Tiggy Legge-Bourke

Background

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

Brought up at Glanusk Park, a 6,000-acre (2,400 ha) estate in Wales, Tiggy Legge-Bourke was educated at Heathfield School, Ascot, 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.

In 1993, shortly after Charles, Prince of Wales, and his wife, Diana, Princess of Wales had separated, Charles hired Legge-Bourke as nanny to their two sons. As the royal nanny, she soon began to make headlines. Early controversy came when she said scornfully of the Princess of Wales's attitude towards her sons: "I give them what they need at this stage, fresh air, a rifle and a horse. She gives them a tennis racket and a bucket of popcorn at the movies". It was also considered to be a gaffe when Legge-Bourke referred to William and Harry as "my babies".

She often went with the princes on holidays. A heavy smoker, she was said to be able to smoke even while skiing, and was criticized by Diana for smoking near her sons. In 1996, at the age of thirteen, Prince William, avoiding a difficult choice, asked both of his parents not to attend Eton's Fourth of June celebrations, the high point of the school's year. However, they were both reported to be taken aback when he invited Legge-Bourke to attend in their place.

Early in 1997, she resigned, but she returned to the royal household only a few months later. On 18 July 1997, while out of Charles's service, she attended the fiftieth-birthday party he threw for Camilla Parker Bowles in Gloucestershire.

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 (200 foot) 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.

Legge-Bourke later admitted having had a "schoolgirl crush" on Charles, who had been a frequent visitor to her family's estate. Diana's biographer, Lady Colin Campbell, commented that "Charles is only interested in her as an uncle is interested in a younger niece."

On 20 November 1995, a television interview with the Princess of Wales by Martin Bashir was broadcast by the BBC. There was no mention of Legge-Bourke. However, on 24 January 1996, newspapers named Diana as the source of an untrue rumour circulated in November and December 1995 that Legge-Bourke had become pregnant by Charles and had had an abortion. The rumours were apparently spread by Bashir as a means to gain an interview with the princess. 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." On 18 December 1995, Legge-Bourke, with the queen's agreement, instructed the libel lawyer Peter Carter-Ruck to write to Diana's solicitors demanding an apology, asking that the accusation be "recognised to be totally untrue".

On 22 January 1996, shortly before the story of the unfounded abortion allegation was published, Diana's private secretary Patrick Jephson resigned, as did his assistant Nicole Cockell the next day. Jephson later wrote that Diana had "exulted in accusing Legge-Bourke of having had an abortion".

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. In February 1996, newspapers published a letter from Diana to Charles in which she asked that "Miss Legge-Bourke not spend unnecessary time in the children's rooms... read to them at night, nor supervise their bathtime."

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". She reportedly did not invite Camilla Parker Bowles to her wedding and Prince Charles did not attend because he had a prior engagement. Princes William and Harry attended the wedding.

Legge-Bourke and Pettifer had a brief romance while they were teenagers at school in the 1980s (she at Heathfield, he at Eton). They stayed friends while he was married to Camilla Wyatt, and Legge-Bourke was godmother to one of their sons. Until May 1997, Pettifer was company secretary and a director of Unique Security Consultants Ltd., providing former Special Air Service officers as bodyguards. He then became chief executive of Rapport Research and Analysis Ltd, supplying companies with former SAS officers for protection work.

In recent years, she has developed a farmhouse bed and breakfast business at Ty'r Chanter, near Crickhowell on the Glanusk estate, billed as "The Tiggy Experience".

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