As maid of honour at the late Queen’s Coronation and longtime lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, there are few secrets that Lady Glenconner doesn’t know.
Yet the 93-year-old former royal confidante has now laid bare one of her own – and admitted she is the real-life inspiration for Lady Mary Crawley in the hit ITV series Downton Abbey.
She said: ‘I’m the original Lady Mary … [writer] Julian Fellowes based Downton Abbey on me and my two sisters, because I couldn’t inherit [the family seat].’
Born Anne Coke in 1932, Lady Glenconner was the eldest of three daughters of Thomas Coke, the future 5th Earl of Leicester.
Due to the inheritance laws at the time, she and her sisters could not inherit Holkham Hall in north Norfolk.
When the 5th Earl died in 1976, the title and the estate passed to his cousin Anthony.
It is a story echoed by blockbuster drama Downton Abbey which starred the late Dame Maggie Smith and Hugh Bonneville, with Michelle Dockery as Lady Mary.
The series sees the 5th Earl of Grantham (Bonneville) unable to leave the estate to his eldest daughter Mary or to her two sisters Edith and Sybil.
Lady Glenconner has admitted she is the real-life inspiration for Lady Mary Crawley (pictured) played by Michelle Dockery in the hit ITV series Downton Abbey.
Born Anne Coke in 1932, Lady Glenconner was the eldest of three daughters of Thomas Coke, the future 5th Earl of Leicester
He has no choice but to name his cousin Matthew Crawley, a Manchester solicitor, as his sole heir. Lady Mary initially resents Matthew’s claim on the title but eventually falls in love with and marries him.
She subsequently becomes mistress of Downton, before Matthew is tragically killed in a car crash.
In an interview with the December edition of Norfolk Magazine, Lady Glenconner said her own link to Downton had been acknowledged when costumes and props from the show were sold by auction house Bonhams.
She said: ‘Bonhams had a Downton Abbey sale where they sold all the clothes that they used.
They put my wedding dress next to Lady Mary’s wedding dress and said, ‘If you want to buy something from the real Lady Mary, there it is’.
‘That’s all quite exciting for me.’
