easy to sew. So standing on the balcony in a Norman Hartnell silk gown, surrounded by regalia, was even more surreal.
The Queen was visibly moved by the reception and her eyes shone as she took in the nation’s support. Along with the crowd below, we lifted our eyes heavenward to watch the planes as they flew over the Palace, dipping their wings towards the Queen. The pilots were among those who had survived the war. And not only had they survived but they had saved us all from peril. And, as if we were one, we all knew it. Their actions had enabled the day to take place, so the flypast was a magnificent tribute, simultaneously a look to the future and a reminder that we had escaped, that we were free and at peace. It was confirmation that we could all, as a nation, put the war behind us. I could see and feel the Queen’s pride as we all shared a distinct feeling of unity and hope.
Once the planes had flown away, the crowd turned their attention back to the Queen: every time she looked as if she might be
going inside, the crowd’s cheers would pull her back. Even when she finally did disappear into the Palace, they stayed there, cheering after her.
The cheers carried on as we milled about inside Buckingham Palace, the day drawing to a close. It was late afternoon when I left the Palace, but I couldn’t help returning. Knowing that the Queen would go out on the balcony to greet the crowd one more time after dinner, I persuaded a friend to come with me and joined them. Only hours before, I had been standing on the balcony next to the Queen and it was strange being one of the crowd, back in my felt skirt, waving and cheering up at her, but the buzz was addictive. The Queen didn’t know I was there, of course—I think I told her afterwards—but we stood and shouted for her as she appeared in an evening dress, feeling the cheers go through us.
My day didn’t end there but took an even stranger twist. All the people in the Royal Household had been charged to look after the foreign dignitaries: my father looked after Queen Frederica of Greece, whom he immediately thought was wonderful; and my uncle, Major Tom Harvey, who was at the time an Extra Gentleman Usher to the Queen Mother, was allocated Sheikh Salman Bin Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa, the ruler of Bahrain, and Sheikh Abdullah Al-Salim Al-Sabah, the ruler of Kuwait.
Uncle Tom decided to take them to the 400 Club—a smoke-filled and dimly lit nightclub in Leicester Square. Bands played all through the night and breakfast was offered at dawn. The bottles of alcohol bought were each labeled with the guest’s name and kept for their next visit, if left unfinished. It was the place for the popular crowd, who all went there to cozy up on the velvet seats, drinking until the early hours.
Since it was so popular with the English aristocracy, Uncle Tom thought the Sheikhs would enjoy it too and asked me to help him entertain them. In the run-up to the Coronation, I had imagined all sorts of glamorous elements of the day, but I hadn’t expected to end it in a dark, smoky club with two Sheikhs, feeling out of place and trying to drum up conversation.
It was impossible to tell how they felt, because their expressions gave very little away. They didn’t dance or drink, which Uncle Tom had hoped they might do once the evening got underway, so we sat there, rapidly running out of ideas as to how to entertain them. Very generously, they presented us with expensive gold watches. I wasn’t used to that sort of present and shyly accepted, feeling increasingly anxious we hadn’t exactly repaid them with an appropriate evening’s entertainment.
When I went to sleep that night, on the floor at Uncle Jack’s flat, it was hard to think any of it had really happened. All I knew was that I would cherish it for the rest of my life.
Still now, all these years later, I am always being asked about that day and have done my best to do it justice, but nothing ever feels adequate. There was so much going on, and when I’ve reminisced with the other Maids of Honor, we always seem to remember something different. What resonates most of all is the solemn promise the Queen made that day in giving her life to the nation. It’s an oath she has kept faithfully. She has never put a foot wrong. She has been the most wonderful Queen and she really has given her life to the nation.
CHAPTER FIVE
For Better, For Worse
AFTER THE CORONATION, I was photographed for the covers of magazines and even got a few very peculiar love letters from strangers asking for my hand in marriage, but I remained single, not having found the right man.
With two sisters and no brothers, the opposite sex was inherently a mystery to me. Men seemed old-fashioned, traditional, and predictable. They were creatures whose interests lay in country pursuits during the day and military reunion dinners during the evening—to neither of which women, needless to say, were invited. The season had whipped up dozens of brief interactions for me: Nigel Leigh-Pemberton had taught me that there was a sensitive side to men, but Johnnie Spencer had contradicted this with brutal rejection. I was left wondering what would become of me and whether my father would succeed in persuading me to marry one of his aging friends from the Scots Guards.
In the summer of 1955, when I was twenty-two, I met Colin Tennant for the first time, at a deb party at the Ritz, held by Lord and Lady Northbourne for their daughter, Sarah. I was waiting at the bar with a friend and they must have known Colin, who was with his stepmother Elizabeth Glenconner, whom he adored: she was always brilliant with him and so kind to me. He obviously took a fancy to me because he rang me up and we started to go out. I was relieved and excited. Not only was a man paying me serious attention, but the man in question was like no one I had ever met.
Colin was tall and terribly handsome, and I found him very attractive. The son of the 2nd Baron Glenconner, he had grown up between Glen, his ancestral Scottish estate in the Borders, and London, living in Admiral House, Hampstead, as a boy. He’d gone to Eton, where he rowed, then New College, Oxford, where he became popular on account of the large breakfast parties he gave in his rooms.
After Oxford, he was commissioned into the Irish Guards, a regiment of the British Army, then transferred to the Scots Guards, before joining C. Tennant & Sons, the family merchant bank. His family was very rich, which allowed Colin to be very generous, and he found any excuse to hold a party. He often entertained friends at the Gargoyle, his Uncle David’s private members’ club in Dean Street, Soho, right next to the Mandrake, another popular haunt. Colin was very much part of “the Princess Margaret set,” composed almost entirely of men, who spent hours and hours at clubs like the 400.
He also had another set of creative friends, including Lucian Freud and Ian Fleming. As it happens, a few years before I met Colin he was staying with Ian in London. After dinner one night, Colin and the other guests read out some of the pages of the book Ian had just drafted, dismissing the story with roars of laughter, having no idea of the iconic fame it would reach. It was Fleming’s first James Bond novel, Casino Royale.
Although his background might have been similar to others, Colin’s combination of intense charm, quick wit, and intelligence made him unique. He hardly drank and didn’t touch drugs: his energy was completely natural and he was creative and fun in a way that other men I’d come across weren’t.
People were drawn to him from the moment he set foot in a room, including Princess Margaret. Their friendship was platonic, but Colin had had several affairs before he met me, with, among others, Ivy Nicholson, a model, who ended up falling for Andy Warhol; Pandora Clifford, Samantha Cameron’s grandmother; and the 11th Duke of Argyll’s daughter, Jeanne Campbell, who went on to have many famous lovers, including Presidents Kennedy and Castro.
Colin’s charm rarely failed him, although there was one occasion, at the 400, where he dug himself into a hole while talking to Princess Marina, the widow of the Duke of Kent. Colin exclaimed that one way of finding out whether a sapphire was real or paste was to drop it in water to see if it kept its color. To prove that genuine sapphires would keep their color, he invited Princess Marina to drop her colossal sapphire ring into the water glass. She did but, to Colin’s horror, the sapphire’s color drained. Colin immediately said he must have got the theory the wrong way around. She was not amused.
Suddenly this charismatic man was with me. All through the summer, he took me out in his Thunderbird, which was impossible to get into because it was so low. It was not a fun experience at all because of Colin’s terribly fast, erratic driving. We went down to Bray, Berkshire, for long lunches and spent a lot of time lying about in meadows. In London he took me out to dinners, introducing me to his friends, before returning to his flat, where a lot of heavy petting went on.
My idea of love and romance was based entirely on the black-and-white Hollywood blockbusters, starring the likes of Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, which my mother and Carey had watched at the cinema in Wells-next-the-Sea. Reality was marred: romance didn’t come very naturally to Colin. Although incredibly charming, he wasn’t very affectionate and was nothing like Heathcliff, the character from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights on whom I based all my daydreams.
Colin also had a very unfortunate temper, which I did witness occasionally in our early days together. In those moments he always said, “Oh, Anne, when we get married, I won’t need to lose my temper.” Excited that he might propose, and not wanting to dismiss his advances because of what seemed the one bad point about him, I convinced myself he would keep his promise. After all, there were so many brilliant things about him—one of them being that he wasn’t like my father’s rather staid friends.
Colin’s good intentions didn’t stop him from making known his complaints: when we first went to dinner to meet his father, for some reason Colin thought he hadn’t paid me enough attention. On the way home, he blew up into a dramatic state, ranting about how his father had let him down and hadn’t been nice to me. As far as I was concerned, his father had been perfectly pleasant, but that didn’t seem to matter to him.
My mother had also seen Colin lose his cool. They had been in the Bahamas at the same time and she had witnessed an incredible outburst while they were both on a boat. She had also heard about some antics at Balmoral the summer before, and the Royal Household disliking him, labeling him unruly. She warned me about his temper but Colin kept reassuring me with the same promise: that when we were married everything would be all right.
At the end of the summer I took him to Holkham to introduce him to my father, who gazed at him stiffly and with great suspicion. Not long afterwards, for better or for worse, we got engaged. I went home to tell my father, who was expecting the news and was very carefully ignoring it and, therefore, me. We were at Holkham, where I pursued him around the house, through the endless rooms, as he kept saying, “No, no, no, not now, Anne.” Finally, I cornered him and blurted out the news. He didn’t really react, offering me no congratulations. Not only was my father still fixated on the idea of marrying me off to one of his friends but also he saw the Tennant family as worlds below the Cokes. While our family had been established in the fifteenth century, springing from fortunes in law and then land, the Tennant family had made its—albeit vast—fortune through the invention of bleach in the Industrial Revolution. Not only were they tradesmen, as far as my father was concerned, they were also nouveaux riches.
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