Whatever Next! (A Bear Family Book, 2)

Product Information

The Queen always understood that the deference paid to her was because of her position and what she represented, not because of who she was as a person. I think one of the reasons she was so loved was because she was not arrogant or haughty.”

Whatever Next? covers some of the same ground as Lady in Waiting, but the tone is much darker, especially about her marriage to Colin Tennant. Before, she painted him as a highly-strung eccentric who was liable to throw tantrums, but now she calls him “an incredibly selfish, damaged and occasionally dangerous man” and says that “I lived with domestic violence and abuse for most of my marriage”. Not really. I just think it was a final cruelty. People do ask if he was gay or bisexual, but I really don’t know. He had a lot of affairs with ladies. He had huge appetites. It was the same with shopping. In India once, he saw these windows on a house. He wanted them, but not a copy. He wanted those very windows. He had a compulsive side. Are you any closer now to understanding why, when he died in 2010 , he left his entire estate to his valet, Kent Adonai ? Yes, but thanks to this book, I’ve had the most wonderful conversations with them. We’ve been able to talk about what Colin, their father, did to them in great detail and I’ve been able to say: “Oh, darlings.”You were born into another world. Did the cooks at Holkham really gather up the shed velvet from deers’ antlers, fry it and serve it on toast? Encourage children to tell the story in their own words using the illustrations to help them. You might find they include some phrases from the story. Talk about the story But isn’t stoicism a double-edged sword? As you admit in your book, life might have been better for you and your children if you’d talked more.

Read the book again allowing children to join in with words they might remember such as WHOOSH! BUMP! Or ‘Whatever next!’ Tell the story Well, I’ve given up supper. I find that eating late gives me indigestion and I wanted to lose weight around my middle. It’s marvellous. I never feel hungry. I have breakfast and a good lunch and that’s it. I lost a stone without trying. I also walk every day and properly. You’ve got to lift your feet up. This book has valuable insights and information on how to cope with whatever life throws at you. Anne says she believes it was her early training on how to behave and her experiences during WWII and as a traveling saleswoman for her family pottery that gave her the ability to deal with everything which happened to her later. Anne wasn't the only one in her family to deal with marital woes; she mentions her beloved sister Carey, who had a husband "who would only talk to her through the dog for years on end." This is very sad, but I'll admit I had to laugh when I read it :) Who can believe the things some people do?!I think that Anne's life is very interesting to me because parts of it are so different than mine. But the part of her life that really inspires me is the way that she reinvents herself over and over. She is over ninety years old and has become an author and she just loves it. Who knows? I’m 90 and a half and I do sometimes get exhausted. But I’m having such a wonderful time. Life is so exciting. I’m going on The One Show on Monday. When writing about her life, I couldn't help many times but be amazed at what it must be like to have such wealth: "We had an excellent staff, and though I felt terribly busy at the time, I never cleaned a bath or made a bed." When my friends asked me about Colin’s behaviour, or Princess Margaret and I swapped stories about our difficult husbands, it seemed much healthier to laugh about it all.”