Island Life Magazine Ltd February/March 2011 | Page 41

interview

Island Life - February/March 2011
Photo: Anne pictured at Shanklin Chine 1984

to attend the court hearing.
She was also in the newspaper offices at
the time of the sex scandal involving MP
John Profumo with Christine Keeler and
Mandy Rice Davies. She said: “I went out to
lunch with the deputy editor of the Sunday
Pictorial and asked him ‘is it really true
about Jack Profumo, because he is a great
friend of mummy and daddy’. He replied ‘I’m
frightfully sorry, but it is true’.
“Jack Profumo was the MP for Warwickshire
where we lived, and he was a very kind
person. When King George VI died I rang up
and said ‘Mr Profumo do you think my cousin
and I could come and see the King lying in
state’? He said yes, and we met him so he
could take us in. Imagine that happening
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these days; it really was a different world.”
Anne was very much part of the London
scene and lucky to see such stars of the
day as Marlene Dietrich and Noel Coward,
dancing to ‘Hutch’ and watching a Goon
Show before it was broadcast on radio.
In all she spent 13 years in her two jobs at
the Stock Exchange and Mirror Newspapers.
Her next employment was secretary with
Rhodesia Public Relations at the time of
the country’s independence, and was once
confronted by Rhodesia’s Deputy Prime
Minister and Foreign Minister while working
in her office.
She later worked for a Russian Prince
as a PR for six months, and was then
employed by former Prime Minister Harold
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