I’ll never forget my first encounter with the late Queen’s companion, Lady Airlie

She was a lady-in-waiting and the chatelaine of a Highland castle, but an approachable and smiling friend to those of us who knew her

She was one of the late Queen’s best known companions, serving for decades as a long serving lady-in-waiting and probably, although she would never dream of admitting it, a close confidante of the monarch.
But this daughter of an American millionaire, who became an instant star when she joined the ranks of the British aristocracy, Virginia, the Countess of Airlie, was just as much at home as the pillar of a country community in the glens of Scotland.
She may have been Lady Airlie to most of the villagers in the township of Cortachy, 25 miles north of Dundee, but to many – from all walks of life – who became her friends, she was “Ginny”, the elegant chatelaine of handsome, pink-walled Cortachy Castle. 
An approachable, smiling friend to all who knew her, my family and I got to know Ginny and her husband, David, the 13th Earl of Airlie, and chief of Clan Ogilvy, when we rented a tiny cottage on the edge of a neighbouring estate nearly thirty years ago. They had married in 1952 when he was Lord Ogilvy, 16 years before he inherited the titles from his father.
He was a former chairman of Schroders and was Lord Chamberlain to the Queen from 1984-97. He died aged 97, last year.
It was obvious to us from the start of our acquaintance that this couple and their six children were the beating heart of the community. Not because they owned vast tracts of it, which they did, but while rich and prosperous and living in a castle they may have been, there were few airs and graces about the Airlies.
And over the years it was as obvious that the term noblesse oblige might have been drafted for the couple. They took their responsibilities to the countryside and its people seriously, from the local primary school across the road to the Church of Scotland.
Ginny was also president of the local branch of Scottish Women’s Institutes– the equivalent of the WI in England – and on one occasion delivered a short speech about her work as a lady-in-waiting, albeit giving away no state secrets, it must be said. However, she did submit floral arrangements for the group’s meetings.
My first encounter with Ginny was memorable. It showed from the very first glance that while she was seen to be first amongst equals amongst these country folk, she lorded it over nobody. Our meeting came on the most important day in the glens’ calendar – the Cortachy Highland Games, which are held on a Sunday in August in the castle grounds.
As a relative newcomer to the event I had taken a jar of my homemade raspberry jam to the “produce” tent where the judging took place. It may have an aura of friendliness about it but the competition inside this marquee amongst the exhibitors was fierce and I was almost immediately told that I’d made the wrong jam. It should have been strawberry.
Ginny, who’d been looking on, leapt to my defence and pleaded with the organisers to allow me a special award. Not a chance, said the smiling, apple-cheeked but stern lady in charge, the wife of a local tenant farmer. “Rules are rules,” she insisted, whatever the Countess may have wished for me.
That this competition was being held on her land, in the shadow of her castle, still didn’t mean that the Countess’s view should prevail. She accepted this fact and my raspberry jam was deemed to be illegal and I was disqualified.
The Earl and his Countess always took the ‘Games’ seriously, chatting to all and sundry as they strolled around the perimeter, inside of which the caber tossing and foot races were taking part. I kept competing, too, and Ginny always had a sympathetic word for me as, in subsequent years, none of my efforts – not with cabers, but at jam and cake making – ever won a rosette, although my daughters’ jam did succeed once and one daughter did take first prize in a race.
Diminutive in stature but with a huge presence, the Countess was a generous hostess and there was often an eclectic mix of the great and good, as well as her Angus neighbours, at the castle’s many social functions. Although she was said to be very wealthy, that fact was never mentioned. She was the epitome of modesty. She simply smiled when I once suggested that Cortachy must be one of the few Scottish castles with central heating.
That disarming smile was one of her greatest assets, not only at breaking the ice whilst on official duties at home and abroad with the late Queen, but also when asked awkward questions about her relationship with the monarch.
She had a great way of rolling her eyes and adopted an almost mischievous manner if prompted to venture an opinion on how well or otherwise Her Majesty got on with some of the politicians she had to meet. Frankly, I always reckoned that smile spoke volumes. 
She was a proud American, who accompanied the late Queen on Royal visits across the Atlantic, as well as all over Europe and the Commonwealth. But she loved Scotland and was loved in return by those who met and got to know her in the country.
It’s little more than a year since her husband died and almost two years since the late Queen died last September. The Countess was understood to be living mostly at her London home recently. However, she died in Scotland, just as the lady she served for all those years did too.