Tiggy Legge-Bourke

Legge-Bourke is the daughter of William Legge-Bourke (1939–2009), who served in the Royal Horse Guards. After taking a degree at Magdalene College, Cambridge, he became a merchant banker at Kleinwort Benson and was deputy lieutenant of Powys from 1997 until his death. Legge-Bourke's mother, Dame Shân Legge-Bourke (1943–2025), was the only child of Wilfred Bailey, 3rd Baron Glanusk (1891–1948), a soldier who became a colonel in the Grenadier Guards and also served as Lord Lieutenant of Brecknockshire. When Shân Bailey's father died in 1948, she and her mother inherited his estate at Glanusk Park, near Crickhowell in Powys, while his peerage went to a cousin. Shân Legge-Bourke was appointed a lady-in-waiting to the Princess Royal in 1987, was High Sheriff of Powys in 1991, and was the Lord Lieutenant of Powys until 2018. Tiggy Legge-Bourke's paternal grandfather, Sir Harry Legge-Bourke (1914–1973), was a member of parliament for the Isle of Ely from 1945 until 1973 and was chairman of the 1922 Committee of Conservative backbenchers. His death in 1973 led to a by-election won by the Liberal Clement Freud. She is a cousin of the public relations executive and television personality Eleanor Legge-Bourke. Legge-Bourke was reported in 1994 to be fond of fly fishing and long walks in the country. ==Early life==

, Tiggy Legge-Bourke's ancestral home, built by her ancestor the ironmaster Sir Joseph Bailey Brought up at Glanusk Park, a estate in Wales, which she left with four O-levels, and the Institut Alpin Videmanette at Rougemont in Switzerland, a finishing school also attended by Diana, Princess of Wales. She has a sister and a brother, Zara and Harry. In 1985, Zara (b. 1966) married Captain Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, also known as Richard Drax. Legge-Bourke's brother Harry, born in 1972, was a Page of Honour to Queen Elizabeth II between 1985 and 1987 and became an officer in the Welsh Guards. In 1966, Legge-Bourke's grandmother Margaret Glenusk, widowed in 1948, married secondly William Sidney, 1st Viscount De L'Isle, who had been Governor-General of Australia from 1961 until 1965. He thus became step-grandfather to the Legge-Bourke children until his death in 1991. ==Career==

After leaving school, Legge-Bourke took a nursery teacher training course at the St Nicholas Montessori Centre in London. She then taught for a year in Balham before leaving to set up her own nursery school in Battersea, called Mrs Tiggywinkle's. Charles hired Legge-Bourke as nanny to their two sons. A heavy smoker, she was said to be able to smoke even while skiing, and was criticized by Diana for smoking near her sons. Early in 1997, she resigned, but she returned to the royal household only a few months later. She helped to comfort the princes after their mother's death in a road accident in Paris on 31 August 1997. There was anger in 1998 when Legge-Bourke allowed the young princes to abseil down the fifty-metre dam of Grwyne Fawr Reservoir in Wales without safety lines or helmets. Staff at St James's Palace mounted an inquiry, and Legge-Bourke was reported to have been saved only by the princes' adoration of her. The press predicted time and again that Legge-Bourke was about to be sacked, but this never happened. She finally retired from the Prince of Wales's service when she married in October 1999. ==Allegations by the Princess of Wales==

On 9 December 1992, prime minister John Major announced in the House of Commons that Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales, were to separate but had no plans to divorce. At the time, Diana was convinced that Charles loved only Camilla Parker Bowles. As early as October 1993, Diana was writing to Paul Burrell that she believed her husband was now in love with Legge-Bourke and wanted to marry her. Diana's biographer, Lady Colin Campbell, commented that "Charles is only interested in her as an uncle is interested in a younger niece." It was reported that words had been exchanged between Diana and Legge-Bourke on the matter at a party on 14 December 1995, when Diana had said to her "So sorry about the baby", and an "informed source" was quoted as saying "The Queen was absolutely furious and totally in sympathy with Tiggy." Jealous of her sons' affection for the woman who cared for them, Diana became more hostile towards Legge-Bourke, asking that she leave the room while Diana was talking to her sons on the telephone. As journalists digested Lord Stevens's report, they looked with a fresh eye at the conspiracy theories the report had demolished and tried to construct another out of Charles's supposed love for Legge-Bourke. The story surfaced again when the British inquest into the deaths of Diana and Dodi Fayed began at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on 2 October 2007, headed by Lord Justice Scott Baker sitting as a coroner. On 6 October 2007, the judge was reported as telling the court that in the evidence of Lord Mishcon, Diana's solicitor, Diana had told him that "Camilla was not really Charles's lover, but a decoy for his real favourite, the nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke". In December 2007, witnesses at the inquest were questioned about a letter to Paul Burrell from the Princess dating from October 1993, of which only redacted versions had previously been public. In this letter, the Princess of Wales had written: On 7 January 2008, Diana's friend Rodney Turner, giving evidence to the inquest, described his shock at seeing the contents of Diana's letter to Burrell, but on 15 January 2008, Maggie Rea, a lawyer in the firm headed by Lord Mishcon (who had died in January 2006), gave evidence to the inquest about Diana's fears to much the same effect as the letter, based on a note Mishcon had left on his file and on a meeting Rea and a colleague had had with Mishcon in October 1995. In the so-called "Mishcon note", dating from 1995, Diana predicted that in 1996 the queen would abdicate, the prince of Wales would discard Parker Bowles in favour of Legge-Bourke, and that she would herself die in a planned road crash. Before he died, Mishcon copied the note to the Metropolitan Police, who took no action on it. In September 2021, Legge-Bourke was offered significant damages by the BBC after an investigation into how the 1995 interview was obtained and amid reports that Martin Bashir himself had provided Diana with a faked abortion "receipt" which led Diana to believe that Legge-Bourke had become pregnant following an affair with Prince Charles. On 21 July 2022, the BBC in a High Court public apology to Legge-Bourke, in London, stated, "The BBC accepts that the allegations made against the claimant were wholly baseless, should never have been made, and that the BBC did not, at the time, adequately investigate serious concerns over the circumstances in which the BBC secured the Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales." The BBC will pay substantial damages and legal costs to the claimant. ==Marriage and children==

In October 1999, she married Charles Pettifer, a former Coldstream Guards officer, with two sons from a previous marriage, commenting to the press "He is magic". In April 2006, she attended the Sovereign's Parade at Sandhurst for Prince Harry's passing out as an officer of the Blues and Royals. In November 2006, the Prince of Wales was reported to be a regular visitor to Pettifer and her family in Powys. Tiggy and Charles Pettifer were two of the one hundred and fifty guests invited to Camilla's sixtieth birthday party on 21 July 2007. Tiggy Pettifer also attended the service of thanksgiving for the sixtieth anniversary of the wedding of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh at Westminster Abbey on 19 November 2007. Tiggy's son, Tom Pettifer was a page boy at Prince William's wedding in 2011 and the former nanny was also a special guest at Prince Harry's wedding in 2018. On 1 January 2025, Tiggy's stepson, Edward Pettifer, was killed in the New Orleans truck attack. King Charles III and Prince William subsequently publicly expressed their condolences. ==Honours==

Pettifer was appointed Member of the Royal Victorian Order (MVO) in the 2001 New Year Honours. ==Ancestry==

Sources for family tree: • ''Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage'' (107th edition, 2004) • ''Who's Who and Who Was Who'' • Ruvigny & Raineval, Marquis of, The Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal: The Anne of Exeter Volume (London: T. C. & E. C. Jack, 1907) p. 543 • Memorial Fountain, Crickhowell at web site of Public Monument and Sculpture Association's National Recording Project • Lucas, Sir Charles Prestwood (1853–1931) in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004) • Descendants of Henry VIII, King of England at worldroots.com ==References==