As the daughter of the Earl of Leicester the author has lived a life in a culture of social elites, in many ways a culture that has mostly vanished except for that of the British royal family. A great deal of the book looks at the author’s family, how things are done and not done in their tradition. Following a family tradition of directly working with the royal family, Anne Glenconner served as a Lady in Waiting for Princess Margaret from 1971-2002 and a good portion of the book details that period. She is very open about the inner workings of her own marriage and children as well as about how her connection to the royal family impacted almost everything.
I did feel somewhat conflicted about the book, having a hard time reconciling the author’s abilities with her subservience to a husband who was both unfaithful and eccentric. But at the end of it all, I did feel I got a good sense of the author as a person in her own right. The book is available in Overdrive as well (though hold list is pretty long).