The surprising down-to-earth pastime adored by Princess Margaret

It's a little hard to imagine, but Anne Glenconner assures me that Princess Margaret loved to roll up her sleeves and get stuck into domestic chores when she visited her loyal lady-in-waiting at home in north Norfolk.

"Oh yes," smiles Lady Anne. "When Princess Margaret came, the first thing she'd ask was, 'Does your car need cleaning?' And I'd say, 'Well, ma'am, I think it does'. So on went the Marigold gloves and she used to clean the car." Gesturing to her tidy garden, which practically abuts the huge Holkham Estate where she grew up, of which more later, Lady Anne who was fixer-in-chief to Princess Margaret for 34 years, adds: "When she came here, she used to enjoy weeding."

Indeed, the Queen's younger sister, who stayed in her close companion's charming cottage-style farmhouse 15 times and visited from nearby Sandringham on countless other occasions, even brought her own weeding mat to spare her knees.

Such was the royal's domestic ease that the sprightly socialite tells me I'm sitting in Princess Margaret's favourite armchair in her cosy living room before a roaring open fire (and, yes, the Princess liked to sweep out the hearth, too). "I remember once, she brought her kettle because she thought she'd be independent," she continues.

"Well, I was a bit suspicious about that. So anyway, in the morning, I hear. 'Anne, Anne'. 'Yes, ma'am, what is it?' 'Well,' she said, 'this kettle's broken'. So I went up and of course she hadn't turned it on. I didn't like to tell her so I said, 'I think it's a bit faulty'. She always had breakfast in bed."

Such charming anecdotes illustrate a point indomitable Lady Anne, now 92 but as active as ever, is keen to make: that the Queen's sibling, who she knew from the age of three, was far more down-to-earth than people realise. She explains Margaret's sometimes haughty demeanour, and reputation for being a little short at times, was more likely to be because she had been ambushed by a request.

"I think she was quite misunderstood from the point of view that she didn't like surprises," Lady Anne tells me. "Quite often, she'd arrive somewhere and they'd spring things on her: 'Oh, 100 people are coming in ten minutes for you to meet'."

So she didn't like being caught on the hop?

"Exactly, and she didn't suffer fools gladly either. But I never had any trouble with her. I did lots of trips abroad because a lady-in-waiting is a go-between." She adds with a smile: "I've been a fixer to everyone. My father, who needed fixing a lot. My dear husband Colin, who needed fixing the whole time. And Princess Margaret. So I can do it. But when she came here, I always asked her what she'd like to do and I gave her alternatives."

Hence the chores, domestic tranquillity and peaceful picnics amid some of Norfolk's most stunning scenery - for we're talking today about her new book, Lady Glenconner's Picnic Papers. And Princess Margaret, it emerges, was a dedicated fan of dining al fresco... with certain reservations.

The original was written with her friend, the late Susanna Johnston and published in 1983 in aid of charity. The close friends were chatting one day - during a picnic, of course - and, "I said to her, the two things I always wanted to do were to play the piano beautifully and write a book," recalls Lady Anne.

"Well, I still can't play the piano but I think she said, 'Shall we do a book about picnics and get people to write about them for us?' Then she said, 'What about Princess Margaret?'

"Well, she'd never done anything like that, and I didn't think she'd say

yes. But anyway I asked and she agreed." So the Queen's sister, who died aged 71 in 2002, recalled a trip to Hampton Court in May 1981 - where a butler helped ensure dining perfection.

Other contributors to the original book included Lady Diana Cooper; adventurer, scholar and wartime agent Paddy Leigh Fermor; and John Julius Norwich who once enjoyed 147 picnics running, crossing and recrossing the Sahara over seven weeks in 1966. By contrast, the late Sir George Christie, whose father founded Glyndebourne Opera, could never understand the appeal of sitting on a rug outside waiting for the opera when you could be more comfortable indoors.

This fully revised edition remains a treasure trove of memories, stories and recipes from its author and a host of famous friends and family - including Bryan Adams, Jools Holland, William Hanson, Rachel Johnson and, of course, Princess Margaret from the original. As its title suggests, it is a book to nibble in delicious, bite-sized chunks of whimsy and, occasionally, hilarity. "My generation was brought up on picnics," says Lady Anne.

"When I was a child, we had picnics in the summer every day at Holkham. Every day at 2pm, all the nannies and all the children and some of the parents used to pile in this wonderful old bus, a charabanc, and go down to Holkham Beach. There were two huts, one for the grown-ups among the trees and the children's one was on the beach.

We had these wonderful minuscule cucumber sandwiches, little sausages. I always remember those picnics when I was a child and the Queen and Princess Margaret used to join us sometimes. There's generally a wind on Holkham and Nanny would say, 'Now don't be fussy!' But I always remember the sand in my teeth.

"Picnics can be more enjoyable than dinner parties which are so formal. It is easier to move around. So often at dinner parties you're stuck with the same person. You're talking to them before dinner then you find yourself sitting next to them..."

Asked for her favourite picnic story, Lady Anne is in no doubt.

"My husband Colin was a brilliant organiser of picnics both at home and in Mustique. There was one picnic at Glen [their Scottish family home] and Colin had a very eccentric uncle, Stephen Tennant, who was visiting," she recalls. "He came in a car decorated inside with flowers and his pet parrot. We were having a picnic the next day. And that evening, he said to Colin, 'Darling boy, can I have a word? The thing is, I can't stand the colour of heather, it's so frightfully vulgar.'

"So Colin, unbeknownst to us, went somewhere and brought hundreds and hundreds of blue paper flowers and stuck them all over this heather. Next day, Uncle Stephen, thank God, said, 'So much better darling boy'." It's an extraordinary story, but we have come to expect nothing less from Lady Anne.

Her 2019 memoir, Lady In Waiting, written at the age of 87, Lady Anne shared candid memories of the royals and her deeply eccentric husband. In one episode, she recounted her honeymoon in Paris, where Tennant took her to a brothel. The bride was ushered into a chair next to her new husband as a man and woman had sex in front of them.

When she recounted the story on Graham Norton's show after publication (her friend, actor Rupert Everett told her she needed to tell a cheeky story first, given Norton's love of innuendo), the clip went viral and helped drive the memoir straight into the bestsellers' list. To date it has sold a million-plus copies worldwide and Norton has now shared his own memories growing up in Ireland for the new book.

Suffice to say, picnics were anathema, as he writes: "The only recipe anyone needs for a successful picnic is to see a patch of blue in the sky that is, as my father used to say, 'big enough for a pair of sailor's trousers' and then pop into the nearest garage shop and stock up on some items packed with fat and salt. Consume these snacks somewhere you can at least see a tree and count yourself one of the luckiest people alive."

Lady Anne has drawn on her lifetime of experiences to pen two novels, Murder on Mustique, and A Haunting at Holkham. As Lady Anne Coke she grew up on the Holkham estate bordering Sandringham. As well as having princesses Elizabeth and Margaret as playmates, the future King Charles would visit from the age of three and remains a close friend of Lady Anne.

The vast Palladian mansion of Holkham Hall would have been hers today had she been born a boy - but because of the rules of primogeniture, the estate and the title of Earl of Leicester held by her father went to a distant cousin who lived in South Africa. Her parents had three girls, Lady Anne being the oldest. "I was the eldest with a sister two years younger than me, Carey, and then a big gap because of the war before another daughter!" she sighs.

"I remember when my aunt rang Carey and I at school and said, 'Oh your mother's had a darling baby girl' - Sarah. We burst into tears because we knew my father would feel like a failure." Today she remains on close terms with the family and visits Holkham regularly. Her books, she notes, sell very well in the estate's gift shop.

Lady Anne has endured tragedy - her oldest sons Charles and Henry both died young, their brother Christopher suffered terrible injuries in a motorcycle accident, while her late husband Colin, who owned the Caribbean island of Mustique, left his estate to an illiterate manservant in August 2010, (which she remains furious about) - yet she is profoundly grateful for her life.

"I've been incredibly lucky," she adds. "I've met so many interesting people. And so many of them have kindly contributed to my new book." Not always a picnic, then. But an extraordinary story nonetheless.

Lady Glenconner's Picnic Papers by Anne Glenconner (Bedford Square, £22) is out now. Visit or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on orders over £25