The Lord of Pleasure Island breaks his silence in an indiscreet and revealing interview
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For decades Mustique has been a private retreat where Royals and celebrities removed their clothes – and their inhibitions. Its owner, Lord Glenconner, has remained tight lipped about its secrets - until now . . .
Snapped on a long-ago December day on a Mustique beach, the plumpish woman in the faded photographs could be any holidaymaker nursing a hangover on the morning after a very long night before.
Princess Margaret slouches in a deckchair, chain-smoking in the sticky heat of
a tropical noon as she contemplates a bottle of gin on a table littered with empties.
Finally, she pulls herself to her feet and, tugging a generously cut kaftan over her whale-boned bathing costume, wanly displays her new hairdo.
Beach Baron: Glenconner relaxes on the sands of Mustique
Her brunette curls have been chopped off, for ease of care during her stay at the villa she owns in this Caribbean Shangri-la, and she has abandoned her attempts to revive them with setting lotion.
It might seem astonishing that a senior Royal would allow such candid pictures. But there was no risk that they would be seen by anyone outside her tightly knit set, or so she assured herself.
They were privately commissioned by one of her closest friends, the owner of Mustique, Colin Christopher Paget Tennant, the 3rd Baron Glenconner, who
for 50 years has been the fiercely protective keeper of the secrets of the exclusive isle.
Rumours leaked out of decadent revels on the three-and-a-half-mile-square jewel of the archipelago of St Vincent and the Grenadines. Boys wearing little except coconut oil were said to have entertained guests at one party.
The carefree atmosphere nurtured two unconventional Royal romances – Margaret’s with society gardener Roddy Llewellyn and Zara Phillips’s with jockey Richard Johnson – and Prince William and Kate Middleton are expected next year.
Drinking Partners: Princess Margaret, wearing a whale-boned bathing costume, with a friend on a Mustique beach in 1976
But under the strict rules Glenconner instituted after buying the island in 1958, the rumours have remained just that. The only airport is owned by the island’s management company, which discreetly screens all arriving passengers.
Paparazzi and gossip writers are put on the next flight out if they show up at the picturesquely thatched terminal. Shortly before Christmas, however, the Baron called The Mail on Sunday to say that he has reluctantly decided to break his code of silence.
He has become increasingly incensed by the speculation about Princess Margaret’s years on the island.
Far from being a selfish hedonist, as she has been portrayed in recent books and a sensational Channel 4 docudrama, he says she retreated there to attempt to mend her broken heart after her marriage to Lord Snowdon began to disintegrate.
To set the record straight, he is planning to publish a volume of memoirs called I Told You So.
He has timed his startling announcement of the book to coincide with a ceremony on the island today at which a statue of him is being unveiled by the island’s ‘householders’, as villa owners such as Mick Jagger, Tommy Hilfiger, Shania Twain, Bryan Adams, Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward and publisher Felix Dennis are called.
Free of formality: Margaret, in a previously unseen picture, and an islander covered up 'out of respect' for the Princess, at Lord Glenconner's week-long 50th birthday in 1976
They will welcome the book, he insisted when I met him on the island, since by the standards of younger celebrities – ‘the Britney Spears generation’ – their behaviour is rather staid.
‘In an age when everything about well-known people is public, Mustique is a place where they can behave naturally,’ he says. ‘My wife has said I created the atmosphere of a continuous house party. We never behaved badly.
'We drank but there were no drugs. We were sometimes a little naughty, I suppose. At one early party, the young entertainers from the village didn’t have anything on and one of the ladies said, “Why are all those men wearing sporrans?” But when Princess Margaret was present, there were limits.’
The pictures of Margaret on the beach were taken during a week-long celebration in December 1976 of his 50th birthday. The highlight was the Golden Ball, a torchlight dance at which village youths formed an honour guard.
‘Out of respect for the Princess, they wore codpieces,’ he qualifies carefully. ‘I made them out of coconut shells and painted them gold.’
An aerial view of Mustique, St Vincent and the Grenadines
The young Glenconner was inspecting family estates in Trinidad when he heard Mustique was for sale. In its heyday, the island had thriving sugar plantations, but now wild cattle and sheep roamed largely abandoned fields.
He cabled his father, the 2nd Baron, requesting permission to buy it for £45,000.
‘It was 1,400 acres, the size of an estate in Gloucestershire,’ he says, ‘but the upkeep would be a lot less because the beaches did not require maintenance.
‘My father cabled that it was OK to buy it if it had plenty of water. It had no fresh water, but I bought it anyway. The Tennant in me loves a deal,’ he adds, referring to his enterprising ancestors.
His wife, Lady Anne, exclaimed ‘You must be mad!’ when he tried to persuade her that wintering there would be cheaper than heating the castle on 9,000-acres in Peebleshire which is his family seat.
She is the daughter of the 5th Earl of Leicester and grew up in the stately splendour of Norfolk’s Holkham Hall, where the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were her playmates.
Glenconner’s own connections to royalty are more oblique. His great-great- great-grandfather, Charles Tennant, patented the formula for bleach in 1799. ‘From 1820 to 1920 we owned the largest chemical company in the world – United Alkali.’
Looking sharp: Bianca Jagger sporting a bizarre hat made from a cactus on Mustique in the heady days of the seventies
Glenconner’s grandfather was elevated to the peerage and his father enthralled the Queen Mother-to-be, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons. They were on the point of becoming engaged, Glenconner says, and he had even bought a ring when she stopped receiving him.
‘One explanation is that Chips Channon [the Tory MP and society diarist] said my father had had an affair with someone called Peta, whom she mistook to be a man called Peter,’ Glenconner says.
‘But I rather think she had a bigger sturgeon to fry,’ he continues. Soon afterwards she accepted the hand in marriage of the future George VI.
The Queen Mother was intrigued, however, to see how her former suitor’s son had turned out, and invited the young Glenconner to Sandringham, where he formed an instant bond with Margaret. They had much in common and there were predictions they would marry.
‘When I met Margaret she was looked on as the dark side of the Royal Family, hanging out at nightclubs,’ he says.
She invited him to Balmoral but did not have romantic designs on him.
‘She would go out riding with the Queen in the morning and there was nothing for me to do. I wasn’t her type. If you look at the men in her life – Peter Townsend, Lord Snowdon and Roddy Llewellyn – you can see that.’
There have recently been claims that Snowdon and Llewellyn were bisexual. Glenconner refuses to be drawn on the subject, but says bluntly that it was Snowdon’s ‘rotten’ treatment of Margaret that led to her finding solace in an extra-marital affair and Mustique.
Margaret first met the former Tony Armstrong-Jones at Glenconner’s wedding. Society photographer Armstrong-Jones was hired to take pictures, Princess Margaret was a guest.
Four years later, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon visited Mustique on their honeymoon, where the Glenconners lived in a bungalow with no electricity or running water. We gave the Princess and Tony a tour of the island on a tractor,’ he says.
‘They were whacking mosquitoes. We drove through the bush to a beautiful headland. I said, “Ma’am, would you like something from Asprey in a box as a wedding present, or perhaps you would both like this piece of land?’’ She waved her arm and said, “Oh, the land!’’
‘We didn’t see much of her after that until the marriage began to become unstuck. She rang one day in 1967 and said, “Oh, that present you said we could have in Mustique? Was it for real?’’ And I immediately said, “Yes.’’ And she said, “Does the offer include a house?’’ I said, “Yes, we will start work now on one.’’’
He adds: ‘She said her marriage had broken down and she’d had enough. I can’t say I was surprised. They didn’t come from the same kind of background or have the same interests, but Tony is a tremendously successful seducer.
‘He plays with people. He draws them in, then turns against them. His fascination with the Princess hadn’t lasted more than a year or two. After that there were rumours of cruelty. I had them to lunch once in the country, and he was very rude to her.
‘When she came here, she left everything behind – her former life and clothes and even her hairdo.’ Glenconner hired the theatrical set designer Oliver Messel to design the Princess’s villa. ‘But she refused my offer to have Oliver do the interior,’ he says.
‘She did the whole house in furniture she saw at the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition, all white Formica. Oliver was so disappointed but she said, “This is my house.’’
It really was the only house she ever owned. She always had the same menu at dinner parties. Shrimp cocktail with a sauce made from mayonnaise and ketchup followed by lamb or chicken, terribly badly cooked.’
The Princess’s life on Mustique may not have been elegant but it was nevertheless perfect from Glenconner’s point of view. He had netted a windfall of £1million from the sale of a business his family owned in the City and invested it in developing Mustique
as a winter resort where he would invite the rich and famous to buy land.
Surely they would not be able to resist rubbing shoulders with a Royal? The island is part of the nation of St Vincent and the Grenadines, but he talked its government into giving tax-free status to foreign property owners.
‘This is an extraordinary benefit,’ he says. ‘Owners can get £75,000 a week if they let their villas at Christmas.’
A Texan beauty was one of the first arrivals. She had considerable funds following her divorce from a brewery heir and she ploughed them into building an upside-down house on a cliff.
The drawing room was on the top floor and its downstairs master suite was reached by an outside stairway reputedly designed to permit discreet visits by gentleman callers.
The house is now an upmarket inn, the Firefly, where then 19-year-old Zara Phillips and 22-year-old Richard Johnson booked the downstairs quarters in 2000. Other grateful beneficiaries of its eccentric layout are said to have have included Mick Jagger and his ‘Cracker from Caracas’, Venezuelan heiress Vanessa Neumann.
‘Vanessa was staying downstairs and if you were sitting in the bar, you could see Mick’s head bobbing past the window on his way to visit her,’ a Firefly regular told me.
The island’s other hotel is the Cotton House, a converted 18th Century warehouse. It was originally owned by Glenconner. I remark on the unusual number of doors from its Great Room. ‘So people could slip away without being noticed,’ he chuckles.
‘In the early days practically everyone was divorced and with a new partner or looking for one.’
Glenconner is wearing his customary outfit, an Indian-style white sutra suit. It is monogrammed with a large G and a crimson baron’s coronet, making him instantly recognisable to residents on the beach.
He suddenly stops and does a bellyflop, landing on his stomach on the sand. Propping himself up on his elbows, he confides that he liked to assume this deceptively relaxed-looking posture at picnics for prospective property buyers.
‘We’d drink chilled white wine, served from a portable paraffin fridge, and I might sing songs. Then I would undress and plunge into the sea. People are much more ready to talk business when they have their clothes off.
'They’d be swept up in the whole idea of living on Mustique and that was when I’d sell them land. They felt really liberated.’
Princess Margaret was introduced to Roddy Llewellyn at a party at Glenconner’s Scottish estate in 1973. At first glance, he was hardly suitable. He was the grandson of a minor baronet and 17 years younger than the Princess.
But Glenconner says his admiration for her was warm and genuine. ‘We were playing gin rummy and Roddy was keeping score,’ he says. ‘The Princess grabbed the card from him. He’d written, “You’re looking very pretty today.’’
She was very bruised by her marriage and Roddy was kind to her. But he was never anyone she could have married. In those days he was a hippy. He wanted to be a pop star but his voice was too thin and he made the most awful jokes.
He did the garden at the villa. His relationship with Margaret changed. When they arrived here, they were lovers but it became that of a mother and son.’
A Channel 4 docudrama has suggested that she subsequently began an affair with raffish actor and gangland criminal John Bindon, who entertained her with obscene party tricks.
She would purportedly ring him late at night to summon him to her villa. ‘That
is absurd,’ Glenconner says angrily. ‘The island’s phone operator, Cynthia, was living at the time with Basil Charles, my barman, and they had two children. She closed the switchboard at 5pm and didn’t open until 8am. The Princess couldn’t have called anyone.’
He concedes that the Queen did worry about how Margaret was surviving. ‘I am sure some people still thought there were cannibals on Mustique,’ he says. ‘The Queen and Prince Philip came here twice to see how she was getting on.
'The first time, the Prince went swimming while the Queen lay on the beach and sunbathed. The second time, in her Jubilee year, I gave a banquet for her.’
Basil – the gregarious son of a West Indian fisherman – waltzed at the function with his new girlfriend, a British Viscountess and former Deb of the Year, Virginia Royston. They went on to live together for nine years.
He now owns Basil’s Bar, a thriving pub on the Mustique waterfront where William and Kate can be found belting out Elvis songs on karaoke nights.
‘Basil is richer by far than me now,’ says Glenconner.
William and Kate first visited the island in 2006, when they stayed at a villa owned by John Robinson, founder of the Jigsaw fashion chain. The going rent at the time was £8,000 a week but the tycoon loaned it after being told the Prince was worried the cost was beyond his reach.
The couple played energetic games of volleyball on the sands and took on local villagers in a frisbee match. During one afternoon on the beach, Kate clambered on to the Prince’s shoulders. ‘You really could see they were in love,’ an islander says.
William also played tennis with Sir Richard Branson and was treated to a cruise on his catamaran. At Basil’s Bar, a staffer says: ‘We always had the Prince’s “poison” ready for him – vodka and cranberry juice. Kate would usually have a pina colada, flavoured with Sunset Premium rum.’
They couple have made several other visits, including in 2008, when they hired the Firefly’s speedboat.
Glenconner ruefully admits that he dissipated most of his fortune on Mustique. He built a mansion for himself, the Great House, inspired by a Mogul palace. By that time Anne was a Lady-in-Waiting to Princess Margaret and they were often travelling. Glenconner amused himself with back-to-back entertainments.
‘We liked to be spontaneous,’ he says. ‘We had one tableau where I told everyone an exotic lady from the East was arriving. She was carried in on a litter, hidden under a mosquito net. I slashed the muslin with a machete and Bianca Jagger emerged.’
Meanwhile, he paid for the island’s airport, the roads, a water collection plant and housing for workers and their families. ‘I sold the land for very little – about £2.50 a square foot,’ he says.
‘When I tried to introduce service charges, some people refused to pay and it
all became very tiresome. I had to borrow money and sell my Lucian Freuds, including my own portrait.’
The financial pressure finally forced him to sell his remaining shares in the management company over ten years to the householders for the same £1million he originally put in.
‘It was cruel,’ he says. ‘If I had just invested the original cash it would have been worth 100 times that.’ A year later, he sold the Great House to Christina Onassis’s third husband, former Soviet shipbroker and ex-KGB agent Sergei Kauzov. It is now owned by Lawrence Stroll, a Canadian garment manufacturer.
In 1999, Glenconner hosted his last party on Mustique, a luncheon in a tented pavilion. He decorated it with erotic wall hangings from the Kama Sutra and Princess Margaret was the guest of honour.
He was clearly delighted, however, when he was invited to today’s statue-unveiling ceremony. The work is by the Queen’s sculptor, Philip Jackson, and is being unveiled by Princess Josephine Loewenstein, wife of the Rolling Stones money manager Prince Rupert.
I accompanied Glenconner to the hilltop where the 13.5ft bronze monument is mounted on a plinth. ‘You need to take two or three trees down,’ he instructed a multi-millionaire businessman who was finalising the preparations.
‘There has to be room for people to stand and take photographs. And I want to be gazing out to sea,’ he added.
Once the trees are taken down, visitors will be able to glimpse the distant peaks St Lucia, where Glenconner is developing a brand-new tourism project, The White House at Choiseul, a boutique hotel-restaurant that will be owned and managed by his valet and personal assistant of the past 26 years, Kent Adonai, 45.
Kent has been a favourite with various attractive women, by whom he has sired several children. He is reminiscent in short, of the younger Basil, Glenconner says.
‘I wanted to do something nice for him. Anne and I will have a flat upstairs. It will be different.’
Glenconner knows that is what will make it successful.
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