The book’s autobiographical nature is both its strength and its weaknessĪs a strength it adds authenticity and colour. She at the time is obsessed with the Hall’s ghost Lady Mary, her childhood friend with the possibility of spies (the Hall being part occupied by various military forces) but as Anne looks back she realises that a lot of what they saw and suspected may be caught up with the 1950 mystery and the book switches between the two periods. This immediately takes Anne back to when she lived at the Hall in 1943 – just before the return of her parents. The book opens with the death of her beloved grandfather just ahead of her own coming-out ceremony – the departure from the real story being that his death is slightly suspicious (an unexplained fall down some stairs he should have known well).įurther mystery (which Anne is assisted in solving by a fictional socialist artist who stays in one of the tenanted cottages) is supplied by the near simultaneous death of a childhood friend (known for his love of drink) and the discovery on her grandfather’s body of both a fake version of the family heirloom jewels (the real-life Coke necklace – with in the story the real jewels seemingly missing) and the name of Anne’s hated childhood Nanny. the author) and starts in 1950 where with the Holkham estate struggling with post-war austerity she has taken a role as a travelling saleswoman selling the estate’s pottery (again as did the author).

Long time lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret and better known in literary terms for her 2019 memoir “Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown”.Īnd in fact this is an extremely autobiographical novel as the main character is Lady Anne Coke – daughter of the 5th Earl of Leicester (i.e. This easy reading country house crime novel is set in Holkham Hall in Norfolk (where I spent a lot of time visiting the local park, in and beach – at the end of Lady Anne’s Drive) and written by someone who grew up in that hall – Baroness Glenconner. 'Johnnie had a bit of a stream of consciousness thing going, didn't he? It's like reading a Norfolk version of James Joyce.'

You'll have to give me a minute, Charles said, sitting down next to her and still staring at the note.

Book by lady anne glenconner