Lady Mary Clayton in her mews house near Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park
One of the most perceptive observers of the late Queen Elizabeth II was her first cousin Lady Mary Clayton. She was little known outside the Queen’s circle, but she was an important figure in the monarch’s life. When Mary and I had an extended conversation in March 2009 at her modest mews house near Windsor Castle, I was struck by her wisdom, spirit and courage. At ninety-one, she was eight years older than the Queen. “I am among the last of the very old people to have known the Queen as a baby,” she told me
“It was always worth listening to her opinions”
“It was always worth listening to her opinions,” her daughter Rosie Stancer told me, because they were original, based on what she saw and heard. Some of Mary’s observations are in my book, Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch but she had much more to say that is worth sharing.
Mary grew up at Glamis Castle, the ancestral home in Scotland of the Queen’s Bowes Lyon family presided over by her grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore. Mary’s mother, Lady Rose, was an elder sister of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. At Glamis, Mary spent countless hours with Princess Elizabeth (known in the family as Lilibet) and her younger sister Princess Margaret. It was a warm and enveloping atmosphere of freedom and fun that shaped the future Queen Elizabeth II in crucial ways.
I was introduced to Lady Mary by Margaret Rhodes, another of the Queen’s Bowes Lyon first cousins, who I wrote about in Royals Extra three years ago (My Friendship with Queen Elizabeth’s II’s First Cousin and Confidante).
“A cross between Tinkerbell and the Terminator”
Lady Mary died in 2014 at age ninety-six, and the Queen attended her funeral—a rarity for the monarch. Since then I came to know Mary’s remarkable daughter Rosie, a renowned explorer who has trekked to the North and South Poles. Last April I caught up with her in London after she had returned from a 2,000-kilometer journey across Saudi Arabia. I was eager to fill in some blanks about her mother and to talk about the late Queen, who took a great interest in Rosie’s explorations. Sixty-six-years-old and a five-foot-three bundle of energy and enthusiasm, Rosie has often been described as “a cross between Tinkerbell and the Terminator.”
Lady Mary Clayton with her daughter Rosie Stancer in January 2000 after Rosie and four other women had completed an expedition to the South Pole
In addition to Mary’s and Rosie’s intimate perspectives, I’m offering my subscribers rare photographs from Glamis Castle that capture what Mary described to me as the “top group, middle group, and lower group” of the numerous Bowes Lyon first cousins, along with two examples of Mary’s little-known talent as a sculptress. In a separate post, I’m giving my loyal Royals Extra Founding Members something unique relating to Lady Mary that I hope they’ll find special.
“It’s very comfortable”
Lady Mary’s house, located near Cumberland Lodge in the Great Park at Windsor, was small and cluttered. Three months after Christmas, a strand of green tinsel was still draped over a vitrine containing porcelain treasures. Accompanied by Margaret Rhodes, I greeted Mary, who was waiting in a corner of her sitting room, dressed in a scarlet velvet quilted vest with a black fur scarf draped around her neck. She had a plaid blanket on her lap, and she wore her signature brightly colored boots—green on this particular day. She had been widowed since the death of her husband, Samuel Clayton, five years earlier, and her manner was straightforward and uncomplaining. She beckoned me to settle into the nearby wheelchair she had been using for more than ten years. “It’s very comfortable,” she assured me.