Anne Glenconner: My Christmas gift from Queen Mary

At the age of 87 I find myself not just a first-time author, but a bestseller. I’ve always told stories, but I never thought of writing them down until this past year. Once I got going I found I couldn’t stop, and Lady In Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown is the result. I’ve enjoyed promoting it as well. Seven decades ago I was a travelling salesman for my mother, who had started a pottery at Holkham Hall in north Norfolk. Off I used to go in my Mini Minor, staying in rundown hotels with all these travelling salesmen. I was the only woman and certainly the only aristocrat on the road. It was rather fun. There was rationing then and in the evenings we used to all sit in a dismal lounge with one bare lightbulb and the trolley would come round and the travelling salesmen would say: ‘Will you be mother?’

What everyone seems to want to know about is the royal family, especially the coronation and my years as lady-in-waiting to the wonderful Princess Margaret. When I was growing up at Holkham, the princesses used to come over to play. Princess Margaret was more my age and we became great friends. There’s a rather nice photograph of Princess Margaret looking at my feet. One day just before she died I found the photograph and asked her why she was looking at my feet and she said: ‘Well, Anne, you had silver shoes, and I was so jealous because I only had brown ones.’

During the war a lot of children of our background were evacuated to Canada and America. People were expecting the Germans to land on the Norfolk coast so my sister and I were sent up to Scotland.