Owner of the island of Mustique whose friendship with Princess Margaret kept him in the public eye

Colin Tennant, the third Baron Glenconner, had a permanent place in the gossip columns for most of the second half of the 20th century, largely because of his intimate friendship with Princess Margaret; but also because of his Faustian compact with fame – or, perhaps, notoriety. Throughout the 1980s in particular it seemed as though Nigel Dempster had a hot line to Glenconner's bedside phone. Given to extravagant gestures – for his 60th birthday party in 1986, the likes of Jerry Hall, Raquel Welch and Princess Margaret flew to Mustique at his expense for a Peacock Ball – he was seldom out of the limelight. And yet for all these fitful wonders he was an essentially honest and charming man in whose company one was often reduced to helpless laughter.

Lord Glenconner's background provided ample genetic precedence for his eccentricities. His paternal grandmother, Pamela, Lady Glenconner, was one of the aristocratic-bohemian Souls of the Edwardian era who conducted life at her Arts and Crafts manor near Salisbury, as a kind of Rousseauesque charade. Peter Quennell recalled that Lady Glenconner would greet visitors arranged in an 18th-century tableaux – a sense of fantasy inculcated in her son, Stephen Tennant, whose sayings as a child she published, and who would live out a decorative reclusion at Wilsford surrounded by tropical lizards, polar bear skins and the rainbow glitter of his imagination. It was to Wilsford that his nephew Colin brought Princess Margaret for an audience with his eremitic uncle, only to be told by Stephen's butler that his master was seeing only blond-haired visitors.

Although he preferred the exploits of his maternal grandmother, Lady Muriel Paget, who during the Russian Revolution had had guns pointed at her, only to reply "Nonsense!" and push them away, Glenconner would maintain more than a little of the Tennants' mercurial, sometimes frustrating feyness in the character he created for himself. Modern eyes would be opened to his more colourful aspects in The Man Who Bought Mustique, a film directed by Joseph Bullman in 2000, which followed Glenconner as he prepared for a visit by Princess Margaret to his island. The vision of Glenconner barking imperious and impetuous commands to his hapless assistants encouraged reviewers to believe he represented an egregious example of feudal arrogance, if not near-lunacy.

A few months after the film aired, I was sent on assignment to interview Glenconner for an article commissioned by Tina Brown for her magazine, Talk. He had agreed to talk about his relationship with Princess Margaret, who was then seriously ill. As I had written a biography of his uncle Stephen, Glenconner told Brown he wanted me to conduct the interview.

Having recently watched Bullman's film, I almost turned down the offer. I recall arriving in St Lucia, the island to which Glenconner had retreated after his Mustique dream had ended in acrimony, with some trepidation. In fact, as his faithful driver and loyal factotum, Kent, delivered me to what looked like a beach hut perched in the most desirable position on the island the man who greeted me was charm itself. Tall, thin, clad in white shalwar kameez, a battered straw hat and all-terrain sandals, Lord Glenconner resembled a character out of Evelyn Waugh via Hello! He bid me sit down, and we talked – for the next five days. Intelligent, well-read, with impeccable manners, he was one of the most entertaining men I have met; I saw that he had inherited his uncle's winning, but perhaps dangerous, allure.

drive from www.independent.co.uk