By the end of the twelve-hour train journey from Canberra to Melbourne, Princess Margaret had charmed them all-and the result was a succession of much nicer headlines. We knew Princess Margaret had a knack with men of all ages, so we held a cocktail party on the train, inviting a whole lot of the press to come. I could see she was upset and unsettled by this onslaught, so Nigel Napier and I came up with a plan we hoped would appease the press. The reporters were brash and rude, haranguing Princess Margaret, shouting, “Why haven’t you brought Tony, Ma’am?” and “Where is Tony?” The Australian press, however, were far less polite, and the barrage of questions and comments started as soon as we disembarked from the plane.
It was around this time that stories about Princess Margaret’s marriage were appearing in the British press although they were, at this point at least, restrained. I had never been there before, so I was thrilled when Princess Margaret asked me to accompany her, in October 1975, for a ten-day trip full of different engagements around the country.
The first tour I went on was to Australia. During the three decades I was the Princess’s Lady in Waiting, I accompanied her on several royal tours abroad, from Canada, where we dressed up in Victorian clothes and went to a rodeo, to Cairo, where we watched the Royal Ballet with Madame Mubarak, the wife of the Egyptian President, who, at seeing the ballet dancers falling over, clapped enthusiastically, not realizing they were actually collapsing because the floor was too slippery, causing disaster.Īll the tours were memorable, some especially so. In the heyday of Mustique, Princess Margaret and I would go from dressing up in extravagant costumes to going all over the world on royal engagements.
Anne Glenconner and her husband on Mustique in 1973 Slim Aarons // Getty Images
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