Oldest Living Aristocratic Widow Tells All
Now ninety, Lady Glenconner—a trusted friend of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret—has become a cheeky chronicler of the British élite.
By Rebecca Mead
Although Anne had grown up in splendor, none of it—not the house, the land, the jewels, the antiquities—was hers to inherit. According to English laws of primogeniture, an earldom can pass only to a son or other male descendant. Some of Anne’s relatives saw her gender as a problem from the start. “There’s a photograph of me right on that staircase,” she told me when I met her at Holkham Hall, one morning in early December. “I’m in my father’s arms, and Grandpa’s there, and Great-Grandpa’s there, looking terribly disappointed in me.”
www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/02/13/oldest-living-aristocratic-widow-tells-all-lady-anne-glenconnor-queen-elizabeth