Princess Anne of Denmark

Princess Anne of Denmark (formerly Anne Anson, Viscountess Anson, née Anne Ferelith Fenella Bowes-Lyon; 4 December 1917 – 26 September 1980) was the mother of royal photographer Patrick Anson, 5th Earl of Lichfield and Lady Elizabeth Anson, first cousin of Elizabeth II, and a Princess of Denmark through her second marriage.

Family

Anne Bowes-Lyon was born in Washington, D.C., in 1917. Her father was the Hon. John Herbert Bowes-Lyon, an elder brother of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her mother was the Hon. Fenella Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis, daughter of Charles Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis, 21st Baron Clinton. Anne had three sisters, two of whom were Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon. These sisters were later known as "the Queen's hidden cousins,"^[1] institutionalized since 1941 for severe mental retardation.

Anne's paternal grandfather was Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, father of her aunt Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, who was born Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.

Marriages

Anne married Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas William Arnold Anson (1913–1958) on 28 April 1938. As her husband held the courtesy title of Viscount Anson, Anne was styled Viscountess Anson upon their marriage. They were divorced in 1948. They had two children, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren:

• (Thomas) Patrick John Anson (25 April 1939 – 11 November 2005), who later succeeded his grandfather as the 5th Earl of Lichfield. He married Lady Leonora Grosvenor, daughter of the Duke of Westminster, on 8 March 1975 and they were divorced circa 1986. They have three children and two grandsons.
• Lady Elizabeth Georgiana Anson (7 June 1941), who married Sir Geoffrey Adam Shakerley, 6th Baronet on 27 July 1972 and were divorced in 2009. They have one daughter and two grandchildren:
  • Fiona Elizabeth Fenella Shakerley (18 August 1973), who married Edward Brocas Burrows, son of Anthony Richard Brocas Burrows and Angela Margaret Sheffield, in 2004
    • Noah Burrows (1 March 2006)
    • Ruby Burrows (2008)

On 16 September 1950, at Glamis Castle she subsequently married Prince George Valdemar of Denmark, upon which she became Princess Anne of Denmark. Her second husband was a great-grandson of both King Christian IX of Denmark and King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway.

Anne died in 1980, aged 62, in London, of a myocardial infarction.^[2]

Ancestry

Notes