The idea of family cameos in memoirs of colourful lives is terrifying

I’ve made three friends in Norfolk. One of them is Kate, the lady who runs the excellent bookshop in Burnham Market. I nipped in a couple of weeks ago to see if she had any copies of Lady Anne Glenconner’s much-discussed new memoir.

The former lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, lives nearby and has become a local celebrity, especially after her appearance on The Graham Norton Show last weekend when she shocked Olivia Colman with tales of her dismal Parisian honeymoon.

“She says your grandparents are in the book,” Kate told me, having spoken to Lady Anne that morning.

Ah. I knew that my grandfather had connections with Mustique, the island that Lady Anne’s late husband Colin turned into a glamorous holiday isle, but I wasn’t sure of the details. Was there scandal and bad behaviour? Was my grandfather about to be unmasked as a bounder who partied on the infamous island where Princess Margaret once appeared on the arm of a man dressed only in a codpiece made from a golden coconut shell?

Visions of The Hon Galahad Threepwood swum before me.

P G Wodehouse fans will recognise him as Lord Emsworth’s younger brother and the subject of the plot in Summer Lightning. Gally had a wild youth and is writing his memoirs. The family are concerned about these revelations; there was a particularly unfortunate incident involving Sir Gregory ParsloeParsloe and prawns at Ascot one year. Various characters gather at Blandings, some charged with stealing this book to prevent publication, and Wodehousian chaos follows. It’s a scream.

As is Lady Anne’s terrific book. I needn’t have worried since all it mentions is that my stepmother imported “a boatload of horses” to